Today the NaPoWriMo website provided a seemingly random list of words, challenging us to incorporate five of them into a poem. I used all twenty-eight words on the list. And I used them in the exact order they appeared on that list, which worked surprisingly well! I didn’t know them all–I had to look severalContinue reading “#20: Owl and Cyclops”
Monthly Archives: April 2013
#19: Monkey Bar Encounter
The assignment from the NaPoWriMo website today calls for a personal ad poem. There used to be a thing in one of our local rags called “chance encounters.” I don’t know if they’re still publishing these, but I found them compelling, and I always wondered how likely it was that the intended audience would everContinue reading “#19: Monkey Bar Encounter”
#18: Let’s Pretend The Schoolhouse Is Broken
Let’s Pretend The Schoolhouse Is Broken I know! I have an idea: Let’s pretend the schoolhouse is broken even though we know it’s not so that a tiny number of thinkers and bureaucrats, of which I am one, can invent and impose new rigorous standards on educators and students (because certainly those educators and studentsContinue reading “#18: Let’s Pretend The Schoolhouse Is Broken”
#17: The American Teenagers Have Theories About The Ancient Chinese Masters
The American Teenagers Have Theories About The Ancient Chinese Masters They’re just making stuff up. Here’s one that says that Li Po was Wang Wei’s evil twin, his doppelgänger, or that the two poets were, in fact, the same guy, a sort of Jeckyl and Hyde affair. Here’s another that says Li Po was drunkContinue reading “#17: The American Teenagers Have Theories About The Ancient Chinese Masters”
#16: 24/7 Good News
Another horrific tragedy right here at home. To most of us, 99.999% of us, what motivates people to do this kind of evil is incomprehensible–and that’s part of the good news, that we find it incomprehensible. Another part of the good news is what Fred Rogers has pointed out to us, that there are moreContinue reading “#16: 24/7 Good News”
#15: Weeping At Rock Shows
Weeping At Rock Shows I’ve done it. I have allowed myself to weep at rock shows. Usually, I’m alone, anonymous in a crowd, no social obligations, no company to keep, and I am moved by the music. There’s an upswell that begins in the chest and travels up through the throat, the eyes water–enough, perhaps,Continue reading “#15: Weeping At Rock Shows”
#14: Tonight
Okay, I didn’t write this. I transcribed it. These are words to a song my seven year old son improvised and sang over a piece of moody music he composed on the keyboard, also, I think, improvised. Listening to the thing, you can barely decipher what he’s singing, so I thought a lyric sheet mightContinue reading “#14: Tonight”
#13: The Walk
The Walk Wandering around in the yard looking up at these gigantic oaks, bare branches, April, too early for new leaves. It may rain. Neighbors getting their mow on, blowing the last vestiges of winter out of their driveways and flowerbeds. My own lawn, freshly mowed. If it were warmer and dry I might beContinue reading “#13: The Walk”
#12: The Shadows
What follows is called a blackout poem. A kind of found poem, it requires a text of some kind, not poetry, and a felt tip marker. Essentially, you carve an original poem out of this pre-existing text, highlighting your chosen words, phrases, sentences, and blacking out or otherwise obscuring the rest. It becomes both aContinue reading “#12: The Shadows”
#11: The American English Teacher Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters
The American English Teacher Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters I want those mountains, that river, my head in those clouds–that kind of wandering, self-ablaze, alive with possibility, drunk with wine, as silent as nature, missing now– found again only through right diligence, an effort conspired against by almost every natural fact of modern living. IContinue reading “#11: The American English Teacher Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters”
michael jarmer 