Well, hello, and welcome to the annual poetry writing extravaganza in celebration of National Poetry Month during which suckers like myself attempt to write and publish a poem every day during the merry merry month of April. My first outing follows the instructions (optional as always) found on the National Poetry Writing Month website, where each day of the month, not only do we get a prompt for the day in case we are stuck, but other goodies as well, such as links to featured participants’ websites and this year, links to poems in translation. How cool is that?
Just in case you’re joining me for the first time and are confused by the number 189 (that was not intended to be a rhyme), I have been numbering all of the poems I’ve published on my blog site, and so this, my fourth consecutive year writing a poem each day for National Poetry Month and a bunch of loose poetry change, finds me today writing my 189th poem for the blog.
Today’s poem is a lune, an English language variation of the haiku, and I am writing my lune with my Creative Writing students, who I am forcing to also write lunes. Here I have attempted a poem in three stanzas, each stanza is a lune (5, 3, and 5 syllables, respectively).
Writing A Lune With My Students
Text messages go
wrong, await
a stupid response.
I assumed the loon
would be the
easiest thing. Fool.
Didn’t turn out to
be: mostly
notebook chicken scratch.
Postscript: I realize after initial publication that I’ve got the wrong lune (loon) in my poem, but decide to leave it as is. Seems to go nicely with the other bird reference in the last stanza. Maybe I’ll try to get a bird in the first one as well in a subsequent draft.
Got it:
Writing A Lune With My Students
Text messages go
wrong, await
a cuckoo response.
I assumed the loon
would be the
easiest thing. Fool.
Didn’t turn out to
be: mostly
notebook chicken scratch.
michael jarmer 