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”
Tag Archives: National Poetry Month
#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”
#9: Some Performance Poets Are Not Very Good At Poetry
They’re often yelling, for starters, and even the good ones have a particular cadence and that annoying inflection that always goes up at the end as if they were, in the words of one performance poet, always asking a question. One wonders if the same poems, the ones shouted at audiences or delivered at break-neckContinue reading “#9: Some Performance Poets Are Not Very Good At Poetry”
#8: Ottava Rima Give Me Cake and Ale (and that is perfect iambic pentameter!)
The assignment for today’s poem from the NaPoWriMo website: write a poem using the ottava rima from Lord Byron’s Don Juan. It’s an Italian form consisting of an eight line stanza in iambic pentameter with this particular rhyme scheme: a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c. It’s groovy, and I wanted to try it, but the prompt comes with no subject matter suggestion,Continue reading “#8: Ottava Rima Give Me Cake and Ale (and that is perfect iambic pentameter!)”
#7: Six Statements and a Question
Write a poem in which each line is a single declarative sentence until the last line. The last line should be a question. That was the prompt today on http://www.napowrimo.net and I took up the challenge. I thought, that since today was the seventh day of the poetry writing extravaganza, that my poem would containContinue reading “#7: Six Statements and a Question”
#6: Drumsticks–A Valediction
Drumsticks: A Valediction Don’t worry; it’s only temporary. But because I’ve been drumming almost non-stop all weekend, I must now say farewell to you, my sticks, until next Friday, when I will take you up again and continue the drumming. Know, you must, that the drumming lately has been exceptional, in the way that fishingContinue reading “#6: Drumsticks–A Valediction”
michael jarmer 