Welcome to sonnetmageddon, day 4. Not even 1/6th of the way through the month, I have a sense of something taking shape in the way of a connective thread, beyond the repetition of this formal structure, the sonnet. Just four poems in, it might at this point be pretty oblique–so I mention it here justContinue reading “#442: I named my undergrad creative thesis . . .”
Tag Archives: National Poetry Writing Month
#441: The bug for travel does not sit with me . . .
Welcome to day 3 of my sonnetpalooza. All sonnets, all the time. 24 hour sonnets. I’m feeling pretty groovy about my progress. I find myself, even, a bit ahead of schedule. As of this third day, I have composed five of these babies. The jury is out about whether I will post more than oneContinue reading “#441: The bug for travel does not sit with me . . .”
#440: These are the worst dogs we have ever had . . .
Welcome to the second day in the festival of sonnet, wherein, I have determined, in celebration of NaPoWriMo, to write a sonnet every day during the month of April. The dilemma always during National Poetry Writing Month, whether you are doing your own thing or following the lovely prompts offered by the NaPoWriMo website, isContinue reading “#440: These are the worst dogs we have ever had . . .”
#439: The poet Larry Levis said or wrote . . .
Greetings! Happy April Fool’s day. Far be it from me, though, to play a prank on you, dear reader. So, I begin today holding true to the self-challenge of writing 30 sonnets in 30 days in celebration of National Poetry Writing Month. For this first one, I have decided to be faithful to the ShakespeareanContinue reading “#439: The poet Larry Levis said or wrote . . .”
NaPoWriMo 2023: A Sonnet Festival
Don’t ask me why, not just yet anyway, but I am moved this year as I anticipate the first day of National Poetry Writing Month to veer away from my annual practice–not by skipping it, or by doing something different, like working on prose, for example, like some fiction writers do in the fourth monthContinue reading “NaPoWriMo 2023: A Sonnet Festival”
#438: Human Nature (a cento on April 30, 2022)
As it is the very last day of April, hence, the last day of National Poetry Writing Month, I kind of wanted to go out with a bang–to do something ambitious. That’s the worst way, FYI, to begin a writing thing. “Today I am going to do something great” is a path to abject failure.Continue reading “#438: Human Nature (a cento on April 30, 2022)”
#437: Gifts and Curses (the penultimate poem, April 29, 2022)
“We are disabused of original giftedness in the first half of our lives. Then — if we are awake, aware, and able to admit our loss — we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed.” Parker J. Palmer Gifts and Curses Parker J. Palmer asks us to reclaimContinue reading “#437: Gifts and Curses (the penultimate poem, April 29, 2022)”
#436: One More (I Promise, the Last) Metaphor Dice Poem on April 28, 2022
poetry. sacrosanct. midwife. Thirty days has the cruelest monthand thirty days in a row for nine yearsduring April I have written a poem.I try and mostly fail to communicateto my students the worth of such a thing, poetry in and of itself, yes, let alonewriting one every day for thirty days, but they don’t quiteContinue reading “#436: One More (I Promise, the Last) Metaphor Dice Poem on April 28, 2022”
#435: A Metaphor Dice Concrete Poem for April 28, 2022
I intended this month to write a poem inspired by Taylor Mali’s metaphor dice that would be suitable for submission to The Golden Die Contest, the deadline for which is two days away. This isn’t it. This isn’t the one, neither is the earlier one I wrote this month. But I’ve been sitting on thisContinue reading “#435: A Metaphor Dice Concrete Poem for April 28, 2022”
#434: Buying a Shed (a duplex on April 27, 2022)
Here’s a poem called a duplex, a sonnet variation developed by the poet Jericho Brown. It’s 14 lines long–and it follows a pattern of partial repetition in the first line of each stanza of the second line of the preceding stanza. Except that the first line and the last line must be the same. AContinue reading “#434: Buying a Shed (a duplex on April 27, 2022)”
michael jarmer 