Lo, for the third day in a row the NaPoWriMo prompt suggestion has yielded results for sonnetpalooza. Today’s prompt was to write a portrait poem that focuses on or plays with the meaning of the subject’s name. I decided on self-portrait for this little project–and for some crazy reason, perhaps in keeping with the additionalContinue reading “#467: Michael, the archangel, whose essential work . . .”
Tag Archives: sonnet a day
#466: This is a love letter to my dear wife . . .
As you may already know, I have taken on the task of writing a sonnet every day for the month of April in celebration of National Poetry Writing Month. This project sort of precludes me from what I typically do in April–which is to respond to as many daily and optional prompts from the NaPoWriMoContinue reading “#466: This is a love letter to my dear wife . . .”
#465: This is a love letter to the contractor . . .
Twenty-four This is a love letter to the contractor:You dummy. I mean, your cabinets are nice. Maybe the nicest bathroom cabinets I’veEver seen. They dwarf the Ikea in the kitchen.And you’re pleasant, super, unless you’reNervous, and then you talk in these big circles. You use the word “buddy” to describe friendsWho will help you do this orContinue reading “#465: This is a love letter to the contractor . . .”
#464: They say, it’s okay to be not okay . . .
Happy day 23 of National Poetry Writing Month, and in my particular case, welcome back to the April sonnet marathon extravaganza. In this final stretch I have been freely messing with the form: blank verse sonnets, odd rhyme scheme sonnets, 15 line-long sonnets, and wonky, iambically-challenged sonnets. Today I’m returning to rhyme in the biggestContinue reading “#464: They say, it’s okay to be not okay . . .”
#463: I saw myself when a friend posted this . . .
Happy Earth Day, Happy Record Store Day, and happy 22nd day of Sonnetachella. It’s been a long festival, but it’s yielded fruit. Today’s offering is perhaps more truthfully the 26th sonnet I’ve scribbled out this month, but I am trying not to rest on my laurels, as evidenced by the trilogy of sonnets for AprilContinue reading “#463: I saw myself when a friend posted this . . .”
#462: Yesterday, when I was at the pet shop . . .
Along with the terrible very bad nasty no-good weather we’ve been having in my Oregon neck of the woods, it appears also to be raining sonnets. Cloudy with a strong chance of sonnets. I reeled in three yesterday, and I caught two today, both big ones, 15 lines long. That’s an extra 7.1228% of sonnet.Continue reading “#462: Yesterday, when I was at the pet shop . . .”
#461: My teacher Parker J. Palmer wrote or said . . .
Today’s sonnet breaches perhaps the one GOLDEN RULE of sonnet making. It’s 15 lines long. Three quatrains and a tercet! I was feeling rather naughty, although, I am nearly 100% sure that I am not the first one to write a thing that’s not 14 lines long and call it a sonnet. I don’t knowContinue reading “#461: My teacher Parker J. Palmer wrote or said . . .”
#460: There was in that crazy business . . .
Here’s the third sonnet in a trilogy, the result of a sudden sonnetplosion about my 32 years as a high school English teacher, 32 years in the same school. The second sonnet in this series pretended to be about things I’d miss about the profession, but turned out to be kind of the opposite thing.Continue reading “#460: There was in that crazy business . . .”
#459: However, there are things I truly miss . . .
Here’s the second poem in today’s sonnet trilogy. (II) However, there are things I truly miss.Not the rat race of it, the perpetualFrantic pace, the bureaucratic bullshit,Pendulum swing of best schoolhouse practice; Not the bells of it, slaving to schedules, clocks,And calendars, the battle between plansAnd grades, always decisions about whatTo neglect out of pure necessity; NotContinue reading “#459: However, there are things I truly miss . . .”
#458: It’s been ten months since I stood in front . . .
I found, every April, as a NaPoWriMo participant, that it was impossible in those 30 days not to write about teaching. In any kind of forced creativity experience, by necessity one writes about whatever presents itself in experience and thought. When I was working, teaching occupied a huge portion of my brain–something on the orderContinue reading “#458: It’s been ten months since I stood in front . . .”
michael jarmer 