April is Poetry Month: "A Poetry Month Challenge and Consequence"(2018)
HAPPY POETRY MONTH!
"Be in the mind / perspective of a writer twenty-four hours a day. That means that all your senses are acute, attuned to delicate and fierce nuances in language. In waking, in walking, in dreaming, in thinking, in talking. Repeat the mantra: I exist to write." From the "Creative Writing Life [Reading / Writing / Performing] Experiments" by Anne Waldman in "Vow to Poetry." April is the month to tend the garden. The time has come to start seedlings and plan a plot. April brings attention to Poetry. Poetry magazine and the Poetry Foundation plan for events all month. Public schools take time to incorporate poetry into their lesson plans. April is a time to remember our favorite poem as we plant our seedlings and prepare for spring. American Poetry Month was created in 1996 after the success of other month celebrations. Our poet laureates prepare speeches. Sometimes the President of the United States makes an appearance with a favorite poem. A month to celebrate the writing of poetry, the sharing of poetry, and all that is poetry, April. The winter is beginning to thaw and spring showers have melted any remaining snow. The backyard is beginning to sprout varieties of green grasses where just days before only dirt remained. This is spring and we need to celebrate our lives and the wonders of our world. Celebration that takes place through poems. Poems finding their way out of the dull cold and into a hazy sunshine. It is time again. The month to participate in the Poetry Month Challenge and publish a poem or poetry related hub every day for the month of April.
Once the seedlings start to sprout then the challenge of successful transplantation begins. With hope that more then one takes to the soil and survives. On the years where every seedling survives the vegetables and flowers fill the yard. Many poets during poetry month use the challenge to help them motivate and create a body of work for use later. Many poets write year round. Some of us need a proper environment for our poems to take soil. Every year, for many years, poets have taken part in a Poetry Month Challenge where they try to write a poem a day for thirty days. The time has come to refuel on springtime's force. To use time wisely and plan for a thirty day miracle. The inspiration from each Poetry Month stays the whole year. While working on Poetry Month fresh ideas seem to sprout along with the seedlings. Enough to bag up or bottle and store in the cupboard until winter storms find us indoors. The seedlings will not tend to themselves. To prepare them for an outdoor plot takes tome and energy. It is the effort that counts, an effort made by a variety of poetry communities around the world to celebrate poetry's place in our world. Honestly, there is no consequence. The excitement level is at an all time high. Who would have thought that April would have such an effect on poets and readers of poetry every year for so long. April is Poetry Month. What Can We Expect This Year?
Every year, going on many years, I have taken part in a Poetry Month Challenge where I try to write a poem a day for thirty days.
I usually only make it about 27 days into the month but that is of no consequence. I am trying again this year and I have many ideas and plans. My excitement level is at an all time high and I can hardly hold my anxiety. Who would have thought that April would have such an effect on me. "The fundamental experience of the writer is helplessness...It is a life dignified, I think, by yearning..."From Louise Gluck's "Proof and Theories: Essays on Poetry"
ANOTHER YEAR Another year. This year has seen many changes, the growing of children, the beginning of a new life. This is the year one tries to plant new seeds along with the tried and true varieties. Everything seems to be falling into place this spring. Life may not be perfect but it can be acceptable and full of hope. This last year did not produce as much as was needed. Most energy has been spent on family. Life throws new challenges everyday. There is no better way to express love then through effort and work. They say that you should spend time for yourself and so take some time to read and write poetry while still watching cartoons with the kids or trying to plant an herb garden. An herb garden whose presence is acknowledged multiple times in a many poems. Some great reading material on poetry is "The H.D. Book" by Robert Duncan or "A Vow to Poetry" by Anne Waldmen, and many more essays on poetry. What to Expect This Year
This year we shall see a few informational hubs on poets from the English Renaissance. Included are essays on what lyrical poetry is and what lyrical poetry can become. These essays also include a celebration of more recent poets like Richard Eberhart. We will see another canzone similar to "Jacobsen's Organ" including discussions of science through poetry. There will be another terza rima letter to include with the letters from following years. Many poems continue themes started in previous poetry months. Some new forms will make an appearance, ones found interesting. Included are some Haikus created with a local group of poets here in Reno. Reno poetry is alive and well. There are incredible readings, taking place, by incredible local poets. Of course their will be a sonnet or two explaining my world through lyric. Along with a return of the middle eastern Pantoum. A lovely firm to work with. There are some dedications to musicians and an imitation or two. Please join in this celebration of poetry. "For poetry which is at the same time light and adult can only be written in a society which is both integrated and free." W.H. Auden from his introduction to "Oxford Book of Light Verse. A THEME Lyrical poetry has become a part of who we are as American poets and motivates what we have to express and how we express it. Lyrical poetry is an internal look into what we feel as humans functioning in a larger community and ultimately a society. Or maybe there is no theme. Most Poetry month material is just poems/essays following a stream of scattered creative energy. So whether encountering organized thematic poetry or quick quatrains from the heart may your poetry fill you with joy. "This is my letter to the world That never wrote to Me - The simple News that Nature told with tender majesty. Her message is committed To hands I cannot see - For love of Her - Sweet countrymen - Judge tenderly of Me." From Emily Dickinson's Complete Poems, # 441.
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I want to talk a little about sonnets.
There was a few long poems and a few extras but most of the poems I wrote for the third year were sonnets. I describe in my essay on Fussell how there is a chapter dedicated to the art of the sonnet. An amazing form, the sonnet, within the fourteen lines of a classical English or Italian sonnet there is a change of ideas, a question and answer period, a purposeful addition of drama, and a multitude of choices to make. The structure is almost purely mathematical in nature. What? You may ask. Mathematical in nature? Well, the first eight lines are usually two quatrains that delineate the idea that changes, the question to answer, or a lead up to drama. Then the sonnet ends with a sestet, mostly Petrarchan sonnets end this way but not always. The ending sestet explains the idea in detail, answers the question, opens the drama of the poem. So where does math fit in? The 4+4 of the dual quatrains give the perfect amount of time to deliver and the sestet can be broken in to 3+3 for a more in depth discussion of ideas, answers, or drama. Let's look at meter. Iambic Pentameter is the common meter of sonnets. Contemporary poetry seems to frown on the sing song nature of iambic feet, but having a firm grasp on the sound that iambic pentameter creates will help to develop an ear for sound when writing other poems. Also, I feel that in the past, sonnets were written in iambs primarily but for contemporary poetry it is important to know that the writer has the freedom to play with other sounds and other feet that fit within the pentameter. When you look at the whole picture. Sonnets contain a wealth of information on how to make drama work within a poetic frame and how to work sound and beat into your poems. It is time to move on. |