Tag Archives: poetry writing

Day 2, NaPoWriMo 2019

Posted on April 2, 2019 | 2 comments

This sprang from today’s 30/30 Poetry Facebook group prompt (up in the air) and a phone conversation with a friend.

Priorities on a breezy spring day

My friend’s pre-school grandson leaves
detailed lists of all the things he wants

for his birthday in voice messages
on her phone. Each recording begins

with him saying, “Beep!” because he knows
you leave your message after the beep

and he’s taking no chances. Today he gave
an exhaustive inventory of Pokemon

accessories, complete with color options
ranked by availability and preference, followed

by a coda request for a Charmander kite
that was so important it merited a separate

phone call and message all its own.

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2 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged 30/30 Poetry Challenge, Charmander, Global Poetry Writing Month, GloPoWriMo, NaPoMo, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Month, National Poetry Writing Month, poetry practice, poetry writing, Pokemon

Day 1, NaPoWriMo 2019

Posted on April 1, 2019 | Leave a comment

That’s right, folks: we’ve traveled around the sun once more to that orbital point when poetry is celebrated nationwide — nay, across the very globe itself! — thanks to the wonders of the internet.

Today’s poem came out of a mash-up of prompts from the April issue of Diane Lockward’s very excellent Poetry Newsletter (local color) and the 30/30 Poetry Facebook group (streets at dawn).

Unnatural Succession

Autumn Ridge, Indian Summer, Winter Haven
Deer Crossing, Pheasant Run, Doe Meadow
Crimson Creek, Briar Patch, Willow Spring

streets in this subdivision invoke the seasons
as well as long-fled wildlife and landscape
features erased by bulldozers and backhoes

Aristocrat, Bradford Pear, October Glory,
Autumn Blaze, Red Sunset, Honeylocust,
Shademaster, Black Gum, Wild Fire, Red Rage

sanctioned cultivars replace native locust,
ash, chokecherry, serviceberry, hornbeam,
black walnut, yellowwood, sycamore

daffodils, reticulated iris, crocus, hellebores,
snowdrops, and pansies decorate curated beds
where once bloodroot and bluebells ran riot

but all is not lost: squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits
remain to be stalked by cats, chased by dogs,
and flattened by unflinching automobiles

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30 in 30, day three

Posted on September 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

A final found poem from Gary Shteyngart’s “Thinking Outside the Bots,” in the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine (pp. 78-80).

The cult of perfection

will extend to every part of us, and the cosmetic-surgery bots
will chisel us
and suck out our fat
and give us as many eyelids as we desire.

Our grandchildren will be born perfect; all
the criteria for their genetic makeup
will be determined in utero.

We will look perfect, but inside we will be
completely stressed out and worried
about our place (and our children’s place)
in the pecking order, because even our belt buckles
will come equipped with the kind of AI that could beat us
at three-dimensional chess
while reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets
and singing the blues in perfect pitch.

And so our beautiful selves will be constantly worried
about what contributions we will make to society, given
that all cognitive tasks will already be distributed to devices
small enough to perch at the edge of our fingernails.

30 in 30, day two

Posted on September 2, 2017 | Leave a comment

Gary Shteyngart’s “Thinking Outside the Bots,” from the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine (p. 80), once again provided the material for this found poem.

As the great rush of technology envelops us

and makes us feel as small as the stars used to
make us feel when we looked up
at the primitive sky, we will be using our Samsung
NewBrainStem 2.0 to send out streams of emojis
to our aging friends, hoping to connect
to someone analog who won’t beat us at Go
in the blink of an eye, a fellow traveler in the mundane
world of flesh and cartilage.

Others of us, less fortunate, will be worried
about our very existence, as armies of Hubos, built
without the safeguards developed by kindly scientists
like Professor Oh, rampage across the earth.

And of course the balance of power will look nothing like
today; truly, the future will belong to societies – often small
societies like South Korea and Taiwan – that invest
in innovation to make their wildest techno-dreams a reality.

Can you picture the rise of the Empire of Estonia, ruled by a pensive
but decisive talking toilet?

I can.

30 in 30, September day one

Posted on September 1, 2017 | 4 comments

Everything seems to shift in September. The angle of the sun is distinctly different, the amount of daylight is perfectly balanced, and the temperature and humidity become once again bearable. Everyone is in school and we can settle into a productive routine.

To that end, I’m setting myself a writing challenge for the month: produce 30 poems in 30 days. This year’s NaPoWriMo was a terrific warm-up for Lexington Poetry Month, and I hope to use this month to do the same for NaNoWriMo in November (though I have no intention of working on a novel). I even created my own logo!

So here is the first poem, a found poem from “Thinking Outside the Bots,” by Gary Shteyngart, in the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine (p. 80).

Seonbawi (Zen rock)

a weather-eroded rock formation that looks
like two robed monks, said to guard
the city – where women come to pray
for fertility, often laden with food
offerings for the spirits (Sun Chips seem to be in abundance
on the day I visit) the women bow and pray
intently – one young worshiper, in a thick puffy
jacket and a woolen cap, seems especially focused –
squarely in the center of her prayer
mat she has propped an iPhone

later I ask why – one tells me
the young woman was recording to prove
to her mother-in-law that she went to the fertility
rock and prayed for hours
another suggests that the phone belonged
to a friend – the woman is creating
a connection between the timeless and immortal
spirits and her childless
friend – this explanation I like the most

the young lady journeys from her city of 25 million to spend
hours on a mountain in the cold, promoting
her friend’s dreams, hands clasped
tightly in prayer: in front of her, a giant
timeless weather-beaten rock and a small
electronic device steer her gently
into the imperfect world to come

4 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged 30 in 30, found poetry, Gary Shteyngart, poetry practice, poetry writing, Smithsonian Magazine, writing challenge

Prompted poetry: wanting

Posted on August 2, 2014 | 9 comments

I took a little break from copyediting today to glance back through my journal for something to post. This is from early April, using a prompt I signed up to receive via e-mail during National Poetry Month.

Outside

yet again she had been
weighed in the scales of friendship and found
wanting, though she did not
know why, she felt certain
there had been cues, unreadable to her
misfit understanding, arcane signals
she did not receive
correctly, so once more she stood
apart, watched the turning
rope and tried to decipher
how the others knew when
to jump in

9 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged National Poetry Month, poetry practice, poetry writing, prompted poetry, writing practice

Tag Archives: poetry writing

Day 2, NaPoWriMo 2019

Day 1, NaPoWriMo 2019

30 in 30, day three

30 in 30, day two

30 in 30, September day one

Prompted poetry: wanting

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