4.03.2008

A poem a day

I mentioned in my last post that I get WritersDigest.com emails, and I was fortunate enough to read the latest one in a timely manner.

Because...

Robert Lee Brewer who is a poet and has a blog called Poetic Asides --

http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides

-- is hosting a poem-a-day challenge for April, which is National Poetry Month, to get some good raw material going. These are supposed to be quick and dirty attempts to achieve some first drafts -- then, at the end of the month you'll have 30 poems to start working on during May, which is apparently National Poetry Revising Month.

(A separate topic to muse upon would be the dubious necessity of magazines anymore given the quantities of information and entertainment now online, as WritersDigest.com and its bevy of blogs is proving. Remember when some online sites, apart from porn, charged money just to be read? That was lame. Thank goodness for advertising revenue!)

So, I know this is a romance writer's blog and all, but I'm so geeked by this challenge. Is it all right to be a poet and a romance writer? I usually try to keep the two separate in people's minds, because be honest -- are you wondering which one I must suck at? The truth is, I'm awesome at both...)

But, seriously, if you're eclectic with the genres like me, feel free to play along. You can post your poems in the Poetic Asides blog's comments, or you can be a reclusive wretch like me and just accumulate privately.

Today, as Day Three, is haiku day, a three-line form (as practiced in English, anywho). I've learned a lot about haiku from reading Robert Lee Brewer's various blog entries on the subject and the links he gave. I especially like the easy-to-follow run-down with lovely example haiku in this resource by Michael Dylan Welch. (Does having Dylan as a middle name automatically make you a poet?)

I did not, however, learn enough about haiku to be brave enough to post my attempts. But I welcome future prompts that motivate us to wrestle with poetic forms. I love freestyling it, too, but I love the way a framework can provide security at the same time as inspiration. Being a fan of puzzles, I love the challenge of fitting my words and ideas into the form. Being a fan of history, I love knowing that a multitude of poets have come up with countless other conclusions to the same challenge.

I guess that's what intrigues me by the whole idea of the poem-a-day prompts in general. The first two were to write a poem on firsts, and to write a poem from someone else's perspective. (You can see that attempt at my parenting blog here.) I love being given a little bit of structure that I can add my own creativity to.

To all my fellow poets and poetry lovers out there, enjoy April!

1 comments:

Lauren Wayne » Blog Archive » NaNoWriMo time! said...

[...] I’m a little slow off the blocks. I had heard about it back in April when I was doing the Poem-a-Day challenge, and I resolved to file it away in my memory bank for [...]

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