In April, this thing happens -- poets are challenged to write a poem a day (April is poetry month) and to publish those poems on a public forum (ie, the internet).
For the last three years now, I've done that. I've written a poem a day and published them in a blog. (You can find 2015 right here, if you scroll down long enough.) Some of those poems have been pretty good, if I do say so myself. Some of them have struggled to reach meh level.
I'm already getting some nods on Facebook and other places about 2016's poetry challenge. My fanbase, such as it is, is waiting.
And I'm conflicted about that. I'm conflicted about having to write a poem a day. I'm confused and also amused by having a few fans out there, waiting for me to deliver. I'm afraid that the well might be dry (at first I typed "will" instead of well -- and that might be a more accurate comparison ... my will might have dried up). I'm tired, too, and my body hurts a lot of the time, so I'm wondering if all of my poetry might be part of a long and semi-amorphous complaint about aging.
On the other hand, I've already started to compose little poetry snippets in my head. I think something occurred to me this morning while I was blowdrying what's left of my hair. (That something is already gone. See above about wills and wells.) I even contemplated, for a bit, writing a bunch of the daily poems beforehand, as in now, today, and even though I knew it was cheating I made some sort of firm plan to do it when I got to campus today that I totally forgot about as soon as I left the bathroom.
That's another thing. How can I write a poem a day when I can't keep a random thought in my brain for longer than it takes to blow out my bangs (that's what we used to call that part of your hair that hangs into your eyes, and it's so much more poetic than "fringe" or whatever else you kids are calling it these days)?
I just lost, again, the flow of thought, thinking as I was about the fact that my last sentence took the parenthesis to a new level of distraction, and then after that riffing in my head on the idea of poetry falling into parenthesis, as if into cracks in the ground, or old disgusting weeks old snow. (Poetry.)
See?
(I'll just have to decide what I'm going to do later.)
One poem a day? Now that's what I call a challenge. Maybe I should give it a try... Out of the 30, there ought to be a good one, right?
ReplyDeleteThose fleeting thoughts, it's so hard to hold onto them. Might be a seasonal thing.