30 Poems, 30 Days: Inside a Poet’s Mind
Copyright
© 2011 by A.D. Joyce.
Cover art and illustrations by CJ Tittle.
Published by A.D. Joyce at Smashwords
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Foreword
April is the
cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring
rain.
--T. S. Eliot – “The Wasteland”
The poems in this ebook were written during April 2011 to commemorate National Poetry Month. Commentary was added to explain a little about what inspired each one. The poems originally appeared on my blog, Sweepy Jean Explores the (Webby) World.
April as National Poetry Month was first introduced by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 to help increase appreciation for and awareness of the art form. In 2003, Washington, DC poet Maureen Thorsen debuted National Poetry Writing Month—or NaPoWriMo for short--in which she encourages people to write a poem a day for the month of April. On her blog, she provides writing prompts and inspiration. NaPoWriMo is not an official event but it is well known among poets who blog.
When I first heard of NaPoWriMo in 2010, I didn’t participate because I didn’t think I had the discipline to do it successfully. This year, I was going through some personal turmoil in the form of the breakup of my 26-year marriage. I was in the process of packing and had even found an apartment but it was not available for me to move into until May. NaPoWriMo seemed like a constructive way for me to channel my energy in the mean time.
The poems here are not presented in the order they were written but grouped into four sections: Japanese Forms, namely, haikus and tankas; Writing Prompts, for poems written in response to topics suggested by others; Cinquains and Fibs, for poems in those poetic forms; and Other Forms and Free Verse. I chose to write relatively short poems during the month because I wanted to have the stamina to finish the challenge. The poems were written fairly quickly and I have not yet revised them as I may do one day. For me, the benefit of NaPoWriMo is the “permission” to write without self judgment and censorship.
Writing a poem a day was easier than I thought it would be. Completing this exercise confirmed for me that poetry is a saving grace that transforms my life.
~A.D. Joyce, September 2011
Untitled haiku (Day 25)
the rosebuds of
spring,
soon the summer fireflies
slow and
aimless, lost
This haiku is about transitions, from one season to the next, though I suppose I imposed on the fireflies a bit of how I was feeling about myself at the time. However, in my defense, fireflies--or lightning bugs as we called them when I was a child—never appear to be doing anything in particular or going anywhere.
Haikus are deceptively simple, with their short length and focus on nature. Yet a lot of meaning can be packed into these poems. In traditional haikus, like this one, the first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables, and the third line has 5 syllables. Many poets experiment with writing haikus with even shorter lines.
Untitled haiku (Day 24)
summer heat in
spring
however impermanent
still burns as hotly
I wrote this in response to the actual weather that day. It’s a variation of the concept that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Visibility (Day 10)
The warm air, cool
rain
of early spring drape fog clouds
over Route 1-9.
Tail
lights blink obscured on cars
one length into the future.
I do a lot of thinking about writing while driving to and from work. The real-life stretch of road that inspired this poem was carved through the mountains. At times, particularly during the spring, fog sits at ground level.
This is a tanka, another Japanese form. Tankas traditionally have five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables, respectively. As with haikus, some poets write tankas with shorter lines for a different effect.
Untitled tanka (Day 26)
spring sky
embraces
the blue
well met
then there was laughter
and after sun rain
(My thought was to explore aspects of human relationships using the sky and the blue as characters).
NaPoMoTanka (Day 20)
Hope springs
eternal
When Perseverance flags;
Oh, my aching Muse!
NaPoWriMo
keeps me up
At night, spirits up all day.
The title of this poem means National Poetry Month Tanka. This tanka was written two-thirds of the way through the month. Every day throughout the month I thought I would run out of things to write about. However, each day I was pleasantly surprised to find that another topic presented itself quite easily. I may not have been up all night writing, but every day my spirits were lifted with the feeling of accomplishment.
Redness (Day 1)
Soaked deep,
Dead
on the sheet,
Virgin spring is torn, pooled:
The suicide of
innocence,
My Plath.
This is probably one of my favorite poems of the month. It illustrates something I have only recently learned: Writing from a prompt doesn’t mean that the resultant work is not authentic. A prompt pulls you in a direction that you may not have gone otherwise and helps you express what’s already in inside you in an unexpected way.
The following are
the criteria given for this prompt:
Use a color as your
title.
Write against what people associate with that color. (I
thought of red as a vibrant color, so I wrote of it as a sign of
death)
Invoke the name of a poet they way you’d
invoke your own name in a ghazal, an Arabic poetry form. (Sylvia
Plath)
Choose a form and write the poem in that
form. (This form is a
cinquain)
Use a form of water in your poem (a
spring)
Double Dactyl (Day 23)
Higgledy
piggledy,
Poetry challenges
Sometimes and mercifully
Give
you a prompt
Just on the off chance that
Writer’s block hits
you so
Uncategorically
You won’t get whomped.
The NaPoWriMo prompt for this poem was to write a double dactyl, a poetic form with a fairly complicated set of rules related to rhyme and rhythm that is supposed to be humorous or satirical. By the way, what else rhymes with “prompt?”
Moving Day (Day 18)
With the curtains
pulled down,
I suddenly remembered
That the wall leans in
slightly;
I once thought a window accessory
Made all the
difference
In hiding that fact.
As I stared into space,
thinking,
The last ember of my cigarette
Dropped off the
butt
And seared through the old shirt
I wore while doing
the
Dirty work of packing up
My life. The sting from the
burn
On my left breast
Was sharp and immediate, yet
Life
goes on. After 20 minutes
Or so, the pain subsided.
For this prompt, the mission was to create a poem by erasing words, recombining words, and adding new words to the following paragraph from Annie Dillard’s book, The Writing Life:
“I pulled down the curtains. When I leaned over the typewriter, sparks burnt round holes in my shirt, and fire singed a sleeve. I dragged the rug away from the sparks. In the kitchen I filled a bucket with water and returned to the erupting typewriter. The typewriter did not seem to be flying apart, only erupting. On my face and hands I felt the heat from the caldera. The yellow fire made a fast, roaring noise. The typewriter itself made rumbling, grinding noise; the table pitched. Nothing seemed to require my bucket of water. The table surface was ruined, of course, but not aflame. After twenty minutes or so, the eruption subsided.”
I used the words to mirror what I was going through at the moment, namely, moving from one place of residence to another. It amazes me how fluid words are, and how easily meanings change from one context to the next. As personal as poetic expressions can be, I think we can gain insight about ourselves and each other by examining the circumstance of the individual.
what “they” say (Day 7)
Indifference
–they
say–
is Love’s opposite
As Such
your smell
causes
my
third eye
to Roll Back
in my head
(it watches the
daydream)
(of your death at my hands)
The sight of
you
fills my Jugular
near to bursting
your
absence
Endlessly
reminds me (endlessly)
that i don’t miss
you
so would you
say
that i am in love
The NaPoWriMo challenge was to write a poem that comments upon or is inspired by a song or other work of art in a different medium. The song in my mind was Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”
My thought here was to examine the premise that indifference is the opposite of love, that perhaps hate and anger are signs that a person still cares. For my part, I believe that hate is hate, anger is anger, and love is love. At the end of this poem, the question remains unanswered, though, and everyone will have her or his own opinion.
Quit Smoking Now! (Day 16)
It’s time that you
put out your butts
‘Cuz smoking is silly and nuts!
It’s
really not cool
So don’t be a fool:
Don’t tarry or linger
or futz!
For this fun challenge, a fellow blogger asked that we join her in giving homage to her grandmother who had died of lung cancer some years ago by writing limericks that encourage smoking cessation. She gave us our choice of opening lines.
Pwoermd (Day 4)
Surpr!!!!se!
The prompt for this poem was to write a pwoermd, which is a one-word poem made by combining two words or using other typographic marks to form an interesting new word. By nature, these poems have to be seen rather than heard to be effective. I was interested to try this form because it is quite foreign to my usual thought process and I often wonder how far words can be stretched before their meaning snaps in two.
Chromatic (Day 2)
thoughts cascade
in
rhythm like
a new kind
of jazz. chord
progressions
never
heard before
sing their
awakening. i
march
in
syncopation,
stepping
over lifeless
bodies. this
is
not a dirge,
rather the
memoirs of
a survivor.
The point of the prompt was to incorporate the titles of three books you have in your house. I used Jazz by Toni Morrison, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing. I made sure to pick books by and about women.
my cento (Day 22)
we’ll kiss each
kiss other on kiss the kiss
with only the fakebook of beauty for
feeling.
the trick is to make it personal:
the chill of closed
eyelids,
sleepily indifferent
in the glaring white gap.
let silence drill
its hole.
oh, plunge me deep in love—put out
pulley glitches,
gully pitches, the reflected gleams,
the places cats won’t go,
the climbing out onto the banks. the naked man
all dopey in the
glass. he wouldn’t stand alone.
what he needed from me, i have no idea.
As suggested by NaPoWriMo and by poet Danielle Pafunda, I created a cento, which is a poem composed entirely of lines from other poems. Here are the sources of the lines I chose in the order of appearance in my poem:
e. e. cummings –
“9.”
L.S. Asekoff - “The Widows of Gravesend”
Khaled
Mattawa - “Ecclesiastes”
Marina Tsvetaeva (translated by Ilya
Kaminsky and Jean Valentine) - “Poems for Blok, 1”
William
Carlos Williams - “Summer Song”
Medbh McGuckian - “Painting
by Moonlight”
Daniel Johnson - “Inheritance”
Sara
Teasdale - “I Am Not Yours”
Paul Muldoon “Extraordinary
Rendition”
Catie Rosemurgy “Gold River”
D.A. Powell
“Abandonment Under the Walnut Tree”
Anne Carson Nox
This exercise was connected with a contest in which 75 lines of poetry were posted on Twitter for participants to use in any order they wanted; punctuation and capitalization were at the discretion of the poet. Certain lines called to me so strongly I was worried that everyone would use the same lines as I had and arrange them as I did. The poem I created is the story of a person pretending to be in love, going through the motions, having sex. At the end, the “I” in the poem is yet indifferent and clueless.
I liked the sound of these lines and how some lent themselves to abstraction and connotation. I was surprised at the uniqueness of the other contest entries, given the finite number or lines available. As far as I was concerned, there could not have been any other combination other than mine. But no, I did not win or place!
NaPoMoKu (Day 5)
Words rip the Spring
sky
in two, kamikaze style:
thirty poems, thirty days.
The prompt for this poem was to respond to or riff off someone else’s NaPoWriMo poem. The poem that inspired me talked about the nature of the NaPoWriMo challenge. I also related it to the writing of poetry in general.
Specifically, NaPoWriMo takes the poet out of the comfort zone. Instead of relying on mood or inspiration to dictate output, the poet must be worker-like to get through it. To some, this may seem to be a flaw of NaPoWriMo. However, why should poets have their imaginative thoughts handed to them in the form of “inspiration” instead of exercising their creativity? Just like physical exercise, it’s healthful.
Others may feel that because of the quick turnaround, the poetry is not as polished as it could be. I can’t disagree with that statement, and for perfectionists, which poets often are, it can be uncomfortable sharing “unfinished” work. As I expressed in my poem, I see it as being fearless and maybe even reckless, letting instinct and your skillset carry the day.
Insomnia 3 (Day 28)
darkness
would
negate
me
leave me lifeless
if not for the light
through my window
from the house next door
Over the years, I’ve dealt with extended bouts of insomnia where it has been hard to fall asleep or I wake up in the middle of the night and have a hard time falling back to sleep. Sometimes the insomnia is borne of fear. In this poem, it seems the light next door is both a hindrance and a lifeline.
This poetic form is called a fib and it is based on a mathematic principle. Typically, a fib has six lines with 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 syllables, respectively. In this variation, I used the count for the number of words instead of the number of syllables. I discovered this form while trying to come up with a way to share poetry on Twitter, with its 140-character restriction.
Short-form poems require that every word mean something.
new beginnings (Day 27)
to
start
my
life
anew is
to lay fear to rest
as there’s room for just
one of us
I wrote this fib to celebrate my birthday.
surrogates (Day 13)
orchids
musky
orange
curl waft slink
they caress me so
cinnamon
I love the smell of flowers. The aroma fills my head and seeps down to my toes. The feeling of content is palpable. I am reminded of an ad for a florist: “Say it with flowers.” Flowers can be surrogates for the words “I love you.” Beautiful flowers, given as gifts, sometimes used as a substitute for actual human interaction ...
This is a cinquain, a poem with five lines. Structurally, there are many variations on the cinquain, which involves counting of syllables, counting the number of words, or using words to serve different functions. Following the criteria of the “functional” cinquain, the first line of this poem is the subject, the second line consists of adjectives that describe the subject, the third line are verbs that provide more information about the subject, the fourth line describes feelings related to the subject, and the fifth line is a word synonymous to the subject.
Five Feet (Day 8)
Five
Feet
Span
the
Lonely gap
A glance can’t bridge on
An elevator shared
by two.
Words are cramming the elevator in this high-concept fib about two people in close proximity who are not able to connect.
My Cinquain Sensation (Day 30)
Buoyed
boat
bobbing
along to
oh la la land: My
NaPoWriMo
“happy ending!”
This was the last poem of the month. One sign that I must have been mentally tired is that this is not a cinquain at all, but a fib! “Floating my boat,” a “happy ending” (think massage parlor), wink, wink, these sexual references were meant to show my happiness at having completed the month-long challenge. Participating in and completing the exercise was like having transcendent sex.
Incomplete Sonnet (Day 15)
I saw the river
imitate my life,
A cold incessant mocking: Days on end
Of
freeform thoughts like waves and rife
With certainty that I did
not intend.
This was meant to be a classic Shakespearian sonnet, complete with the rhyme scheme and the iambic pentameter. A local news item current at the time was its inspiration: A young mother of four from New York City drove her car into the Hudson River with her children in tow. The oldest child, able to escape before the car sank, was the only survivor.
This harrowing story touched me and I wanted to understand why a person would commit such an act. I actually completed a first draft of this poem but I was not satisfied. I wondered if it rang true or if it sounded stilted. I wasn’t even sure if it was my story to tell. In any event, I knew that if this poem were going to work at all, I needed more time and emotional distance from it. Ultimately, I decided to share only the first quatrain of it on my blog. I very much plan to come back to this poem to try to finish it properly.
Insomnia 2 (Day 17)
square circle
shadows
wear down the hours
mid-night thoughts
break through
the silence
in grayscale
This poem describes what insomnia looks like when you are lying awake at night, especially if you are nearsighted and astigmatic, like I am.
Meme (Day 12)
Look at me! I’m
playing a game:
[Fellow Blogger] is to blame!
You see, he
tagged me in a “MEME”
I’ll play by the
rules as he did deem.
I must complete a
questionnaire
And pull the answers from the air.
Bloggers are generally a fun, social bunch who often play writing games with each other. This poem was part of a blog post game in which I was supposed to answer a questionnaire and then recruit other bloggers to do the same, just as I had been recruited. I decided to begin the meme with a poem so it would not disturb what I was trying to do that month. It would have taken me forever to answer the questions in verse, so I wound up answering in flippant, good-natured sarcastic prose.
How to Write a Poem (Day 14)
Sense it
Then
think it then feel it
Then chew it eat it drink it
Vomit
it
Sense it
Then think it then feel it
Then chew it eat it
drink it
Vomit it
Sense it
Then think it then feel it,
Then
chew it eat it drink it
Vomit it
Until you stop
In any piece of creative writing, it’s not until the author begins the revision process that the piece actually takes form and truly begins to live.
Idiot (Day 3)
Absurd and
lethal,
You are as unhealthy
As a full-on pork loin–
Raw
and fat–
Slathered with
butter cream icing.
Still,
I love
your mortal foolishness.
I have a habit of writings my ideas down on scraps of paper until I have enough time to flesh them out. This poem started out as one such scrap that stood out among those I was fishing through. Any sexual innuendo detected here is totally intentional. But it’s open to interpretation as to whether “I” am teasing or truly frustrated. Also, who is the “idiot,” the subject or the speaker?
One Plus One (Day 6)
For today
No
fear
So free
Blue air
For now
Open eyes
Soaring
cloudward
Ceaseless skies
Present moment
Heart space
Soul
spirit
Happiness haste
Utmost instant
All again
Open
wider
Sorrow mend
Never ending
Ever solve
Cosmos
infinity
Constant love
Every week I host a game called 1 + 1 Wednesday. I invite my blog visitors to leave a two-word phrase in the comments section. It’s surprising how such a simple concept can be so much fun. It’s even more surprising that two words are enough to create vivid images or convey complex ideas.
In keeping with game, I wrote this poem using two words per line. Rhyme is not a device I use often in my free verse, so this was a fun change of pace.
Poem for Monday – Untitled (Day 11)
It’s a so fast
city life
Day today. “One day,”
I dream, walking down
A
city street, “One day,”
I say, pounding hard
The pavement,
“I will
Have a better job,
A better life for me
And mine,”
my mind a million
Miles away, my sights
Set on imagined
things,
So focused I see
No one nor do they
See me, the
mobs,
Passing, brushing by me,
Walking somewhere briskly
Where
they are needed
Very badly, while I travel
On a city street and
think
Random but relevant thoughts.
This poem, pulled out of the vault, was originally written when I was in my early 20s and revised for the current challenge. There was something about the rhythm of this poem that struck me and a truth about it that I think is still relevant. In some ways, this one hints strongly at my current, more mature voice. Mostly, my edits trimmed away some of the sourness and mean spiritedness. Hopefully, it’s a little more vulnerable and human.
My Pledge (Day 9)
A birth, a death, a
miss, a try:
For these, I promise I will pray
For you, because
truth is gauged by
A birth, a death. A miss, a
try:
Reflected in a beggar’s eye
I see my path a windfall
away.
A birth. A death. A miss. A try.
For these, I promise I
will pray.
This is a triolet.
I love the French forms. Their structure very much resembles that of a song. In a triolet, the trick is to give the repeated lines a different context each time they are used. The message I was trying to convey is similar to the saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Sensation (Day 19)
you can
pick up
the
reddest apple on
display
touch it turn
it
around
inspect it for
marks or bruises
but biting
is the
only
way to
really know
This poem is about the danger of taking chances and the need to take chances.
FYI (Day 29)
Is I?
You think?
I think
clue don’t have you fucking a,
yet here right you
walk. How did it
my door?
What the
fuck you is? Not me no
more, not.
Don’t care if shit why ass:
Just so you know
who
is.
I am very interested in the ways words can convey meaning outside of traditional usage. I found that bending the language here was especially useful to express deep anger in a way I don’t think traditional wording could have conveyed as well.
Bear With Me (Day 21)
If I can’t give
you the best of me,
Then take all I have to give
Today. If this
is not all,
Then consider it the majority,
Though just a bit
more than half.
If it is less than that,
Take it anyway:
It
is given freely–
With love.
This was just a thought, just a circumstance people find themselves in. I’m almost sure that I was tapping into a kind of depletion of energy as I moved forward with the poetry challenge, and more importantly, with the separation. Yet, I also wanted to convey the sense of a temporary lack, that the speaker in this poem still has the capacity to love.
Thank you for reading!
A.D. Joyce is a poet/writer/editor living in New
Jersey. Her blog, Sweepy
Jean Explores the (Webby) World, showcases her poetry
and discusses topics such as the writing life, women's issues, and
personal
observations.
Blogs:
http://sweepyjean.wordpress.com
http://1plus1wednesday.blogspot.com
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sweepyjean
http://twitter.com/1plus1wednesday
Facebook:
http://facebook.com/sweepyjean
http://facebook.com/1plus1wednesday
E-mail
explorestheworld@gmail.com
CJ Tittle
lives and creates in
Alabama.
Blogs:
http://cjtittle.blogspot.com
http://treasuresbyyou.net
E-mail
jones.designs@hotmail.com