Day Ten ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day

Today, Robert Lee Brewer once again offers a “Two-for-Tuesday” set of prompts: "forest poem" or "tree poem." Do one or the other, he says, "Or you can dive right into the metaphor separating the two." Catherine gives us a clever little send-up of Emily Dickinson's "I never saw a moor" today; her poem even sports its own fake Johnson number, no less. And, of course, there's a tree! 10. I didn't do my chores Instead I climbed a tree And when my mother came to look She quickly spotted me. I found it very odd Since I was only seven That she thought I should be taught To clean the dirty kitchen. —Draft by Catherine Pritchard Childress     [do not copy or quote ... thanks] Over at NaPoWriMo.net Maureen Thorson mentions "a quote usually attributed to T. S. Eliot: Good poets borrow; great poets steal." For Day Ten then, she says, "let's stick to plain old stealing by writing poems with their first lines lifted from other poems." Maureen bringing up that Good Poet / Great Poet business reminds me that this quote (which isn't exactly what Eliot really said) leaves out perhaps the most important category: the Bad Poet. And even more important than that: the VERY Bad Poet. So, in honor of all BAD POETS and VERY BAD POETS, I offer this little ditty neither Maureen nor Robert probably saw coming. (Or maybe they saw it coming all too well.) In Memoriam My Dog Edgar Allan With sincerest apologies to Joyce Kilmer and the Little Bunny hopping through the forest I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. But I know I have seen a bee That chased my dog right up a tree. Now, he was tough, that little bee, And I was glad it wasn't me But Edgar Allan foo-foo'd, see? And THAT, my friends, is Poe-in-tree. —Draft by Vince Gotera     [do not copy or quote ... thanks] Didja notice how I got both "tree" and "forest" in there? Whoo-eeee! Not to mention of course stealing Joyce Kilmer's most popular opener. I was almost tempted to sprinkle in some dashes and capitals to mash up Dickinson with Poe, Kilmer, and Little Bunny Foo-Foo! But even I have my limits — though I can imagine some people saying they wouldn't have thought so. Our featured blog today is No Vacation from Speculation by Jessica McHugh. On April 5, an enterprising facebook member created "Bad Poetry on Facebook Day." Jessica pounced on this opportunity to use "bad poetry" as her prompt for Day Five and wrote several hilarious Bad Poems, some on the facebook event page and others on the blog. Classic. Jessica is a well-known speculative fiction writer who has written horror fiction, alternate history, and epic fantasy, publishing ten books in the last three years. As you will see from her blog, Jessica is also a fine poet . . . she doesn't only write bad poems! Okay, friends, we're 1/3 through the month. Who'd a-thunk it? Leave a comment below, won't you? I got rid of that word verification malarkey today, so it's much easier to comment. Ingat. POEM-A-DAY 2012 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30