Day 27 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2014

Day 27. Four poems to go, counting today's. Robert Lee Brewer's prompt today: "a monster poem" (Poetic Asides). Maureen Thorson suggests a "poem from a photograph," providing four photos one could use, though one could also use a photo of one's own (NaPoWriMo). Here's the photo I've chosen. Skeleton Talks to Pumpkin I'm not so much articulate as articulated. Though I can talk a goodly amount. Thank God for museum techs and the colony of hide beetles that devoured the flesh from my bones. It tickled when the larvae crawled all over me and munched munched munched. Then the techs reconnected my bones with rods and screws. And so I became a meatless zombie. But smarter and nicer than any zombies you know. None of that pointless grunting and hissing, that staggering and grabbing, mindlessly grubbing for brains. I don't need brains. I get along fine without them. And you, brother pumpkin, I know you feel the same. Though you are stuffed with seeds and pulp and fiber, and my skull is full of nothing but atmosphere, We are the same. We are happy only to be. We love the sun and the moon, the trees and the sea. We desire nothing. We compete with no one else. We love everything. We gladly brook all fools. We only seek to please, help others delight. Provide sweets and joy when they trick or treat. And for that we need no brains, we need no meat. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] This poem was a joy to write because I had no idea where it was going to go and where it was going to end up. Just three lines from what is now the ending, I told Kathy I had no idea how to get out of the poem. And I'm still not sure how this ending came to me. I just had to empty myself of ideas and walk downhill, if you will. I also enjoyed this process because I started off with rough blank verse and didn't know these were rhymed couplets — okay, slant rhyme — until I hit line 14 or so. And then I saw that indeed there were slant rhymes already there, though some were exceedingly distant, like beetles/tickled or munched/bones, which to some are probably not rhymes at all. From that point, I began to rhyme more consciously, as in be/see and else/fools. And really, it was trying to work the rhyme that got me to the end. Or that revealed, however mysteriously or impossibly, what might make an ending. The zombie material came up because a few weeks ago, my friend Gary Beeler, who was my classmate in a beginning poetry writing class when we were first-year college students, challenged me to write a zombie poem. I tried to twist this poem in that direction, but it wouldn't go. So . . . sorry, Gary, this isn't the zombie poem. And now on to Alan's poem. He tells us, "I am following Maureen Thorson's prompt inviting an ekphrastic poem for today. This poem does not describe anyone in particular; I see what, in my opinion, should not happen in promotional shots for writers, and I post this poem with the usual disclaimer (not intended to represent anyone you or I know in the entire span of human history) and with the hope that should I be put in the line of lens for having published something, I will remember this criticism. To be clear: I am not talking about the celebratory selfie/snapshot of when a person just gets hands on something newly released or has a friendly encounter with a reader somewhere. I am talking only about professionally produced promotional photos." To the Poet Who Poses for Promotional Photos I look at back covers, flaps inside dust jackets, faces at three-quarter, indirect turn, in denial a photo reveals any mystery, keeping reserve behind eyes almost always directed at some potential readers. You hold your book in the woods— your own book. I look at you and wonder, “Why your own book in the woods?” I have taken drafts into the woods to work on them, to read them out loud and hope for an echo out there near the hollow, but I find that your holding your book — your own book — in the woods calls for my projecting meaning. You want me to think of you bonded with nature, your book an extension of kinship, not to think that backdrop trees or trees like them were cut down to publish your new volume. Mention to your publicist the value of an inset — separate published poets from their published works, avoid redundancy. The poet stands a mere inspired corpus. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes     [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] I know exactly what you mean, Alan. There's such hubris sometimes in those promotional photos. I tried to find something to illustrate without portraying an actual writer. The closest I could get is this image. This guy's pipe (Hemingway-ing, anyone?) and his bowtie and suspenders matching his typewriter's blue color are all over the top. And really, who uses a typewriter anymore? Actually, one of my most prolific writer friends still uses legal pads and a typewriter, and he's published something like fifty books, so I take back that snark about typewriters. But the rest of what's pictured is clearly faux writer schtuff. Almost as bad as Hef's satin smoking jackets and pajamas. Ya know? (Hef smoked a pipe too.) Won't you comment, please, friends? To make a comment, look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. If you don't see that, look in the red line that starts Posted by Vince, then find the word comments and click it once. Ingat, everyone.   ヅ

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