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

Okay, friends, it's Day Five today: one-sixth of the way through National Poetry Month and the first weekend. Get to work on your poems, everyone!   ヅ "[W]rite a discovery poem," prompts Robert Lee Brewer today. "The narrator could discover an object, a person, an animal, a dishonorable deed, or any number of things. Poets can focus on the discovery, examine the aftermath, or even just mention it in passing" (Poetic Asides). "Today I challenge you to write a 'golden shovel,'" urges Maureen Thorson. "This form was invented by Terrance Hayes in his poem, "The Golden Shovel." The last word of each line of Hayes’ poem is a word from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem "We Real Cool." (NaPoWriMo). In her post today, Maureen has more suggestions: for example, writing from other small poems, such as "Watermelons" by Charles Simic. Okay, taking on both prompts at the same time today. Wish me luck! Discovery — A Golden Shovel after Terrance Hayes and Gwendolyn Brooks Friends, what can we discover if we think only about what's real? Or worse yet, what's cool? No, no. let's stretch our minds. We can look beyond right and left. Forget all we learned at school. Geometry, civics, chemistry we detested in high school. There lurk old bugaboos and heartbreaks. Late friends, relatives, and enemies we had forgotten have died. Let's strike out into perilous wilderness, straight into rapacious light of the sun we take for granted every day. Let's sing of flames and waterfalls, saints and sin. Seek the exotic, delicate axolotl we have glimpsed only on the internet. Thin tall sequoias. Rare Tanqueray Malacca Gin. Whatever elegance and bright glory we can chase. Rockabilly and acid jazz in the voluptuous summer daze of June. Fiery spaceships. Icarus wax wings. We need to jump without looking. If we die we die. Let's live, live, live . . . and soon. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Okay, that's my best shot at a "We Real Cool" golden shovel today. I need to live with the poem longer — days, months, a year — and let it simmer. I've been after my student poets lately to eschew the abstract and embrace the concrete, but here I am with lots of abstraction, so not practicing what I preach very well today. Anyway, here's my golden shovel for now. Hope it works well enough for the nonce. Are you maybe wondering about the axolotl? It's a Mexican salamander that's pretty amazing looking. Okay, now on to my NaPoWriMo buddy Alan's poem for Day Five. He says, "I'm playing with the non-Greco-Roman mythology idea again, deciding to add another tale of the adventure of Coyote, English adjunct instructor, and dragging Raven into it." All right . . . double tricksters! Coyote Asks Raven for Assistance in Grading Freshman Compositions Coyote, adjunct, teaching comp, distressed, his essay pile a week behind, the grading grind depressing him to tears, aroused by gentle tapping, stood to find friend Raven, one whose confidence in every sense enthused the Trickster trapped by rubric, syllabi, and work. “Oh, Raven, help me, please!” Coyote cried, “Good friend, to grade so many essays makes me fall into despair. How might I find relief?” His head cocked to one side as if to view the matter with clear sight, coy Raven said, “Give them all A’s, and no one will complain.” Coyote thought and then replied, “Some don’t deserve those grades and might become through my neglect school teachers, judges, priests, physicians, university administrators—no!” Friend Raven then suggested fire. “No good!” Coyote yelped. “They turned them in by Internet; I could recover files.” “Then line them on the sidewalk. I will flap my wings, and those that do not move deserve the A’s because they’ll have more weight.” Coyote found no flaw and lined the essays on the ground, and Raven’s wings beat hard to blow them far away. “Stop! Stop!” Coyote cried. “I’ll never find them, blown away! I have to print the batch and start again to get my work done right. I was a fool to follow your advice.” “Indeed, you were,” replied his friend, who flew beyond Coyote’s reach and cawed at compositions, good and bad. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes     [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Excellent poem again, Alan. Reminds me of the old joke among composition teachers of throwing essays you're grading down some stairs: the further an essay falls the higher the grade because obviously that essay has some substance.   ヅ   You could even label each step with a grade, starting with A at the bottom step. I also appreciate how Raven and Coyote hearken back to Native American trickster mythologies. And the subtle connection with Poe is fun too. I thought Raven would say "Nevermore" at some point! Friends, won't you comment, please? I'd particularly like to hear what you think of my golden shovel. Or what your own ventures have been with this form. Alan would love to get some feedback on Coyote and being an adjunct college instructor. To comment, look for a blue link below that says "Post a comment"; if you don't see that, look in the red line that starts "Posted by" and click on the word "comments." Ingat, friends — take good care.  ヅ

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