Day Seventeen. Today, the number of days gone and left in National Poetry Month are both prime numbers: 17 and 13. Word. Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo prompt: "write a 'social media'-style poem. Namecheck all of your friends. Quote from their texts, tweets, FB status updates, twitter accounts, and blogposts, and the back of the cereal box on your breakfast table. The poem is about you and you are about what you say, think, talk, eat." Robert Lee Brewer's PAD suggestion: "write a swing poem. Sure, there are park swings and mood swings; there’s swing music and swing dancing; and there are swingers. Some people swing one way; others swing another. In politics, there are swing votes and swing states. And many people have swung a bat, an ax, and/or a hammer in their lifetimes." It's really cool to have the "swing" prompt from Robert today, because my son Gabe and I went this evening to a Self-Help International fundraiser called The Rat Pack Live, with SNL alum Gary Kroeger and three local celebrities putting on a show as Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Joey Bishop, with surprise guests, all from 1962. The swing music was provided by the wonderful Bill Shepherd Big Band. Just got home from that fundraiser a few minutes ago, and I was able to craft two haiku stanzas that are the length of a single tweet — exactly 140 characters — combining the two "official" prompts of social-media poem and "swing" poem. Hope you enjoy the poem. Swinging with Dino and Friends I don't know if I'd call it a poem, exactly. It's certainly verse, especially because its syllabic structure makes for two chunks that are exactly 17 syllables, divisible into patterns of 5-7-5. You decide. Here's Alan's offering for today. "This is intended to fulfill the requirements of the two prompts," he tells us. "It reads like a social media posting, and its reliance on dactyl meter makes it swing in a different manner than my usual iamb attempts do." For those who don't know, a dactyl is a pattern of three syllables, stressed followed by two unstressed, like the word everyone or gallery (EV-ry-one / GALL-er-y). #Dactyl Everyone, each line is made up of one or two (sometimes three) dactyls, exactly . . . like the lines "LAME three four / TIME hash-tag" or "THOR-son a- / POL-o-gies." Brilliant! Hard to stack up SO many dactyls in a row. Friends, won't you comment, please? Love to know what you're thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don't find the word "comments" in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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That's good fortune for Vince that he had such inspiration to pull off the challenge in the final moments. I was beginning to sweat it out a bit. Please excuse the curmudgeonly approach today.
Thank you, Alan. I had been thinking about it all day. I just needed such details as song titles. That there were also rat-pack friends on hand helped to fill out the poem. It was then just a matter of juggling names and titles until the syllable count and the character count worked out. I was lucky that I was able to push it all way to the maximum 140 characters.
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