Day Five ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2018

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that . . . reacts both to photography and to words in a language not your own. Begin with a photograph. Now find a poem in a language you don’t know. Ignore any accompanying English translation (maybe cover it up, or cut-and-paste the original into a new document). Now start translating the poem into English, with the idea that the poem is actually 'about' your photograph. Use the look and feel of the words in the original to guide you along as you write, while trying to describe your photograph. It will be a bit of a balancing act, but hopefully it will lead to new and beautiful (and possibly very weird) places." Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: "For today’s prompt, write an intelligence poem. Of course, intelligence is subjective. What is common sense for one person makes no sense to another. But intelligence is more than IQ and test scores. There’s artificial intelligence, intelligent animals, and military intel. And I’ve found that many poets have a special intelligence of their own." I'm doing two out of three today: mashing up Maureen's idea of looking at a photograph (though I'm looking at a political cartoon instead) and Robert's "intelligence" theme. I'm not attempting Maureen's "translitic" angle this time . . . perhaps I'll do one of those later in the month. I googled "Trump" and "intelligence" and found this political cartoon by Chris Britt, dated 20 March 2017, poking fun at how Trump doesn't bother to look at the briefings the US intelligence community prepares for him. Chris Britt cartoon, 3-20-2017, creators.com/read/chris-britt/03/17/200121 And here's my poem — once again, a tanka — that uses for fodder an internet claim that Trump's IQ is 156 (a myth busted by Snopes.com) and Trump's own tweet about his intelligence from January 2018. Intelligence Trump doesn’t look at his intelligence briefings because his IQ is 156 and he's “like, really smart,” he tweeted. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] 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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