Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a homograph poem. Homographs are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. Sometimes they are pronounced the same, but that's not always the case. Click here to find a list of homographs, though there are many more homographs than these to use.”
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt today is based on Jim Simmerman's Twenty Little Poetry Projects exercise. This is the 20th year of NaPoWriMo and Maureen is recycling some of the more popular prompts from previous years. This one is an oldie but goodie! The exercise posits twenty mini-prompts all to be used in one poem, for example, "Begin the poem with a metaphor" or "Use a piece of false cause-and-effect logic" or "Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective." Maureen says about the exercise: "It really pushes you to use specific details, and to work on 'conducting' the poem as it grows, instead of trying to force the poem to be one thing or another in particular."
I wrote a poem using the Simmerman exercise on 5 April 2020 when it was the NaPoWriMo prompt of that day. That poem The Front Door was quite successful and eventually was published later that same month in the Silver Birch Press website. This time, I'm just not feeling inspired by the Simmerman exercise as well as the homograph idea, so I'm "going rogue," as Alan says, no working from prompts today. I might try the Simmerman later on.
Easter Fantasy
My dad taught me to read when I was two,
and by age four I had read the entire
Bible, Genesis to Revelation.
I didn’t understand most of it but
I was enchanted by the fantasy vibe.
Probably I didn’t yet know that word
but I knew that a lot of the Bible,
beyond the begats, was out-and-out weird.
I really relished Revelation, called
Apocalypse in my parent’s Bible.
There were those angels with multiple wings
— how did that even work? And whirling wheels
floating in air next to the cherubim;
five years later, I would connect those wheels
with flying saucers. Probably my love
for science fiction arose from this book.
The Four Horsemen were my introduction
to sword-and-sorcery. Ghostly warriors!
Another tale full of strange happenings
was Jesus’ crucifixion. It was weird
enough to have a guy nailed to a cross,
but also darkness at noon, an earthquake?
Then the curtain in the Temple tearing
in half by itself? I knew even then
what the Holy of Holies was, recalled
the Ark of the Covenant, and so on.
Then three days later an angel rolling
a boulder off the guy’s grave — now empty?
Whoa. A whole lot to take in at age four.
I don’t know how this eventually
linked up to faith (probably arising
from education by nuns) but at four
I was definitely hooked. On weird tales,
at least. And so here we are, friends: Easter!
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Well, that's blank verse — decasyllabics, actually — probably long enough to be a Simmerman 20. In fact, it's possible I may have invoked a couple or three of the Simmerman 20 poetry projects, but if I did, it was purely by accident.
Here is Alan's poem for today; he tells me, "I devoted a lot of attention to both prompts." The poem addresses the momentous, disturbing news coming out of his state, Tennessee, in the last day or two.
Sheer Thursday, Tennessee 2023
Self-proclaimed children of God berated youths on a golden path.
A home economics degree can take you anywhere, even to the United States Senate, but,
specifically, within three blocks of my work, hatefulness refracting light like a
new blacktop oozing petroleum by-products, my boss its company.
In these blessed hills crossed with abandoned railroad beds, old-growth forests, and
converted rayon plants and flour mills,
Maybe not accompanied by my boss, but definitely directed by my boss—
I saw the photographic evidence.
While, four hours away, in cluster-fouled-up legislative chambers, the Undead
Confederacy of GOP Supermajority,
Holding themselves righteous preservers of Holy Week’s virtues
Voted to expel two young Black men from their august body,
Sparing by only one vote an older white woman accompanying the two in their call for
gun restrictions
In the wake of a mass shooting only days before, its victims including three children and
a close friend of the governor’s wife,
His devotion to gun rights unshaken, because he remains true to his core principles,
That it is better to wash children’s feet in a religious ceremony than to restrict access to
weapons of war among unregulated death cult members fomented by powerful
political PACs.
He washed children’s feet as an act of Christian selflessness.
He behaves as if he loves.
Old Alabama has seen this act before. He saw it in the sixties, when the grownups took
him to join the crowd drawn to the Little Judge on his campaign stop. He saw it
when the self-proclaimed “not a crook” got off scot-free. He saw it when the
demented actor aligned with the adulterous salamander and the compromised
televangelist. He saw it from the oil-men-in-chief. He saw it from the self-
proclaimed genius innkeeper, all those grand old guys.
The godly patriots who scream at our youths and protect the weapons that kill our
children expelled two young men who said they recognized them.
Tetelestai.
He towels the child’s foot dry without looking at the confused face above him.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Alan definitely worked with both prompts. For example, the word "boss" here is a homograph, used with a different meaning each time. The poem opens with the first Simmerman poetry project, to begin with a metaphor. Another Simmerman dictum asks for something from another language, and Alan gives us "tetelestai," Greek for "it is finished." The poem ends, as required by the Simmerman exercise, with a visual image that connects to an earlier image sans statement: in this case, the foot-washing. Beautiful work, Alan.
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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4 comments:
I don't see all the prompts in Alan's poem today, but no matter. It is brilliant, angry, powerful stuff. Yours is great too, Vince - I love the "magical" take on religion. I wrote two today, one for each blog's prompt. I agonized over the NaPoWriMo prompt today because I didn't think I'd have enough time to do it, but I managed to steal enough to come up with one by mid-evening. Like you, I've had one of those 20-prompt exercises published too, and I included it in my "Bungalow" collection (titled "Señor Morning").
Bruce, I swear I printed out that list and checked off items line-by-line as I worked my way through. Sometimes, I got the prompts out of order, and sometimes I let one line take care of more than one prompt. The hardest prompt was to remember a nickname someone had given me, because I don't believe folks should give themselves nicknames. Fortunately, I remembered what a classmate from a couple of years ago called me. It helped in the line about the series of politicians.
I think the Simmerman exercise doesn't have to be done in order. And you also don't have to do all 20. Pretty sure I'm right with the first, but not sure about the second.
I checked the exercise. My first was correct, second not.
"Give each project at least one line. You should open the poem with the first project, and close it with the last, but otherwise use the projects in whatever order you like. Do all twenty. Let different ones be in different voices. Don’t take things too seriously."
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