National Poetry Month / Poem-a-Day 2013

Hello, friends. Yes, yes. I know. It’s been almost a year since my last blog post. I’ve been bad. Bad blogger, BAD blogger.   ;-) The occasion for the resurrection of the blog is this: it’s National Poetry Month! And once again I’m going to try to write a poem a day during the month of April. Like last year, I’m taking on Writer’s Digest editor Robert Lee Brewer's “PAD challenge” (PAD for “poem a day”). Every morning in April, Robert will issue a prompt in his Writer’s Digest Poetic Asides blog . . . today, April 1, his prompt is to write “a new arrival poem.” Same as last year, I plan also to pay attention to Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompts (that smushed-up word, by the way, stands for National Poetry Writing Month, a now-international project she invented . . . imagine that!). Anyway, Maureen suggests, for Day One, writing “a poem that has the same first line as another poem.” Well, folks, here it is, just the first day, and I’m already cheating on prompts. Tsk-tsk. My poem below refers to new arrivals but they don't really arrive yet. Also, instead of using someone else’s first line as my own, I’m using that stolen line as part of my title. Close enough, though, don’t you think? Besides, it’s April Fool’s Day, right? So we’re just fooling around. April Is the Cruelest Month ... Or, Hoping 30 New Poems Will Arrive April’s blood curdling damnable expectation for gorgeous Homeric iambics just kills limpnoodled me. No OLD pantoums qasidas rondeaus senryu terzanelles . . . Ugh. Verse. Well? Xbox? Yu-gi-oh? Zoloft? —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] I’m really proud the opening line I’m stealing is from T. S. Eliot, because of his often-quoted dictum: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” So I’m stealin’ from the best, from the master who told us all to steal . . . alright! Did you notice there are 26 words in the poem, not counting the title? What might the number 26 make you think of? Yes! Each word in the poem starts with a letter of the alphabet, in order. To be technical for a moment, this kind of poem is called an abecedarian. Sometimes they are written with 26 longer lines starting with the ABCs in order. Wait, what’s that? I cheated? There's no word as limpnoodled, right? Well, yeah. April Fool’s! Cheatin’, stealin’, it’s all about maturity . . . Dr. Seuss and Shakespeare both made up flapdoodle words.   :-D Okay, that’s it for me for Day One. I hope you liked the poem, even the cheatin’ and the stealin’. In fact, I hope you enjoyed it because of the the cheatin’ and the stealin’! See you tomorrow for Poem Two. As always, ingat. (Filipino for “take care,” remember?) Ingat, everyone. Oh, I almost forgot . . . please comment below. I’d love to hear what you think. Looking forward to your comments! P.S.  Just a little show and tell before I go. I gave a reading last week at the University of Northern Iowa, and I’d like to show off the handsome flyer the good folks at the Center for Multicultural Education made to advertise my gig. Cool, huh? [Click the image to see a larger version.] Thanks for coming back to the blog, friends. Comment below, okay? See you tomorrow. Ingat.   :-) POEM-A-DAY 2013 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30