National Poetry Month • Day One, NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2025 • Stafford Challenge 75

Well, friends, we're back! Going to be working NaPoWriMo and Poem-a-Day (typically merging their poetry prompts into one poem), plus continuing with the Stafford Challenge, all in that one poem. Also, Thomas Alan Holmes will be joining us again this season. Hurray! Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “As with pretty much any discipline, music and art have their own vocabulary. Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word. For (imaginary) extra credit, work in a phrase from, or a reference to, the Florentine Codex” (an encyclopedia of 16th-century indigenous Mexico). Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For the first Two-for-Tuesday prompt: 1) Write a "Best of Times" poem, and/or . . . 2) Write a "Worst of Times" poem. . . . Write a poem about the 'best of times,' 'the worst of times,' and/or 'the everythingest of times.'” Alan's poem today is a Petrarchan sonnet, with an unusual closing sestet that brings back the a and b rhymes. He said, "I call my variation of the Petrarchan sonnet the Uvalde sonnet, because the expected terminal couplet occurs prematurely." Alan merges all three prompts: both the best of times/worst of times ones along with the musical terminology one, using the word waltz. First the Right Foot, Then the Right Foot, Then the Left Foot It is the worst of times, three-four, the waltz that trips misstepping, like a misspent text, a signal sent corrupted. What comes next is slipping, old denial, placing faults on those who speak only the truth. Trump halts analysis, in his denials vexed by probing questions, even more perplexed that these, his best of times, when as he salts the wounds of those descrying villainy and also those caught in his calumny, ransacker of our nation’s courts and vaults, should be series of days of infamy, diminishment through stumbles, slides, and halts dismissed, denied through obvious pretext. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] You may have noticed that the word "waltz" in the first line is, by coincidence (or perhaps not), the National Security Advisor's surname. I was also successful today in melding all three prompts: like Alan, both the best of times/worst of times prompts as well as the musical terminology prompt — the first term was somewhat familiar but the second term was completely new to me. Bass No Pain When I’m on stage playing my bass it’s the best of times, my sciatica pain in diminuendo. It’s the worst of times when I’m not playing bass. Sometimes I can barely walk. Basso profondo . . . bass as musical medicine, a miracle. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

https://vincegotera.blogspot.com/2025/04/day-two-napowrimo-poem-day-2025.html

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