Napo questions

These questions were posted at the Poetry Free For All so after I answered them there, I realized I should put them here too.

1) What made you want to do it? This was my fourth Napo, so like Donner, it has become my April tradition. Now I feel if I don't do it, somehow I am failing. April forces me to write. That is a very good thing, because otherwise I tend not to focus as much as I need to waiting for the poem to arrive. Napo makes me go looking for that poem.

2) What do you feel you got out of it? Minimally 30 poems. Over the four years that is quite a stack. I feel some sense of accomplishment just for that. I also feel that I occasionally hit the mark that I seem to have set for myself. I am proud of and surprised by a few of the poems. I like that feeling.

3) Do you think the poems you produced are necessarily worse what you would normally write? I am not sure. I tend to be all over the place because I still consider myself new to writing poetry even though I have done it off and on since high school. If nothing else Napo gives me a place to start for the work of revision.

4) Did it prompt you to write different kinds of poems to the sort you normally write? In what way? I generally stay away from rhyme and meter because I know I don't do it well. It doesn't come to me as naturally as it appears to do some. Napo gives me a place to try these. I feel I have stretched toward forms I normally wouldn't feel confident enough to try. I tried to simplify some of what I was writing, to keep it small and close. I also tried writing from another character's POV. That was strange.

5) Do you feel it goes against any principle of writing poetry, or definition of poetry, or somehow cheapens poetry or anything like that? Oh not at all. If you are writing, and I think Napo bears that out, the sheer effort will produce something, and from that something might come something better. And if not, hopefully you had fun trying. Poetry, with the big P, is big enough for all of us. It can bear the weight of Napo.

6) What are you going to do with the poems you've written during the month? Well right now they are stacked in order sitting quietly on my desk in a folder. In a few days, I will look them over, and remember those I have forgotten. (A weird side effect of Napo.) If I am pleasantly surprised by any of them, they will go onto the "to be dealt with" file. Those that were commented on by others in a positive or hopeful manner will go in that stack too. Then the real work begins. Because I truly believe that is where the poetry is crafted. This is where it gets difficult.