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.

I am doing this everywhere so I might as well do it here too!

::passes out more post-Napo drinks::

April 30

Can You Play Today?

Can you come out today,
can you come to play?

Don’t want to play today,
I don’t want to play.

Who do you play today?
Should you play today?

Maybe you shouldn’t today,
shouldn’t come out to play.

Some days aren’t meant to play,
some days aren’t to play.

I can play tomorrow,
that what I can do.

I will play tomorrow,
that’s what I will do.




Thanks for reading and commenting all month. I was going to say "And in closing...." but I might keep them going. I don't know. It doesn't feel like stopping, so maybe I will play tomorrow. Maybe not. I will see how it goes.

April 29

Autopsy

The pages bent over
like the skin flaps on his chest.
They revealed a troubled
heart, broken
and swollen with effort.
Incised and gutted, diary
lessons were deemed
as failure to thrive.
Reading it seemed like stolen
charity. Nothing was given,
from the empty soiled pockets
of regret.


Thanks for reading.

April 28

Is this a chicken poem?

Pigeon prodding
ought to produce
practical pay-offs
that provide
for a pristine
path, rather than a patchy
penance positioned
on a person’s pump.

If anyone ever tells me I write cr*p poetry, I can proudly agree and point them to this poem! LOL Also I considered using "poem" as the last word, but chose not to.

April 27

“Daughter of Fornication”

Galileo birthed astronomy and opened
the skies like a wanted book.

He opened
Marina, who birthed his three
illegitimate daughters. His legacy for them, infinite
unmarriageability. They were later convented,
never to leave the nunnery,
their heavens closed forever because the sky high
cost of dowries are expensive
for an explorer only looking up,
not looking out.

[Marina was rumoured to be happy with this arrangement but then later married someone else. The daughters couldn't marry because of their mother's situation, and Galileo couldn't afford the dowries, so the only option was the convent. They could never leave the walls of the nunnery. Completely unsurprisingly, it appears the church had no opinion on this matter, as they did on his other more astronomy related actions.]

April 26

Headlines

Mother never said
she liked camping.
She always preferred
working indoors.

So when we were cleaning
out her house after her death,
the discovery came
as quite the shock.

The police officers took us
in for questioning. We had nothing
to say. The body
in the closet spoke volumes.

Even though the autopsy showed nothing
suspicious, you have to wonder
why the dead woman in the closet
was wrapped carefully in a sleeping bag.

Mother used to say when making the beds,
that tidy corners meant the world.
The police report did note
the admirable wrapping on the body.

April 25

Woman in Pompeii, I Want To See Your Poem

You paused for a moment
like a butterfly on a wall
to consider your words
before you flew on.
Placed pen to lip to page to artist
you stared down and measured
the length of your line,
and reflected on
what you would rest there.

I don’t know if the weight
of your words lasted, like the painting,
or if you got the words just so,
but your consideration
of the moment reached me
and I could at least poem your attempt.

April 24

Bothers

Now that I have seen Death
I don’t imagine him anymore.
He isn’t the billowing gust, or the drama
queen on stage, he is the quiet blink
of gone.

When I was eight, I used to imagine
my grandmother’s death. I would cry
in bed alone, hearing the dry
windows creak, knowing she would
be gone one day. That day
didn’t happen until I was
thirty two, while expectantly absent.
It was sudden even though it had been
coming on for years. Slow, no
drama, just a stopping I missed.

When I finally looked Death
in the face, his eyes
were closed. Death wasn’t
even looking back. He couldn’t
be bothered. We provide
the live drama, he is the absent director.

So I don’t imagine
him any more. I can’t
be bothered.

April 22

She Said

Desire just shows her
all she does
not have. The stripping away
of want, bared nude
like Aphrodite rising
from the sea. Veiled tides, idealized
moments exhibited,
now shelved in the museum
of the ancients.

April 21

Reveille By Request

My son greets me in the morning
singing in sun rising operatic tones,
“Good morning to you!”
He descends the stairs, his notes clearing
my early morning fog with each step.
His arms stretch to the musical
heavens, ruffled hair not
slicked back like the tenors
on TV, no tux or cummerbund
awards event, but the encircling song
of my boy’s hug.

April 20

Tribble Double Dactyl

Star Trekie, Star Trekie,
"The Trouble with Tribbles",
Quadrotriticale,
worrisome grain.

James T. Kirk, James T. Kirk,
buried up to his chest.
Cyrano Jones tries for
financial gain.

April 19

Mining the Dusk

Seeing the giants lined up
having tossed paint
like Finn did rocks, the splash
haunts forward so I can hide
in the waves of your grey
stare. This washed world
of blurry frames, eyelashed
by night, harbours in the shadow.

In 1877 the critic John Ruskin denounced Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875; Detroit Institute of Arts), accusing him of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face", and Whistler sued him for libel the following year. from here. It also reminded me of the time I was in Northern Ireland and went to see the Giants Causeway. I don’t know why it reminded me other than the flinging.

The Nocturnes, this one above in particular In Blue and Silver, are also some of my favourite paintings. Gorgeous.

April 18

We Went Uptown For Lunch on Saturdays.

The lunch counter at Woolworths
had twirly stools upon which my skirt pleats
dangled, umbrellaed over my crossed ankles,
primly balanced, no elbows allowed.

I always selected cherry pie,
from the glass-domed case, and a small pepsi.

Behind the metal rib-edged counter,
the waitress’ uniforms were ironed
onto them as if a seamstress were present,
tucking and pinning a mannequin.

Hamburgers, liver and onions
were oft prepared, the waitress
flipped them onto their raw backs,
sealing their nakedness instantly.

Toasted buns sat neatly pressed
together like lips, posed
on white china, edged in green,
with a smile of tomato, and lettuce wedge.

Later a streak of red
stained the teacup rim, and the napkin
wrung tight on the plate,
next to the double quarter tip.

April 17

Sevenling (Writing Group)

We three women eat deeply:
fruity drinks and assorted dips,
ravishing prose-stacks for play.

We swap houses and stories, green belts
for Mojitos. Banking words for tomorrow,
amongst collected recipes and spouses

at work, we carry home more than words.



My first sevenling. For B and L who did these word things with me!! *g*

April 16

Atmospherics

The wind greases my hair with dust. It skip
ropes around my face, my eyelids twitching
from the whipping. Not of my doing, the forsythia
branches bow down before me, residents
of their own yellow bouncing halo.

The daffodils can’t stand
spring’s floral pressure.
As soldiers of delight
they rise up against
the power that decries
their fanciful freedom.

When the battle pauses for the shortest time, swallowing
the wind, the warm invades again
and shelters up against me. My tentacle
Medusa hair lies down
until the dizzying wind flames return.




Normally I love the wind, and even wrote this poem yesterday in a sort of windy tribute. But it literally kept me up all last night with blowing and banging windows and neighbourhood lawn furniture, so now not so much. I am tired.

Vicky

April 15

Upon Reading Tablets 1-7 of The Epic of Gilgamesh

Through the hegemony of time, those intervals
of broken sentences and [box brackets]
speak the liminal epic of the god
king and wild man.
Uruk’s brother pair.
Into the forest of giant cedars, their Eden,
they played their traveling
dream, struck with swords, restless
hearts in council. Punished
for destiny, deprived
of light, shattered clay tablets
from their Bronze Age door
are rivered to my hand.


Thank you. I am going to keep at this one.

April 14

This is Not a Cat Poem

Charged with a Napo mission
and meowing ambition,
this poem will not be feline.
So I must sadly decline

most gracious offers of such.
Each of the others, I’ll vouch
Olympian in their catlike scope,
will be more amusing. I hope.

Apologies to PIL who would hate this.

Vicky, purring

April 13

Good morning. I am feeling somewhat better so yay!

Bus Tour

All that remained were the sidewalks and front
porch steps after the flood. Green had returned
vesturing gullies smooth. People, houses

were gone. My bus tour took me past bleak
cemeteries of all kinds, both living
and the dead. Quiet sniffles and ruffles

of handkerchiefs announced the gateway trust
over the berm, crying stayed in the air
tight bus. The orange line broke the cracked streets

but was marked new on the next empty block,
tone deepened to rust, each square block tied New
Orleans tight. Sharp even stitches, quilted

a patchwork delivered from the near past,
to a city now holding our future.


Thanks for reading.

ETA: Just thought of a better title: No Rhyme, No Reason.

April 12

Points

watching the scalloped
wood unwind, pencil shavings
as unwritten poems