#NationalPoetryMonth’16 Round-up (Day 30)

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#NaPoWriMo, #NationalPoetryMonth, Apparatus Magazine, Bao-Long Chu, Bookslinger, Brain Pickings, Chronically Creative, Eavan Boland, Erika L. Sanchez, Found Poetry Review, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Jo Bell, Joy Harjo, Lorna Dowell, Marcus Jackson, Mariah Wilson, NotaLiteraryJournal, NPM16, Pablo Neruda, Poem a Day, Poetic Asides, poetry prompts, Poetry School, QuillsEdge Press, Samiya Bashir, Sara Teasdale, The Writer's Center, women poets

Whether you made it here fast or slow, Congratulations, poemers! It’s the final round-up of the best prompts, poems and news from your #NaPoWriMo/#NPM16/#NaPoMo /#NationalPoetryMonth/#poemaday hashtags.

Best of the Prompts

NaPoWriMo’s “Translation Challenge”
NotaLiteraryJournal’s “Places You’ve Never Been prompt”
Poetic Asides P-A-D “Dead-End prompt”
Poetry School’s “Leaving Home prompt”
Mariah Wilson’s “Celebration prompt”
QuillsEdge Press’ “Hands prompt”
Found Poetry’s “Phone-words prompt”
Apparatus Mag’s “Endings& Beginnings prompt”
Jo Bell’s “Love prompt”
Imaginary Garden’s “Maypole prompt”
Chronically Creative’s “Thief prompt”

Poems I Have Loved (Tweeters’ Shares)

Sara Teasdale “There Will Come Soft Rains”
Lorna Dowell “Window Display”
Eavan Boland “The Pomegranate”
Marcus Jackson “Pardon My Heart”
Bao-Long Chu “Durian”
Erika L. Sánchez “A Woman Runs on the First Day of Spring”
Samiya Bashir “John Henry’s First Real Swing” w/commentary
Pablo Neruda “Keeping Quiet” (read by Sylvia Boorstein)

Miscellaneous

Nearly Unbearable Grace: The Poetry of Joy Harjo (Univ of Cali TV)
Poetry Publishers On Their Favorite Lines (Bookslinger)

**Poets, if you would like to be featured in 2sDay Poems, have your collection reviewed, guest post in the Poetry Lab or blog on any of the Thoughts on Poetry topics, including Foremother Friday or Small Press Interviews, drop me a line at  bonesparkblog@yahoo.com.

#NationalPoetryMonth’16 Round-up (Day 23)

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#NaPoWriMo, #NationalPoetryMonth, Apparatus Magazine, Brain Pickings, Deborah Landau, Found Poetry Review, Franny Choi, Harpoon Review, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Indiana Humanities, Jehanne Dubrow, Jo Bell, Kate Foley, Lagan Press, Mariah Wilson, Mary Carroll Hackett, NotaLiteraryJournal, NPM16, Pablo Neruda, Poem a Day, Poetic Asides, poetry prompts, Poetry School, QuillsEdge Press, Roisin Kelly, women poets

DAY TWENTY-THREE of the best prompts, poems and news from your  #NaPoWriMo/#NPM16/#NaPoMo /#NationalPoetryMonth/#poemaday hashtags.

Best of the Prompts

NaPoWriMo’s “Sonnet Challenge”
NotaLiteraryJournal’s “If I Ran the World prompt”
Poetic Asides P-A-D “Footwear Poems prompt”
Poetry School’s “Ghazal Challenge”
Mariah Wilson’s “Describe an Animal prompt”
QuillsEdge Press’ “(Un)expected Journeys prompt”
Found Poetry’s “Jouet’s petit récapitul portatif prompt”
Apparatus Mag’s “Celestial Bodies/Skygazer prompt”
Imaginary Garden’s “Things Shakespearean prompt”
Lagan Press “Sunrise/Sunset prompt”
Jo Bell’s “First Time prompt”
Indiana Humanities’ “What You Like Best prompt”
Mary Carroll-Hackett’s “Returning prompt”
Kate Foley’s “Pride in a Weakness prompt”

Poems I Have Loved (Tweeters’ Shares)

Franny Choi “Weight”
Maggie Smith “You Could Never Take a Car to Greenland”
Jehanne Dubrow “Eastern Shore”
Pablo Neruda “Love For This Book”
Deborah Landau “I Don’t Have a Pill for That”
Roisin Kelly “Robert’s Cove”

Miscellaneous

How Nabokov Met His Love & Won Her Over With a Poem (Brain Pickings)

**Poets, if you would like to be featured in 2sDay Poems, have your collection reviewed, guest post in the Poetry Lab or blog on any of the Thoughts on Poetry topics, including Foremother Friday or Small Press Interviews, drop me a line at  bonesparkblog@yahoo.com.

#NationalPoetryMonth Round-up (Day 26)

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#NaPoWriMo, #NationalPoetryMonth, #NPM15, Amy Lowell, Asian Americans poets, Beastly Verse, Brain Pickings, Claudia Rankine, Ellen Hopkins, Flashbang Writing Studio, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jamaal May, Marianne Moore, Mark Jarman, Mary Biddinger, mslexia, Pablo Neruda, pink ink press, Poem a Day, Poetic Asides, poetry prompts, Robin Scofield, Stories& Slams, the language inside, West Trestle Review, Wild Violet, women poets

The best prompts, poems and news from DAY TWENTY-SIX of #NaPoWriMo/#NPM15 /#NationalPoetryMonth.

Best of the Prompts

Mslexia’s “Tiny Square prompt”
The Language Inside’s “Boundaries prompt”
Imaginary Garden with Read Toads “3 for 1 Play it Again prompt”
Flashbang Writing Studio’s “So Good You Can Taste It (after Diane Lockward)”
West Trestle Review “How-To Extended metaphor poems”
Poetic Asides P-A-D “Words of Shakespeare prompt”
Stories& Slams’ “Conversations w/ Friends prompt”
Wild Violet’s “W is for Word prompt”
NaPoWriMo’s “Persona Poems”
Pink Ink Press’ “The Fabrication prompt”

Poems I Have Loved (Tweeters’ Shares)

Gwendolyn Brooks| “We Real Cool”
Mark Jarman| “Then Saw the Problem”
Amy Lowell| “Superstition”
Mary Biddinger| “Burying the Apron”
Jamaal May| “Sky Now Black with Birds” (video)
Robin Scofield| “Three Paintings by Monet”
Claudia Rankine| from “You are in the dark, in the car….”
Marianne Moore| “The Fish”

Miscellaneous

Asian-American Poets to Watch at NBC news
Painting the Verbal Landscape: Ellen Hopkins at Write All The Words
Ode to the Captain: Discovering Pablo Neruda at fsgworkinprogress blog
Beastly Verse: From Lewis Carroll to William Blake, Beloved Poems About Animals in Vibrant& Unusual Illustrations at Brain Pickings

Wild Things in Art & Verse: ANIMAL Rocks the Poetry Lab

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ANIMAL, Cynthia Huntington, Derain, Dufy, Fauvism, Gertrude Stein, Matisse, Muppets, Natalie Goldberg, Pablo Neruda, Peter Jay Shippy, poetry prompt, Writing From the Body

Muppets are good therapy, especially when faced with the worst kind of writer’s block–inabilitytowriteapoemitis. Kermit’s wise words tell us to embrace our differentness, but ANIMAL may be the real key to unlocking our truest selves.

He knows how to rock the beast, how to unleash that wildness that is sorely lacking in much contemporary literature and art. I’m not talking about debauchery or creating for shock. I’m talking about tapping into your animal core. Be the wild beasts, like Les Fauves.

ANIMAL would have loved these guys! They were a tight group of French painters that decided to shake up the art world at the dawn of the 20th century.

Theirs was a wide departure from the subtleties of the impressionists and the more structured post-impressionist style, with an ultimate goal of capturing crystallized emotion in their big, lusty brush strokes and bold colors.

While not immediately popular in the art world, their work took off amongst the literati, most notably with writer Gertrude Stein, who purchased A Woman in a Hat (left) from Matisse very early on in his career.

Other key artists of the movement were Derain, Braque, Vlaminck, Camoin and Dufy. Just a few representative pieces, and then I move on.

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Though Fauvism as a movement was largely over by the time that Pablo Neruda came onto the scene (having been absorbed by the German Expressionists), its influence is strongly felt in his work, both in his use of color (scroll to the Ode) and raw emotion.

For instance, in this poem:

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
—————————————————————–

What passion! The man was surely a genius. And he got there by throwing off worldly constraints and embracing his animal instincts. Think about that. Think about how that would feel. It would give you the wild energy that John Lee talks about in Writing From the Body (ch.7). ANIMAL would approve.

Even more so, the exercise recommended by Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones (pgs. 83-84). She asks us to “be the Animal..to walk in the world in touch with that present, alert part of ourselves, that animal sense part that looks, sees and notices…to move slowly, stalking your prey, which is whatever you plan to write about.”

In other words, write through animal eyes. Let it make a new way into your poetry. No boundaries. Just go with your emotions. RELEASE THE ANIMAL. And write.

Then perhaps come back and take a look at Peter Jay Shippy’s poem, The Palm of the Paw, or Cynthia Huntington’s, From the Dunes.

And if you end up with something great of your own, please feel free to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AY COLORES!! Juicy, Juicy Color Bytes for Poets and Painters

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Aimee Bender, Audre Lord, Belle Journal, color, contemporary artists, Diane Lockwood, Marge Piercy, margo roby, Pablo Neruda, poetry prompt, Ruth Stone, Sylvia Plath, W.S. Merwin, William Sitting Bull

So, I’m a big fan of Margo Roby’s Wordgathering blog and her Poem Tryout for today was all about color. And since I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic myself:

1) because I’m highly anticipating Aimee Bender’s new collection of short stories, The Color Master and 2) because I just put together a collection of my own art for Belle Journal [will link to the gallery when it’s up],

I have decided to give you a selection of poems and paintings to complement Margo’s post.

First a sampling of some contemporary art:

Profile on Red by Delia Parvu

Fire Horses by Maria Spencer

Image #29 by William Sitting Bull

Large White Flowers in Vase by Susanna Shap

Image #32 by William Sitting Bull

Flirting with a violin by Anna Razumovskaya

And now the poems:

Ode to Wine by Pablo Neruda

Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy

The Summer He Left by Diane Lockward  [You have to scroll]

Tulips by Sylvia Plath

White on White by Ruth Stone   [Ignore the nasty comment. Someone please send me a better link if you can find it.]

Separation by W.S. Merwin

Coal by Audre Lord

And that should be enough to get you going for now.  I’m sure I’ve left some really good poems out. If you have one, please post in the comments.

C.A.