#NaPoWriMo Early Bird Prompt

Shawn and I recreate “The Kiss”

Kiss
Together
Couple recreates
Painting hanging in bedroom
Art

NaPoWriMo Early Bird Prompt – Today, we’d like to challenge you to spend a few minutes looking for a piece of art that interests you in the online galleries of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Perhaps a floral collar from the tomb of Tutankhamen? Or a Tibetan cavalryman’s suit of armor? Or a gold-and-porcelain flute? After you’ve selected your piece, study the photographs and the accompanying text. And then – write a poem! Maybe about who you imagine making the piece, or using it. Or how it wound up in the museum? Or even the life of the person who wrote the text about the piece – perhaps the Met has a windowless basement full of graduate students churning out artwork descriptions – who knows?

Good morning and welcome to the early NaPoWriMo Prompt. I did not pick a piece from the Met website though Maureen speaking of art work reminded me of the #gettymuseumchallenge everyone did in the early days of the pandemic and since Shawn has The Kiss by Gustav Klimt in our bedroom; I thought it would be the perfect piece for us to recreate. I also noted I posted the work without a poem back in May. So this has been rectified. And as my readers know, I prefer short poetry forms this is an oddquain a variant of the cinquain with an odd syllable count instead of even. Here is the #haikuchallenge I wrote today about it too. Note – at a count of 17 syllables an oddquain is very close to haiku.

Early pandemic
No one wants to be lazy
Recreate The Kiss

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NaPoWriMo Day 28

Peace Bridge

Peace
spans across
Niagara river
brings two countries together
Plain
drab green color blends in well
offers no pizazz
to skyline
Bridge

Voice of Niagara Peace Bridge photo

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for today’s prompt (optional, as always). Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about bridges. A bridge is a powerful metaphor, and when you start looking for bridges in poems, you find them everywhere. Your poem could be about a real bridge or an imaginary or ideal bridge. It could be one you cross every day, or one that simply seems to stand for something larger – for the idea of connection or distance, for the idea of movement and travel and new horizons.

It’s funny how life works at times. I’ve been working on a bridge poem thinking about Big Bridges Motion poems submission call. Deadline is now May 15th so fellow napowrimo poets if you think your bridge poem has what it takes…

Meanwhile we have been bridging some personal family issues. Hopefully making a stronger connection. And of course Rachael bridged into NHS. They lit a candle for each inductee. It really reminded me of how they bridge in girl scouts, but there was no physical bridge and they didn’t say exactly what the candles signified. Yes, Rachael’s girl scout troop actually bridged up to the next level. Gretchen will be “bridging” up to high school. I just got an email about the parent praise letters they want us to write to our children?! My other daughter graduated from this same school three years ago and I didn’t hear about praise letters. On top of this, there was an example letter. I know you’re quiet and don’t talk to me about your day. Umm… whose kid are they raising? We have dinner together almost every night and both my girls fill me in on their day. Then the email said, letter should be one page. Ha! they really don’t know me. When the girls applied for the middle school honors program, Dad went to the parent meeting on what is expected. He came home and told me, parents have to fill out this section. Damn woman you wrote a book. Yes, we already had the paper work and I know how to read. It wasn’t my fault they didn’t give me enough room and I added another page. I’m a writer, after all. I wonder what the school will think when I send in a praise poem over a letter.

NaPoWriMo Day 12

Scotty, NO!

Starship
Enterprise flies
over volcano to
rescue Spock but Scotty misjudged
Fireball

Burning imagination

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our prompt! Yesterday’s was a doozy, so today’s is much more laid-back (and optional, as always). It comes to us from Dr. Cynthia A. Cochran of Illinois College:

Here is a great prompt for anyone who likes to write descriptive prose but shudders at writing poetry–and it really works:

Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form.

Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.

Cut the lines where you see fit and, VOILA! A poem!

All right Star Trek fans you can’t blame me for this one. Yes, I put the fire in the chimenea but the rest was all Gretchen. She brought out a box of her writings to burn. The next thing I know she’s folding paper airplanes naming them Enterprise and flying them “into” the volcano to rescue Spock. All aboard perish. Spock is the only survivor. He had a contingency plan if the shuttle couldn’t pull him out.

Does everyone know what today is? Extra poem day. 😀 It’s DEAR day. And here I am without a good Star Trek novel to read.

DEAR

Read
Celebrate
Beverly Cleary
Dear Mr. Henshaw her best
Book

NaPoWriMo Day Nineteen – Happy Birthday, DAD!

Fishing

Calm
Still waters
Memories flood in
Rowing out under dawn’s pink
Sky

Dad
Hunkered down in the canoe
Fishing pole in hand
Patiently
Lures

 

My Dad and Me

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for today’s (optional) prmpt. This is a bit silly, but it’s Saturday. I recently got a large illustrated guide to sea shells. There are some pretty wild names for sea shells. Today I challenge you to take a look at the list of actual sea shell names below, and to use one or more of them to write a poem. You poem doesn’t have to be about sea shells at all — just inspired by one or more of the names.

Today is my Dad’s birthday!  If you are following this blog, you can figure out how old he is.  I’m not telling.  When the napowrimo prompt said seashells, I was wondering how I could write a birthday poem.  Reading the list of names, I saw one with canoe and remembered fishing with my dad.  When we would go camping, he would wake me up early in the morning to head out and fish.  Most times he would cast his line out and I would just drop my line straight down the boat’s side.  When I would catch more fish than he did, he always said, I’m luring them over to the boat for you to catch. 😉

Happy Birthday, DAD!

NaPoWriMo Day Sixteen – Lies I Tell

Spin
Dishes clean
Floors and toilets scrubbed
Poetry comes after chores
Lies

Fibs
Poetry is piece of cake
Laundry completed
House is clean
Yarn

 

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for today’s prompt (optional, as always). After yesterday’s form-based prompt, today’s will hopefully be somewhat easier to get into. This prompt is from Daisy Fried, and the basic idea is to write a ten-line poem in which each line is a lie. Your lies could be silly, complicated, tricky, or obvious. Happy Writing!

Here is a little yarn I spun, maybe. 😉 Anyone interested in cleaning a house? I can promise zero compensation.

NaPoWriMo Day Eleven- Anacreon

 

Wine – Bottled Poetry

There’s nothing quite sublime

As reading poetry with wine

Until the bottle is tipped

And every poet ripped

Who can recite what was read
Next morning no one leaves bed

 

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now, our prompt (optional, as always).Poets have been writing about love and wine, wine and love, since . . . well, since the time of Anacreon, a Greek poet who was rather partial to that subject matter. Anacreon developed a particular meter for his tipsy, lovey-dovey verse, but Anacreontics in English generally do away with meter-based constraints. Anacreontics might be described as a sort of high-falutin’ drinking song. So today I challenge you to write about wine-and-love. Of course, you may have no love of wine yourself, in which case you might try an anti-Anacreontic poem. Happy writing!

This could be fun as long as poets don’t mind facing the dawn.  This prompt made me think back to day one – Forget that, you bozoer of a wineglass, whom Shepherd in the kinglet disputes. I can’t seem to get away from the wine and poetry references.

Grapes

Ripe on vine

Given high laurels

Fermenting in oak barrels

Wine

NaPoWriMo Day Ten – Ad Poem

Write
Poetry
April is the month
Novice or pro, don’t be shy
Rhyme

 

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Today, I challenge you to write your own advertisement-poem. You don’t need to advertise Burma-Shave. Any product (or idea) will do. Perhaps you could write a poem advertising poetry? It certainly could use the publicity!

I think I was doing my share yesterday to advertise #5lines poetry.  The PAD prompt for Writer’s Digest was to write about shelter.  I wrote this oddquain:

House
Structure made
Wood, nails and concrete
Love of family creates a 
Home

 

Then I wrote two cinquains I shared on twitter and Facebook.

Saturn
Orbits the sun
Celestial body
Shining silver in our night sky
Planet

 

Labor
of love welcomes
First breath of life, new mom
Trembles with desire to hold her
Baby

 

Since it is April, everyone should give poetry a try. 😉

 

NaPoWriMo Day Nine – Songs

Cake
World of Two
Tougher Than It is
Friend Is a Four Letter Word
Songs
Alpha Beta Parking Lot
You Part the Waters
The Distance
Band

 

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now, our (optional) prompt. Today’s prompt was suggested by Bruce Niedt. Here’s Bruce’s explanation: take any random song play list (from your iPod, CO player, favorite radio station, Pandora or Spotify , etc.) and use the next five song titles on that randomized list in a poem.

The form is an oddquain butterfly.  I am not a big fan of cake but their songs do stay with you.  My husband likes the band and while he was exercising yesterday, Sheep Go to Heaven played.  Today I have Cake songs playing in my head.