Saturday, April 13, 2013

Flurries, But Still

So, here's a few things I want you to be aware of during this, our National Poetry Month:

1. It's snowing here in Chicago today. Flurries, but still.  For a poetry prompt, write a haiku about snow in April. It might include such phrases as "I shake my fist at the sky," but really, just do your own thing.

2. If you buy a poetry book online this month from some select and wonderful publishers of poetry, those presses will send another copy of your purchased book to a friend.  For free.  As in zero dollars and zero cents.  The suggestion is to send poetry to someone who does not normally read poetry.  It's like the Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on their door, but slightly less invasive.

3. There's a project going on this month, where various poets take Pulitzer Prize-winning novels and use those texts and via erasure and other collage techniques, make poems.  This would be a great journal exercise or writing practice for, well, for me, but probably for a lot of other people, too. Here's one of my faves, from Germany-based poet Sarah Sloat.

4. I am still plugging away at my project to write 69 letter poems.  Here's a draft of one:



Dear Family Chronicle of a Flock of Pigeons,

There are so many of you!  And so few
pigeon heros, or dastards,
and also, I think,
so few affairs since
each and every character
mates
for life—the history of pigeons is a story
with no wars, and no sons
elected bishop, just over and again
the tale of how you rose
on a January morning
on wings nearly
white against
a bank
of darker cloud, and I read this
and was thankful
to be cold, here, waiting
on the train, nearly
able
to love the world the way
a flock of pigeons loves
the sky.

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