Wild and Mysterious Poetry

This week I talked about being unpinnable, the violence of language, and survival, so I was drawn to my Sasquatch poetry kit _{(assoc link)}.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo: Write a sijo. “This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise.”

PAD Challenge: Write a dead poem

Poetry Non-stop: Write a supermarket poem

Today’s Poem

Convenience

I need to grocery shop at the store down the hill with the
fresh produce, nuts and seeds bins, and vastly better choices,
but closer to the library, the Grocery Outlet awaits.

Poetry MFA Week 4 Review

Writing: This week was both challenging and fun. I combined the assignments from Doug Kearney’s workshop with the forms I needed to write for the Portable MFA, and wrote a Lipogram Villanelle, and let Shakespeare write the end rhymes for my Sonnet.

I thought this week would be a good time to re-visit Terrance Hayes’s DIY Sestina machine from So To Speak (2023)_{(assoc link)}. And though I love the diagram and can imagine those gears moving the columns of words up and down, I still can’t say that it helps me write a sestina at all.

For my sestina I returned to Ada Limón’s “Sharks in the Rivers II” from her collection Sharks in the Rivers (2010) _{(assoc link)} and chose sets of six words that stood out to me from the poem. I found it to be a really interesting way to study the poem. I read it differently and the words stood out individually. If you haven’t tried word grouping while studying a poem, I recommend it.

Thanks to this week’s prompts I also wrote a Triolet, and an American Sonnet. And last week I wrote a Pantoum.

Reading: This week’s reading really came together yesterday. While looking at the American Sonnet, I could see how a poem doesn’t only bring words together, but other poems and poets as well, and that gave me a new perspective against my own argument. I really enjoyed seeing so many of the things I’ve been reading connecting in a meaningful way.

I’ll talk about the week five MFA instructions and expectations tomorrow.

Time is precious, and I appreciate that you spend some of your time here at Experience Writing reading and learning along with me. I set up a buy me a coffee account, so you can now buy me a beverage. It will help a lot.

Happy Poetry Month!
Only Two More Days!
See you tomorrow