Poetry Month Begins with Acceptance

This first day of poetry immersion has already been Amazing. This morning, I received my first Acceptance letter of the year. Two of my poems are going to be published in Heron Tree later this year. What a great way to kick off NaPoWriMo!

Acceptance is not only a great word for today because it is a goal of writing and submitting poems, but because it is also a great attitude for the month. There will be ups and downs during the month (last year I fell and hit my head, pretty scary) and I want to accept all that comes with an open mind and heart. Another important part of a successful NaPoWriMo is self-acceptance.

So with acceptance as my word for today, I took a look at my first Poets & Writers magazine in my stack the July/ August 2018 issue with Terrance Hayes on the cover, and found “the journal accepts queries or pitches via e-mail year-round,” on a very interesting page titled “Literary MagNet.” The page followed one essayist named Chelsea Hodson through different Literary Magazines that published her work. The article introduced me to EOAGH, The Scofield, Sundog Lit, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, all online journals that I had not heard of before and look forward to exploring.

Though I approached today’s letter in somewhat the opposite way than I had planned, I accept that this year I’m doing things differently, and I accept and enjoy process.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo: Write a poem that recounts the plot of a novel you liked but haven’t read in a long time.

PAD Challenge: Write an optimistic poem.

Poetry Non-Stop: Write a poem inspired by a good news story.

Today’s Poem

Every Day Holds Possible Skink

What makes a good day?
Optimism arrives like a runaway
governor vigilante in an old shower cap
on a mission to thwart
crooked, polluting developers
Solutions to my problems
lie within my grasp like
roadkill collected and cooked over
a campfire, leaving plenty to share
once found in the deep swamp
where gators leave little evidence.
It’s not that I want to ignore laws
or meet violence with violence
but I find hope in self-sufficiency
and the day turns like a glass eye
when the motor suddenly
roars to life.

Today is also Quadrille Monday at dVerse Poets Pub. The Quadrille is a poem of exactly forty-four words, not including the title, that includes a word chosen by the host. Today, Lisa has chosen “contour.”

The Mountain’s Hat is Never Wrong

The curved cloud contours of the mountain’s hat on a hat,
emulating the tall Stetsons its park rangers wear,
defy the blue sky reflecting in the still lake and confirm
that I mowed just in time, because rain
is going to come before long.

Portable MFA Week One: Beginnings

The opening instructions for this first week say that “This is the week you give yourself permission to write.” So here on day one I am declaring my commitment to working through all eight weeks of this program, and I hope you’ll hold me to it.

This week has a writing component and a reading component:
Writing: Write for forty-five minutes every day. Break this up into three blocks of fifteen minutes to play around with different writing times in different places to explore where and when you feel most creative. Write these sessions by hand in a notebook. Free-write, letting the words come in fragments, or lines without trying to force them into a whole (this is something I need to work on).

The chapter then gives seven suggestions for connecting with your creativity. The first one is “Read a newspaper and free-write about something you find there.”

I’m going to be using “Ideas for Writing” exercises from _{(assoc. link)}The Poet’s Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux to guide my writing sessions. I will choose one exercise from the Subjects for Writing section for my morning writing, and one from the Poet’s Craft section for the afternoon, and then write about something I found interesting during the day for my night writing.

Reading: This week’s reading assignment is to pick a poet that I’ll be reading and studying for the next four weeks. I chose Ada Limόn. I got three of her collections from the library: _{(assoc. links)} The Hurting Kind (2022); Bright Dead Things (2015); and The Carrying (2018). I have Lucky Wreck (2021) and Sharks in the Rivers (2010) on hold.

The reading assignment is: “Begin with a single poem by your poet of choice, and after you have read the poem at least five times (preferably aloud), spend a good half-hour writing about the poem in your writing journal. If you must, you can break up the half-hour into ten-minute increments throughout the week, returning to the poem, rereading it at different times. Do this every week for the next four weeks, choosing a different poem by the same poet each week.”

For this week, I chose “Anticipation” from The Hurting Kind .

How was your first day of NaPoWriMo and/ or Blogging A to Z? Or do you have something else fun going on for April?

See you tomorrow!