Poetry Focus

Today’s word from the Nov/Dec 2018 Poets&Writers Magazine is Focus. This issue had a section called “Focus in on Literary Magazines” that included three articles: one on the dawn of digital submissions; one on magazine contracts; and one on increasing diverse representation.

My intense focus on poetry and poetry submissions for the first quarter of this year has revealed to me how scattered I’ve been in the past. I can see why I was only coming up with poems to post on here, leaving few unpublished poems to submit to journals when I was also working on short stories and novels. For the first time during NaPoWriMo, I have a file with unpublished drafts in it, and there are already seven poems in there.

So what’s working? How am I staying focused when I haven’t in the past?

P&W Collage #6 – Focus

It started with a rejection letter bingo card in the Writer’s Relief newsletter. I liked the idea of each of my rejection letters being a possible square on my bingo card. The idea got me submitting and when the rejection letters started coming in, putting stickers on that bingo card made me want to get more rejection letters, so I kept submitting. Those first rejection letters still held the familiar sting, but now, after my first bingo, yesterday’s rejection only made me think about where to send my next submissions.

The other thing that has changed that’s really helping is I found an online generative writing gathering called Friday Gatherings led by MK Chavez of the Ouroboros Writing Lab that I’m really enjoying. And yesterday I tried the Gotham Writers write-in. These zoom write-ins are really helping me generate work in a new way, and I’m excited by the results.

Retaking Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop is also keeping me focused and generating new, unpublished work, and the Portable MFA(assoc. link) will keep me focused on poetry through to the end of May.

But mock events for the Writer’s Games are already starting this month. Will I be able to keep my poetry focus and write a couple short stories? Do I want to spend six of my weekends this summer writing short stories? I really enjoy the Writer’s Games, but the intensive short story competition will draw my focus from poetry.

I will stay completely focused on poetry this month. I will not even look at the Mock Events, but I have high hopes that by June I will have such a solid poetry practice that I will be able to split my focus for the Writers Games and have some fun with short stories on the weekends.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo : “write a poem rooted in “weird wisdom,” by which we mean something objectively odd that someone told you once, and that has stuck with you ever since.”

PAD Challenge : Write a minimum poem.

Poetry Non-stop : The green envelope. For this poem ask yourself: “Why is the envelope green? What does that mean to you? Where has it come from and what does it say? What would you want it to say? Open it with us. And read it with us.”

Today’s Poem

This Green Envelope

Green is the real color of love
someone told me once.
I don’t remember why.
The color of money, envy,
the green M&M.
But this green envelope
is a mass-produced advertisement
disguised as a letter
addressed to my neighbor
in digitized handwriting.
Putting the envelope
in the correct box
is the bare minimum, but
we cannot expect that.
I walk the green envelope
down the street and slip
it into the void of the open slot.
Perhaps it is an advertisement
for something my neighbor
needs, but could not find.
This is my act of love.


See you tomorrow!

Poetry of Ephemera

Every issue of Poets & Writers has a page titled, “The Time Is Now: Writing Prompts and Exercises,” which has three prompts” Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction. The poetry prompt in the Nov/Dec 2018 Poets&Writers says to “make a list of objects or ephemera that have played a prominent role in your life in the past two or three years, including items that have figured into international news. Write a poem in response to a selection of these objects, exploring any emotional ties you have to them and their significance to larger social issues.”

Ephemera is such a great word. It is the plural of ephemeron and means items designed to be useful or important for only a short time, especially pamphlets, notices, tickets, etc. I find the “or” in the prompt instructions odd as ephemera are objects. But an interesting exercise none the less.

P&W Collage #5 – Ephemera

When I looked up “poetry of ephemera” on the internet, I got some interesting results. I found Ephemera by Ann Lauterbach which is a portfolio of photographs and captions. I found the poem “Ephemera” by W.B. Yeats. And I found two poetry collections (assoc. links): Ephemera by Sierra DeMulder, and The Ephemera & The Eternal by Kai Mei.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo : start by taking a look at Alicia Ostriker’s poem, “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog.” Now try your hand at writing your own poem about how a pair or trio very different things would perceive of a blessing or, alternatively, how these very different things would think of something else (luck, grief, happiness, etc).

PAD Challenge : take the phrase “Tell (blank),” replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

Today’s Poem

Tell us the joy of the doctor, his skeleton, and the crime tape

Finding a healthy heart
hearing its steady beat
makes me want to dance,
said the doctor smiling,
and a day without
finding a tumor;
that is pure joy.

Not being feared,
side-glanced with a grimace
while fleshy fingers
flutter over muscled thighs,
whispered the doctor’s skeleton,
hanging in the corner.
Being observed as the fact
that I am the stable center
of industry would bring me joy.

A day of rest
just one day
staying rolled, still
in a dark closet or trunk,
says the yellow crime tape
across the gaping shattered-glass
door of the doctor’s office
overlooking the body-shaped tape
and the blood stain.
I dream of that joy.


See you tomorrow!

Poetry as Decisions

I discovered so many great D words reading through the Sept/Oct 2018 Poets&Writers; such as: despite, disheartening, discouraged, denigrate, determine, deeper, delve, delight, doubt, derided, dependent, deserves, dimension, and distract. Using that list of words right there in a poem makes for an interesting poetry prompt. But for today’s word, I want to talk about decisions.

P&W Collage #4 – Decisions

In “MFA in Mind: Twenty Questions o Ask Before Applying,” I read, “But advice is rarely universal, and the decision to pursue a graduate degree is one that requires individualized attention. One writer’s expectations for an MFA program might be radically different from those of another. So rather than spout platitudes about the uniquely personal decision you are facing, we’d like to offer some simple questions . . .” In “Like the First Time” by Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, she talks about all of the life decisions she made while taking twelve years to finish her third book. She had two children, a teaching career, and moved from one side of the country to the other and back again. Then, in parentheses she writes, “all decisions I do not regret.”

A poem, like any life event, is full of uniquely personal decisions. Today, I thought it would be interesting to pay attention to my decisions, try to capture my thoughts, and take notes of every little decision I make while working on my poems. Then include some of my decision making in the poem for the reader to be part of made aware of. Will they all be decisions I do not regret? Only time will tell.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo : write a poem in which you take your title or some language/ideas from The Strangest Things in the World

PAD Challenge : write a mistake poem.

Poetry Non-Stop : pain

Thanks to Bruce Niedt who shares his poetry at Orangepeel, I became aware of another source of prompts; Poetry Super Highway is providing daily prompts for NaPoWriMo.

Poetry Super Highway :

The Assembly Line of Surprise

Step 1 – Choose a subject to write about. This should probably be something about being human such as a mental state, emotion, or social issue. Often this is abstract.

Step 2 – Choose an object to compare it to. It’s best if this is something very different than in step 1. Concrete things like machinery give good imagery. The more outrageous the better. Congratulations! You’ve just created a metaphor.

Step 3 – Make two columns on a piece of paper. List the parts of the subject step 1 in the first column and the parts of the item in step 2 in the second.

Step 4 – Map items in each column to those in the other. Choose the most interesting mappings. These will be phrases in your poem.

Step 5 – Put these phrases together into a poem.

Today’s Poem

Gigantic Serpents of the Sky

He reported two pink serpents in the sky
but they were flocks of pigeons
migrating in search of acorns
like they do every ten years
like the lightness of delight
they take flight, but in him
their undulating movements
evoked fright and tricked his eyes
and he saw two giant asps
roaring to earth with a thunder
of a million beating wings
jaws unhinged revealing rows
and rows of tiny teeth like beaks
light  glinting off their venom
dripping fangs coming to pierce him
coming right at him to end him
and consume all the nature
he so carefully observed

Enjoy all the decisions you get to make today.
See you tomorrow!

Poetry as Carrying

The second issue of Poets&Writers Magazine in my stack is the Sept/Oct 2018 issue with Ada Limόn on the cover. In the article, “The Poetry of Perseverance,” Carrie Fountain talks with Ada Limόn about her fifth collection, The Carrying(assoc. link).

P&W Collage #3 – Carrying

Ada Limόn says the poems in this collection were answering the question, “Where do I put all this?” She also said, “When I finally had about thirty poems, I realized I was writing something real, making a complicated living thing. Then started to push myself to plunge further, to be as veracious as possible and follow the craft, follow the song as far as it would take me.”

She says that her book terrifies her and when asked what it is about The Carrying that terrifies her she says, “I think what scares me the most is that I’m writing more about the body and from a place of physical vulnerability. . . .I address more of the frailty of my own body.”

Just before I started writing this, I came down the stairs carrying a Poets & Writers magazine in one hand and a mug in the other, and I thought about how I carry myself. I instantly felt my spine straighten, but not completely because I was watching the stairs. I thought about how I’ve always slouched, and the string that is supposed to pull the top of my head toward the sky always goes slack when I’m not focused on it.

What do my poems carry? How do they carry themselves? What are the things I am carrying that I need to put into my poems to let the poems carry for me?

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo: Write a surreal prose poem.

PAD Challenge: pick a musical act or artist and either make that the title of your poem or incorporate into the title of your poem; then, write your poem.

Poetry Non-stop: Alex Blustin’s prompt is: Try imagining a hapless engineer designing love from scratch. How would it work? What tragic errors would they make in their design, and is any of it funny enough to inspire a poem?

These three prompts seemed to fit well together.

Today’s Poem

The Mothers of Invention Engineer Love

When the idea came to us to engineer such a thing that would excite the body as well as the mind, binding two beings in such a way that they would desire to stay together—the hissing amusements, giggling glucose and rough savor—we hadn’t taken into account that we are antiseptic, rectangular, loose, and astringent. We thought of love as a red sequin unitard with fringe that sticks out her tongue a lot, crawling, climbing, and rubbing up against bodies, but love is as breakable as inflammations, a hollow ricochet of discomfort, tinkling, nasty, searing, grubby, and malty. We tried to stage a low grade, sorta cheap pseudo Mother-mania hysteria event. She was going to demonstrate how in love she is by providing a much needed element. How can someone so electric lust after the faultiest harp? Right now, paper bags are plotting to get rather intimate with dental floss, and ferns that surround us may be genetically unstable. We are in a labyrinth surrounded by people, but we can’t be sure if any of them are real. Right now, pins are plotting to turn invisible which may lead to the result we hoped for: you can get drunk on it, and you can gaze upon it, and you can have a phobia about it. If you want to get completely confused by it, you’ll need a fire exit.

See you tomorrow!

Poetry as Boxes

I guess I need to be more careful with the words I choose for A to Z. Just yesterday I was talking about how acceptance is so important and how I want to be accepting of everything that comes this month, and this morning I wake up to no internet. My internet was out all day and just when I had given up on being able to get the prompts, write my poem, and post today (7:30 pm), my internet suddenly started working. So I have an abbreviated post today, but I’m here, so Hurray!!

P&W Collage #2 – Boxes

While reading Hanif Abdurraqib’s profile of Terrance Hayes, I came across this interesting sentence, “He is talking about boxes and how every box, like every poem, has multiple sides through which it can be entered. So B is for boxes. This made me think of a poetry exercise I did a few weeks ago in which we drew boxes in a document and then put our text into the different boxes. Hayes’s thoughts on boxes made me think of using a flattened cube to put my words on. Then I can put the words on the inside or the outside of the cube. Then, by turning the cube, I can enter the poem from different text.

The Prompts & Today’s Poem

NaPoWriMo: Write a platonic love poem

PAD Challenge: Today is two for Tuesday

  1. Write a happy poem, and/or…
  2. Write a sad poem.

The Light on the Top of the Box is Blinking Yellow

I’m not sure when our relationship
changed from a casual acquaintance
to a  platonic love to this
unhealthy dependence
so clear this morning
when you disappeared
I awoke without a tether to the world
plans shredded and flapping in the wind
all communications lost
with no way to report that I’m adrift
and no way to lodge a complaint
Only yesterday I swore
acceptance of all that was to come
and here it is the unexpected
but I’ve come undone
And worrying that you’re gone for good
sucked my day away
checking and double checking
that I couldn’t bring you back
ate up all the hours
But here you are, suddenly returned
and I’m so happy, all is forgiven,
but please don’t leave me again

Here’s Hoping I’ll See You Tomorrow!

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.

P&W Collage #1 by Maria L. Berg 2024

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.

The Mountain’s Hat by Maria L. Berg 2024

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!

What to Expect Here at Experience Writing this April

I apologize for being away so long, but I took a wonderful vacation to Puerto Vallarta, and returned with COVID-19. I’m only now beginning to feel like I have a functioning brain again, and that’s only for a short part of the day. When I’m feeling all better, I should have beautiful pictures, and writing from my trip to share which will most likely sneak into my poems and posts this NaPoWriMo.

I received this year’s poster from Academy of American poets in the mail the other day. I really like this year’s design. You can find out about their events and get their graphic on the poets.org page.

While I was trying to decide on my Blogging A to Z theme this year, I found myself thinking, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Every year, I hope to write better poems that speak to and inspire more readers. And each year I hope to write more than one poem a day, so I have poems to revise and submit when the month is over, but I find that one poem and a post are all I have in me each day. So how will this year be different? How can I change my Poetry Month experience to get to different results?

My first idea was to not participate in any of the blogging challenges this year, and only write unpublished drafts each day, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, I’m going to the other extreme: complete poetry immersion.

I decided to use this month as the first four weeks of the eight week Portable MFA Poetry program by Rita Gabis from the book, (assoc. link)The Portable MFA in Creative Writing from The New York Writers Workshop. I’ve started it in the past, but not made it past the second week. I’ll be discussing each week’s program and my progress. I hope you readers will keep me accountable.

2024 Blogging A to Z

Theme: Miscellaneous poetry topics inspired by reading physical Poets & Writers Magazine issues from July 2018 – February 2021.

I pulled out all of my physical copies of Poets & Writers. I have every issue from Autumn of 2018 through January/February of 2021. I plan to read every page of each issue cover to cover, one issue every two days, and share what I find most interesting in that issue for two letters of the alphabet.

For example: The first issue I’ll be reading is the July/ August 2018 issue with Terrance Hayes on the cover. Only looking at the cover, I see it’s the literary Agents issue, so A might be for Agents, or (assoc. link)American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes, or the African fabric print on his t-shirt because have some fabric with that exact print on it in my closet that I bought in West Africa. B might be for Jamel Brinkley because there is an interview with him inside. Who knows what will actually grab my attention and be what I want to write about once I read the entire issue.

I thought to further explore each magazine, I would cut them up and use them to make collages to illustrate my blog posts. Flipping through this first issue, it appears that my imagery will include a lot of faces, book covers, and words.

The Prompts

Each day I will post a poem that combines the daily prompts from NaPoWriMo and the Writer’s Digest PAD (Poem a Day) Challenge. And I may add the dVerse Poets Pub prompt on Monday, Tuesday, and/or Thursday.

This year to be more immersive, I’ve also found a podcast celebrating NaPoWriMo. Poetry Non-Stop will have daily prompts and poems shared by guest poets each day. So their prompts may also sneak into my daily poems.

Today’s Poem

There is an Early Bird prompt at NaPoWriMo, so I thought I’d get in the mood with a new poem.

Prompt: “Pick a word from the list below. Then write a poem titled either “A [your word]” or “The [your word]” in which you explore the meaning of the word, or some memory you have of it, as if you were writing an illustrative/alternative definition.”

An Ocean by Maria L. Berg March 2024

An Ocean

Through the searing sand
I raced to you
Even when you appeared calm
you pushed back
with an uninviting chill
that disappeared once
you rose over my chest
and reached my neck

After difficult introductions
we became playmates
inventing games, fun
for their hint of danger
Shells and bones, leftovers
from death, scattered
on the beach, betrayed
the life within your darkness
I gave you my body
and you lifted me as if weightless

All I wanted was to stay
immersed in you
forever, then I would know
pure joy, but with that thought
I also felt my muscles tire
and my guts rumble
and I let you push me
to the shore.

Other Plans for Poetry Immersion

Classes: I’m going to take my favorite free poetry class again. Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop with Douglas Kearney through CALARTS is available online through Coursera. And I’m also going to review the poetry courses on Masterclass: Joy Harjo, Billy Collins, and Amanda Gorman.

Videos: I found a list of interesting looking poetry TED talks. And there’s plenty of interesting results on Youtube when I searched poetry videos.

With these videos and the podcast, I have my vision and hearing full of poetry, but what about my other senses? How do I smell, taste, and touch poetry every day?
1. Each morning in my journal I will write what I am experiencing with my five senses in that moment: I see, I hear, I smell, I feel, I taste . . .
2. At every meal I will note about the flavor, smell, texture, colors, shapes, similes, metaphors, etc. in a notebook.
3. Every day I will select one small object to interact with and describe each day. I will attempt to pick objects with different textures each day to explore touch.

Throughout the month I will attempt to become more specific and more descriptive of all my senses.

I’ll share more about my poetry journey so far this year as it fits with my daily posts. I hope you’ll join me and share your thoughts. If you have any ideas for my poetry immersion in April, please leave them in the comments. I’m looking forward to sharing this poetry intensive with you.

The Narcissus in a New Way

Today’s prompt at dVerse felt like a continuation of my poem from Tuesday. How can I say more about those daffodils? But then I read the example poem: NARCISSUS AND ECHO by Fred Chappell, and heard myself say “How beautiful,” and thought, now I’m seeing in a different way.

Narcissus in Shade by Maria L. Berg 2024

Narcissus in Shade

Bloomed too early, that’s what y’all say
H’aint she heard they all been with her daddy

Not a bloomin’ to do that’ll set her apart
Might as well wilt with the breath of a shart

‘N wiltin’s good nuff if she’d look like she should
down in the bowin’ would do her some good

But she so stuck up with her face to the sun
Otta take her down before she can run

But all y’all should know she’s got grandaddy’s gun,
and she is her father’s most beloved son.

*I know I didn’t follow the rules exactly, but I want to thank Laura for the inspiration to push into my experience and use it on the page in ways I haven’t tried before to tell Narcissus’s story.




Defiant Youth

Today’s Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub is to write a poem on being “young and green.” It seems an appropriate prompt for my poem today: the sun came out and upon opening the curtains in my office, I was greeted by a camellia in full bloom in complete defiance of the snow that was on the ground this morning. It made me think of the impetuousness of youth.

Impetuous Youth by Maria L. Berg 2024

That made me think of the the early daffodils that bloomed last week. Mom had told me to put them in a vase before the freeze, believing they would die, but they also defied old man winter and posed brightly for me this afternoon.

Early Bloomers by Maria L. Berg 2024

Impetuous Blooming

I don’t remember a year
when spring was so eager
Narcissus and her little sister
stared down old man winter
and refused to go back to bed
wouldn’t bow their brilliant heads
Not used to being ignored
he threatened and he roared
positive he could make them cower
by covering them in icy showers
and somehow even stole my power
leaving me in freezing dark
confused and frightened for my part
but those impetuous youth stood strong
and invited their friend Camellia along
her delicate ruffles innocently mocked him
while her exhibitionism shocked him
and seeing all her sisters budding in the green
he slipped into the shadows not wanting to be seen


Collective Behavior of Lemmings

Yesterday’s Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub was to use the concept of leaping in a poem. I’ve been exploring collective motion and behaviors in my photography this last week, so this prompt made me think of lemmings. I started searching for photographs of lemmings leaping over a cliff and found this Disney documentary from 1958:

Inspired by this video, I cut silhouettes of leaping (falling) lemmings for my filter and took it into my mirrorworld.

A Split-Second Swerve into Frenzied Leaping

In a frenzied second
of frozen observation
I kneel helplessly
and feel more than see
the lamp leap from the shelf
the mug leap out of the way
causing its coffee to leap
like lemmings over a cliff
into the ocean of carpet
This Rube Goldberg
finally completed
I am released
and leap into action
grabbing towels
to sop up, gathering
soaked papers and slippers
to throw them in the sink
stripping off my shirt
to join them
wetting a washcloth
and adding soap
in an attempt to arrest the stain
now leaping into view
Then I leap to
the online meeting
I had had plenty of time
to get to before all this leaping
I feel like I’m covered in coffee
and sweat leaps from my pores

Lemmings Leaping by Maria L. Berg 2024