Reflections - Poem-a-Day

James Wright Still Life

I’ve done crazy things.

On April 5, when I read about the Write a Poem-a-Day Challenge sponsored by Writer's Digest, I considered attempting one of my craziest yet. I’m only a dabbling poet, but the project intrigued me. If I accepted, I would have to write two poems a day for four days to catch up. Could I write one poem a week, let alone thirty in a month?

When I told Spence, he didn’t stare at his computer and say, “That’s nice, dear.” He didn’t threaten to tell our children. He looked me in the eye and said, “Okay.” Maybe he was used to my whacky ideas or thought I would reconsider after writing the first poem.

Whatever, I filled stacks of scratch paper with potential lines.

Cornering Spence in the great room after he woke from a nap a few days later, I read him my first five poems.

He nodded.

“Well?” I wanted feedback.

“I like the first best. It sounds like a James Wright poem.”

His words pleased me more than winning the Nobel Prize in Literature would have. James Wright wrote my favorite poem—the second hangover poem, about a blue jay jumping up and down on a pine branch outside his window.

Day 1: Write an F-title poem.

    Feathers

The red hawk

Flew too low

Sat too still

Yet his feathers glistened

Too bad the ‘best” came first. No one, except me, would care if I made it through the month. Yet, I took inspiration from the advice Ketanji Brown Jackson gives youth, advice a Black woman once gave Ketanji when she doubted herself.

Persevere. I’m sure she had loftier goals in mind than setting pen to paper to play with words.

I beavered away with my pen ripping through paper as fast as beaver teeth chew into saplings. I didn’t stop until the stack had dammed the side of my desk and the flow of the pen had shaped what looked like a poem. I scooped up the top sheet and found Spence washing his hands. “Do you have time to listen?”

“Sure,” said the saint. But his answers in those early days didn’t feel heavenly. “It’s too repetitive. Try something different. Use deeper images like James Wright.”

Though I didn’t enjoy hearing his comments, he was right. The more pages I’d scribbled, the further I’d strayed from a coherent poem. I only aggravated my knuckles and reduced the topic to bland-as-cardboard drivel. In frustration, I put the poem away. The next morning, I switched to a fresh idea. Less mashed lines worked better. Lesson learned.

And I unlearned what Timons Esaias, a favorite Pennwriter mentor, had huffed and puffed at a poetry workshop. “You are not that important. Leave yourself out of the poem.”

Robert Lee Brewer’s prompts forced me to put myself into some poems.

Day 8: What “they” never tell (told) you.

         History

Because I was a girl

In junior high they told me

How to sew an apron

How to hand wash dishes 

How to boil vegetables.

Not content with girl’s work

I revved my husband’s drill

And pressed the revolving pad

Against his rusty truck.

The drill snatched my hair

And wound it tight.

Because girls were banned from shop

They never told me that.

If I was going to succeed, I needed a routine.

I studied Brewer’s prompt. Though he said to use it as a spark not a limit, the elementary school teacher in me followed his directions. I brainstormed the directive and chatted to Spence when we went for exercise walks. “I need ideas for a scary poem,” I told him one day.

“You could write about bears.” He gazed into the woods. “Maybe . . . She was bare, wearing nothing but hair.” I didn’t use his bear-bare suggestion.

Next in my routine, I selected a workable idea, jotted down lines to include, and slept on them. In the morning, I sat at the bedroom desk and scribbled the poem in my morning journal. Ande pranced over the pages searching for a paper ball—cats can be insistent—while robins, mourning doves, and phoebes outside the window sang their parts in the morning bird chorus. Cheer-up cheerily. Cooooo, cooooo. Phoebeeeee.

Ande on Journal

I revised, rewrote, and revised some more then dashed into the great room to interrupt Spence from reading his computer news.

He gave me his attention and offered quiet “okays.”

Gullible, I figured my routine worked.

Day 12: Two-for Tuesday. Write a counting poem and/or a not counting poem.

Not Counting the Trips

(inspired by James Wright)

In a hollow

High in a birch

Yellow-bellied babies

Scream twee twee twee.

Sapsucker parents fly to and fro, to and fro

Offering insects, sap, and fruit.

The perpetual motion parents might as well be filling a hollow tree

For their squawking babies’ hunger is as large as

The sky above the tiny open beaks.

 

His “okays” continued for a few more days before my illusion broke. Writing a poem a day meant none got polished. All could be improved. And Spence, who spent his entire life trying to make me happy, didn't want to hurt my feelings. He was my beta listener. I needed his feedback—especially on the “mad” poem.

It took a while to choose a topic because I wasn’t feeling angry. Daffodils bloomed. Spring sort of put in an appearance. The cats behaved. I finally chose machines because they made me dependent and then broke down—automobiles, cameras, can openers, computers, needle threaders, pencil sharpeners, printers, telephones, and washers. Annoying. The poem took hours and hours and still didn’t sound right.

Maybe Spence could point out what needed to be fixed.

He listened, said “okay,” and returned to his computer.

No help. “How could I improve it?”

He looked up. “Make it more specific. I didn’t get an image of which machine. It didn’t grab me. I didn’t care.”

He was right. I’d worked to make it apply to any machine and made it blander than oatmeal without toppings. Seething with frustration at myself, I scratched Mad in the middle of a page and let anger at myself rip. Five minutes later I read a second poem to Spence.

Day 17: Write a mad poem.

         When People Say

When people say “Just relax”

Sirens blare through my head

Volcanoes erupt from my toes

Screams shatter my teeth

Don’t tell me how to feel

When I’m seventy-three

He nodded again. “That works. Next time I’ll say, ‘Don’t relax.’”

“It’s just a poem. I had to write something.” I felt guilty. “For heaven's sake, my teeth never shattered. I don’t have volcanoes inside me. It’s just writing.”

He stroked his beard. “Don’t relax, dear. Worry about it.”

“Besides, you telling me to relax helps.” I giggled. “Sometimes.”

The rest of the day, however, he said, “You can sit and don’t relax. It would be fine.”

Spence hasn’t told me to “Just relax” again. With prodding—“Is there a better word I might use?” and “How could I make it better?”—he’s offered feedback again.

Three days later, I needed that feedback for my sanity. I’d read, “Write a six word poem.” The prompt was misleading. Brewer’s “six word'' poem had fifty-eight words. He listed six words and expected challenge-accepters to use at least three in their poems.

Monkeys rearranging those six words for a million years couldn’t produce a coherent thought.

Determined to write a poem in six words, I systematically chose sets of three words—more like a math problem than word exploration—to see if any made sense. I used the least worst before ditching all words on Brewer’s list and writing a poem with six words that wasn’t horrible. I read the poems to Spence. This time I didn’t need his feedback as much as I wanted comfort.

He gave it to me. “You can’t write a good poem if you have to follow rules.”

Day 20: Write a six word poem.

Use at least three of the following six words

or go for extra credit and use all six.

 1. Content 2. Double 3. Guide 4. Meet 5. Pump 6. Suit.

Success

Employee meetings

Pumped by

Double Coffee

             Six Word Poem

Tense Cats

Surveil

The scampering

Chipmunk

I wish I could say I write poems with ease now. I don’t. I open prompts with hopeful expectation, then shut the laptop lid wondering how Brewer expects anyone to write about that. I still find myself chasing the poem and badgering it into shape rather than letting it gracefully form itself. Yet, I’ve assembled verses. I’ve preserved. I’ve finished.

JW Prompt: Write a celebrating-the-end limerick.

Celebrating

This April a challenge I’ve run

Creating new poems all in fun

They gave me some flack

I wrestled them back

It’s May and I'm finally done.

River Willows