Election Day Redux: State of the Union

Re-posting this poem from April 2013 (but with the edits I later made for Journalism) for Election Day. The original post can be found here. With rodomontade nonpareil, the esteemed Senator Dunderhead clove to the bilious position he'd espoused during a particularly ego-fuelled rant in the aftermath of the latest crisis. That the elusive logic of his twice-baked [...]

National Poetry Writing Month: Day #30 (April 30, 2013)

Today's prompt: "Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite." For this particular exercise, I chose to work with "Nagarkot", a poem by David Sylvian, from his book Trophies: The Lyrics of David Sylvian (1988, Opium (Arts)). [...]

National Poetry Writing Month: Day #29 (April 29, 2013)

Today's prompt is to write a poem using at least five words from other languages. I spent five years living in Tokyo after college, so I decided to just try writing something in Japanese. 僕の言葉 誤解の原因 君の逃げ出した理由 僕の孤独の始まり 未練を隠して闇に消える でも、君の想い出を胸に秘める Here's a rough translation: My words The cause of the misunderstanding The reason you left [...]



National Poetry Writing Month: Day #27 (April 27, 2013)

Today's prompt:  Think of a common proverb or phrase — something like “All that glitters is not gold,” or “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Then plug the first three words of the phrase into a search engine. Skim through the first few pages of results, collecting (rather like a poetic magpie) words and [...]

National Poetry Writing Month: Day #25 (April 25, 2013)

Today's prompt is to write a ballad. I can do that… On the Eve of Our Divorce Don't mention it again, my dear; it really wasn't much. In all this time, what we've held dear was just too hard to touch. We couldn't have been more surprised the day things fell apart. But, still, there [...]

National Poetry Writing Month: Day #24 (24 April 2013)

I hate today's prompt: use anagrams from my name. The suggested anagram generator came up with a bunch of crap, half of which didn't resemble actual words (the other half seemed to rely inordinately upon the word "jinn"). So, I winged it. I hate the results—but there it is… Revoke Jane's con in me an' [...]

National Poetry Writing Month: Day #23 (23 April 2013)

Today's writing prompt: triolets. Eight lines; iambic tetrameter; lines 1, 4, and 7 the same; lines 2 and 8 the same; ABaAabAB rhyme scheme. Not sure how closely I hewed to the particulars of the form, but I gave it a shot—several shots, actually. (The second one starts with a line from a poem by Emily Dickinson.) [...]

National Poetry Writing Month: Day 22 (April 22, 2013)

Ignoring today's prompt; writing a pastoral poem doesn't interest me. The shadow of the chair in the morning sun, like a lion about to strike. The warmth and the distraction remind me I have things to do. Sounds come in from off the streets outside; the roar of the traffic ebbs and flows. The skies [...]

National Poetry Writing Month: Day #21 (21 April 2013)

Ignored today's prompt, which involved "re-writing" a poem called "Lines for the Fortune Cookies". Not so interested in that. Instead, I leave you with a brief impression from a function I attended last night that apparently did not get going until well after I'd left and turned in for the night… The music seemed to [...]