NaPoWriMo 2024 ~ Day 8

Read the full post here.

Today, we have two featured participants: (1) Behind Door Number 3 and Orangepeel, where you’ll find very different, but compelling, takes on Day 7’s postcard prompt.

Featured resource is this animated video of a talk given by the poet Jane Hirshfield on the art of the metaphor.

Prompt

… takes its inspiration from Laura Foley’s poem “Year End.” Today, we challenge you to write a poem that centers around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met – whether due to time, space, age, the differences in their nature, or for any other reason.

Happy writing!

The first few years I did NaPo, I was flagging at this point – just over 1 week in. Currently I feel like a well trained athlete, (I’m not) – still powering up to the big push. It isn’t always a feeling of ease but the challenge/bite is fun and I’m invested. I know what magic this process can unearth – and always preferred (and was the Top 10/ 120+) for Long Distance running!

I knew one of the featured websites Orangepeel from previous NaPoWriMo, it was good to revisit.

I read Postcard, unwritten on Behind Door Number 3 first. These lines were striking.

The sound of his laughter,
as slick as watermelon seeds,

                        ... and 
the posture of all the stories
you would have told.

I loved the extended description of feeling and object. It was a very cinematic read. It was divine/ beautiful/ I dived to a deep place and was both soothed and unsettled by this postcard poem.

Great work! I was so enthralled by this poem, I read around the blog/website other NaPo ’24 poems.

Letting Go Day 6 completely bowled me with its power.

On the About page I discover:

It is my aim to write, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said in Self-Reliance, “…in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow… in hard words again, though it contradict every thing [I say] today.”

I certainly agree the ‘hard as cannonballs’ is being achieved by some of these NaPo poems.

I am somewhat familiar with Bruce Niedt’s work, especially around April). I was delighted to see this part of the post:

Also, the “postcard” prompt is a familiar one: It’s been a favorite of Peter Murphy’s Winter Poetry and Prose Getaway writer’s conference in New Jersey every January.

….. One of my most successful poems was written as a result of that prompt several years ago. It was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by U.S. 1 Worksheets and won second place in an annual poetry contest sponsored by Robert Lee Brewer, poetry editor of Writer’s Digest.

What a poem Postcard to the Ex is. Go and read today’s featured poem(s) and scroll all the way to the bottom of the post. WOW! Congratulations on the accolades, Bruce!

Featured Resource

I love Jane Hirshfield’s work, some of it has featured already in poetry resources from Week 1 of NaPoWriMo. I also love, (and create) animation, and I love a Ted Ex/ Ted Ed video and I also LOVE a metaphor. So, WIN, WIN, WIN!

Today’s prompt intrigued me. I don’t know the work of Laura Foley. I had heard of Verse Daily. I read Year End (the poem which inspired today’s prompt), and looked up the collection.

Perhaps I’ll climb the icy hill,
trudge through woods and slippery snow,
to place him as close as I can to sky,

his proboscis dipped in honey water,

Verse Daily®

Today, we challenge you to write a poem that centers around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met –

Thinking cap on. First – find 2 things…

I revisited Day 5 and my random collection of things. I gathered 4 combinations and dismissed half of them instantly. I then chose the one to run with and started searching for facts and information.

Maybe it is the acting training, character role – just like a novelist there is a lot of unseen, unused background gathered before entering a poem if you use this method. Sometimes I look at the working document and think what was the point of all that? But on the other hand, it has helped backtrack factual checks during editing and compiling collections. Nothing is wasted. It all goes in somewhere and it may well pop out in a different (non-NaPo) poem in the future.

Some striking things about my poem: my own love story (Mr. G) snuck in there in part, I never expected romance between a car air freshener and broccoli… it was fun to write. My first version was mainly one sided so I worked on building up the other part and then adding more description to reveal the subject/object a bit more to the reader.