A Bouquet of Violets for You and You and You too!

Photo by K.Iuppa, First Violets of Spring.

Due to stacks of papers and end of the semester events, I''ve neglected this blog.  I have been writing every day, trying to keep some balance in these Wild Days, Wild Nights.  But, I had promised poetry prompts.  What to do, what to do?  I'll post a few more today.

This week is the last week of the semester at St. John Fisher College, then too quickly finals week, rolling into grades due, and the procession of graduates.

What I have accomplished this weekend:
I have graded three classes' papers and journals (three mountains scaled!)  These will be handed back on Monday. 

I  helped hang the upcoming Art Exhibit at St. John Fisher.  Our opening reception is 4/23, 2013, 3-5p.m.
We will also be showcasing some of our campus musicians/singers and in celebration of National Poetry Month, there will be an open mic.   We have some very strong creative writers at St. John Fisher and it's been an absolute pleasure watching their work  morph over the semester. So if any of my local readers would like to come and read a poem or sing a song, or just eat a cookie and have a glass of lemonade and admire the watercolors and drawing Ireland artwork, please do come join us.  We're going to have a good time!

The weather has been bonkers.  Warm one day, just enough to encourage the grass to green and flowering trees to bud and daffodils to bloom, then pelting raining, blowing sideways and cold, cold wind and confetti snowflakes.

The week had us all thoughtful about what happened in Boston. All of us watching, watching the pieces of the narrative come together. Some of us amazed by the speed of technology.  How it's able to uncover every action and interaction. I hope that we will find out what  was motivating these young men and who was backing their enterprise.  I think there is a lot to this story.  I think the day of the attack is a metaphor. Even though the oldest brother claimed  that he didn't understand Americans, I think he understood metaphor. There is an "under-telling" to these events, and I'm hoping the news will do what news is suppose to do-- investigate & report.  Everyone needs to know exactly what happened.


 

Double Yolk Morning: 2 Prompts

Double Yolk Morning:

Write a poem that incorporates a city or town in the state you grew up

in, but make it a city you've never been to before.

Include a reference to either religious iconography or a national

monument.

Finally, use your favorite brand name laundry detergent.

******

Write a poem using compound words and flip the words.

Such as lipstick, pigtail, icebox would flip to sticklip, tailpig, boxice.

Pick a theme, situation  and select a series of compound words that you 

will flip to create the poem.

The word play  is fun and strangely  makes sense.

 

 

 

April 2nd. Day Two of Poetry Month. Wild Weather.

Dear All,

Yesterday's weather was so wild.  The air so cold and windy.  Two-fisted.  It could steal your breath away.

Are you  thinking about writing another poem?   Here's an impromptu prompt:

Exercise: Day 2

Write a list of your first experiences, from riding a bike to eating a stuffed olive.  Write the list quickly, without
censorship.  Then pick the first that has the story beneath its story.  How does that first influence you now.
Comfortable or uncomfortable?  A bit of both.   What about now?  What are your current firsts?

Then, match this with lasts.   Make the last list. (repeat the directions above).

Write the poem using both firsts and lasts or individual poem(s) of either firsts or lasts.

Ready, set, go~


Of course, I'm feeling smug.  Have a fistful of new poems.  Decided to do the running start on this challenge and was feeling in the zone yesterday. (Must have been the weather).  We'll see if I make the full commitment.   Perhaps with my great luck, I will, because I have begun a poetry project with a colleague and friend.  This all came out of the blue and, as my friend says, I have myself to blame.





 

It's snowing poems! Hallelujah! National Poetry Month 2013

Thirty Days of Poetry!  Hard to believe that April is here and another poetry month begins. Last night, early morning April 1st, a thunderstorm commenced.  Quite a sound and light show and this morning it snows.

Once again, I will make the commitment to write a poem a day.  Once again, we'll see how far I get in such plans.

Here's an exercise:

I have been thinking about how ever action in writing is intentional action; even though in daily living, action is mostly random.  The door creaks.  The phone rings.  The fork slips off the plate.

Write a poem that is about "action."  To begin, write down six actions.  Then write down six things you did yesterday.  Followed by six things you want to do sooner or later.  This may be a lyric, lyric-narrative, or narrative poem.

Ready, set, go~


Have been thinking about the upcoming planting season.  This month the swallows and hummingbirds return.
In a month and a bit, the Spring semester will be over.  In a week, I will be doing several readings.
My prose chapbook Between Worlds will be released this month.  With every stack of papers corrected, there is another stack.   I'm climbing a paper mountain.  Soon, I will stick a flag in it.

Remember to keep a poem in your pocket.