April experiment

It is National Poetry Month once again. I usually do not take part in poetry month writing challenges, but I thought this year I might try something out of my comfort zone.

My plan: post a poem draft a day for this month. I have never blogged daily before, and I have never tried to compose a poem a day as Luisa Igloria has been doing on the via negativa blog for, I think, more than three years!!

This concept–er, this practice–will be super-challenging for me and scary on several levels, mostly on the level of posting unrevised, often unfinished or awkward material publicly. But I have just about 3,000 followers and only a minuscule percentage of them read my blog regularly, so I have to think of this as reading to a small room.

I can deal with that. At least–I think I can.

We’ll have to see how the month goes. Meanwhile, welcome to my month-long experiment in immediacy.

~

Tom’s Green Field

In your landscape
light exists as waves, not particles

active, roiling
over the placid horizontal planes: sky, treeline,

cropland in wind.
For there must be currents of air, speedy thrill

storm can assume
chopping at clouds miles distant, changing hue

illuminating
the dense grove’s surface so it shines

and no rain’s fallen
and perhaps no rain will dampen the field today–

only luminescence
pigment trapped in layers of oil, bouncing

cobalt, cadmium
iron oxide through your swirling glaze

that gazed once
on energy in patterns, an hour’s moment, waving green.

~

agriculture clouds countryside crop

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

10 comments on “April experiment

  1. Lou Faber says:

    If anyone can do it, Ann, you certainly will, and at a level of which we will all be silently jealous.

    Like

  2. Ren Powell says:

    I love that you are doing this.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. […] days, three poems, one tenth of National Poetry Month having passed; I can do this, right? NaPoWriMo has a site that includes daily poetry prompts, if you happen to be interested. It […]

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  4. […] And hence, another draft for my poem-a-day challenge. […]

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  5. […] and just get over their weakness and rough spots and recall that the drafting aspect is part of my April experiment–pushing the envelope, as the saying goes, and allowing the imperfections to go public. Then […]

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  6. […] My poem for Day 9 seems to evoke Han Dynasty style poetry. […]

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  7. […] marks the halfway point in my challenge to myself to write a poem a day for National Poetry Month. Is it getting easier yet? […]

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  8. […] Last April, I challenged myself to write a poem a day and posted the drafts on this blog. That turned out to be a useful experience, but I feel no need to repeat it. This year, I want to post about some new(ish) books of poetry. Not critiques or book reviews, just what the poems evoke for this particular reader. […]

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