National Poetry Month

Yes, April is National Poetry Month, and there are many ways to celebrate poetry this month. I am going to attempt to make all my Facebook status reports and Tweets either rhyme or be quotes from or about poems. The boys and I are studying Emily Dickinson's poems this month; I read them a short biography this morning and we'll read a poem or two a day over the course of the month.

In addition, the website poets.org is hosting a NaPoWriMo -- National Poetry Writing Month. We're supposed to write and post a poem a day for the entire month. I will try it -- no telling if any of it will rise above the level of complete and utter crap, but it may spark some better work later on. What I will be posting here will be in rough draft form only, so please don't judge my writing purely on the quality of the verse I'll be putting up here. Here's a link to poets.org's poetry prompts that may help you if you're struggling for ideas: Prompts.

Here's a poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago at our church's women's retreat; I had the chance to share it there with the speaker who asked me to read it to the group. The speaker had asked us to take a cheap taco shop napkin, write our hopes and dreams on it, and put it in an urn that represented ashes. Then in its place we were to take a gorgeous scarf (my lovely purple and blue one is from Turkey, Peggy tells me) as a symbol of how God would take our hopes and dreams and guve us His plan that is beyond our wildest expectations. The poem is still quite rough, but I think it has promise:

Beauty from Ashes

Crumpled in my fist --
longings, needs, desires
that I cling to in desperation,
even fear --
I place them into the flowered urn --
now rendered as ashes --
Dry in my mouth and
dry in my soul.

All that is dreamed of, unfulfilled,
that I have harbored
far too long
I offer with trepidation,
somehow trusting that
goodness and peace
will emerge.

Violet melds into sapphire,
fragile against my cheek and
filmy to my touch.
Faith is burgeoning,
thrusting forth roots, shoots,
beginning its slow work of
bringing beauty from the ashes.

(c)2009 Susanne Barrett

So what are your plans for National Poetry Month? Yes, it's only been around since 1996, but that's no reason NOT to celebrate the written word in poetic form. Any reason is a good excuse to read and write poetry. My poetry notebook is at hand and will be scribbled in a great deal this month -- I hope.