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Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people’s work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?
Day 5 Prompt
This prompt challenges you to find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem. If I used Roethke’s poem as my model, for example, the first line would start with “I,” the second line with “W,” and the third line with “A.” And I would try to make all my lines neither super-short nor overlong, but have about ten syllables. I would also have my poem take the form of four, seven-line stanzas. I have found this prompt particularly inspiring when I use a base poem that mixes long and short lines, or stanzas of different lengths. Any poem will do as a jumping-off point, but if you’re having trouble finding one, perhaps you might consider Mary Szybist’s “We Think We Do Not Have Medieval Eyes” or for something shorter, Natalie Shapero’s “Pennsylvania.”
The Poem I used was found in Poetry Magazine Feb 2021 issue. It was by Stella Wong “The Hindenburg Mystery”. I randomly chose one of the magazines I hadn’t read yet them thumbed through the magazine three times and stopped on this poem. I left it up to the universe and the universe always provides what we need when we need it.
Day 5 Poem
The Father I Mean To Be
My example provided me with a photo negative
Because I used to think he didn’t know better
And does this excuse his example
Benefactor of his own abuses
Any time I want to know what not to do
Accessing the memories
Instant recollection provides the answer
Beatings and badgering for bad behavior
Are not what I want to pass on
Accepting my faults and my lack of knowledge
Instituting controls on my anger
Never punish while upset
My offspring will have their own guideposts
Positive exposures
Will lead them to raise their own
Healthier than I have raised them
Beautiful memories is what I wish upon them
From this battered soul
Heaven truly is
A smile on their lips that lasts past my lifetime
Father, why have I had to remove you
Parenting is not a contact sport
Wishing for the perfect family
Always leaves me shivering on the floor
And the day I stopped trying to
Appease you, appeal to you
& started this journey alone, with my family
That is when I broke the cycle
Truly began loving my family
In ways that maybe you wished you could
It would have been great if you were a strong man to have shown the way
Reaching Out
To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.
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