Luanne Castle: Poetry and Other Words (and cats!)

Tag Archives: Poets.org

by Luanne | April 16, 2018 · 5:20 am

Reporting in at Half Time #NAPOWRIMO

I guess there is no half time, no break, just keep going through the whole 30 days without drawing a deep breath. Shallow rapid breathing. I’ve written 15 poems in 15 days (actually in 16 days because I started a day early, but somehow I lost a day–or maybe lost a poem–and am now where I am supposed to be: 15 for 15). Can’t write long here as I have another to write today!

This month has been much sloppier than when I did the Tupelo 30/30. I am happy just to get a crummy rough draft done and move on to the rest of my day. I don’t have time to take a break and revise, not to mention that daily blog posting I did in September 2015!

So I don’t really know what I will end up with. More than zero, I guess. Some days have been awful. I had to travel to California for work last week, so there were 2.5 days of hours and hours of travel (not just the getting there and back, but the travel within California for work). Do you know how hard it is to find that poetry zone in my head when the gardener is playing oldies (loud) and chomping gum (even louder)? He also keeps up a running commentary on every driver, every traffic jam, every building site, in short, whatever passes by on the road. I can only tell him to shut up so much as he is the one who is driving in the hideous traffic. I can no longer tolerate the sound of the traffic whooshing around me either. It’s gotten so bad that it permeates my innards all way to the tips of my soul.

Still, I came up with something. One day I was “blessed” with seeing two different birds of prey at different points in the trip, each carrying its squirming meal. That was a poetic coincidence. One morning I woke up dreaming about poetry.

I’m getting tired pushing myself this hard to crank out the poems, but in two weeks it will end, and I can go back to being regular-tired instead of super-tired.

Thought I’d mention that I’ve mainly been using the NaPoWriMo.net prompts. And that anthology I am creating over at poets.org? I am still working on it, but am pretty frustrated because a lot of my favorite poems are not on their site and you have to use the poems on their site. They don’t have some of the best poems of the poets writing past 1970.

Have you written daily poems? Any poems? Prose? Blog posts? Writing for work?

If you have, go pet a cat or dog as a reward. That’s what I plan to do!

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Filed under #amwriting, #AmWriting, #writerlife, #writerslife, National Poetry Month, Poetry, Writing, writing prompt, Writing prompt

Tagged as #amwriting, #NaPoWriMo, napowrimo.net, National Poetry Month, Poem, Poetry, Poets.org, Writing

by Luanne | April 2, 2013 · 5:20 am

A Sample from National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month
by Elaine Equi

When a poem speaks by itself, it has a spark and can be considered part of a divine conversation. Sometimes the poem weaves like a basket around two loaves of yellow bread. "Break off a piece of this April with its raisin nipples," it says. "And chew them slowly under your pillow. You belong in bed with me." On the other hand, when a poem speaks in the voice of a celebrity it is called television or a movie. "There is nothing to see," say Robert De Niro, though his poem bleeds all along the edges like a puddle crudely outlined with yellow tape at the crime scene of spring. "It is an old poem," he adds."And besides, I was very young when I made it."