Tuesday, April 01, 2008

So this is the challenge

Post a poem a day on your blog for thirty days (even if it is crap) not to publish or work on, or include in your manuscript, or add to a fellowship app or turn in, or give to a lover, or seduce. Write a poem a day, for thirty days just for the beast of poetry.

Day 1

This is a poem without animals,
nothing braes, bothers or finds its way through the grass.
This is a poem absent of reproduction:
the fuck, the sway, tilt of the hip.
This is a poem drained, left on its side,
white grass under stone, deformed.
This is the sprout and the seed, the cock and the void.
This is the thread sewn into our eyes, here is the needle
This is the point, silver and clean, absent of sacrifice.

16 comments:

Radish King said...

Yes, that's what I'm writing. Essential crap. Every day. It's kind of like flying.
xox

Molly said...

Mmm, I will try too, just not on the blog. I will, however, link to a poem a day that I find true on the internet.

early hours of sky said...

Yes, yes, yes!!!

I am going to re-open my writing so you don't have to read a poem a day unless you want.

There's only so much suffering I should afflict on the world without consent but it is important for me to post it. It feels more real that way.

early hours of sky said...

re-open writing blog

hell, i wish I could re-open my writing;)

tom said...

i've been trying the poem a day or at least writing each day - so today - day two - nothing

friday my daughter will do her poetry reading for her MFA at Mankato - then off to Korea and perhaps Japan this summer -

LKD said...

T, over on Peter's poem, you said Carolyn has the poets post their poems on the world. That made me smile. You meant wall, yes?

Radish, flying is like crap?

Last time I flew, it was to Las Vegas, and I looked down at one point and the world looked like a giant Georgia O'Keeffe painting.

T, I was going to the 30 days 30 poems thing, but the first poem I wrote was...

like flying.

(grin)

So, I flew the whole challenge right on into the deep black sea.

LKD said...

Sigh.

Over on Peter's BLOG.

World/wall.

Blog/poem.

Crap/flying.

In the end, it's all so interchangeable.

Radish King said...

Flying is heaven. Writing essential crap is how we get to the good stuff. I think poem-a-day is one way to get past essential crap which I need to do. I'm hiding my essential crap on a blog no one can find. I'd rather be flying.
r

LoveandSalt said...

I'm putting mine up on Intoxication Made Easy, my semi-defunct writing blog.

LKD said...

You mean if I write enough crap, I'll eventually write something that's not crap?

I dunno.

I wrote such an utter piece of shit for my first poem that I buried it in a hole and said goodbye napowrimo.

I agree that flying is heaven. Scary heaven. I'm not afraid of flying...but I experience real, visceral fear as the plane begins to speed up and roar down the runway. I guess deep down inside I don't trust that the plane is really going to fly.

But once I'm up there? Heaven.

Radish King said...

You mean if I write enough crap, I'll eventually write something that's not crap?

Exactly.

In the music biz we call this practice. It's not different with poetry. All art is art.

LKD said...

I used to play the piano.

I know all about practice.

I write and write and write though.

Never seems to elevate my poems out of crapdom.

Hope, she springs eternal though.

Maybe that's why I write every day.

I keep hoping for...

I just keep hoping, I guess.

early hours of sky said...

Laurel a great deal of your poems are well beyond crap. That is a fact.

You need to send them off into the world more and let them go. If they stay too close to home they grow extra legs;)

I did mean wall but the world sounds oh so much nicer.

LKD said...

I agree.

About world sounding better than wall.

Post your poems upon the world.

All of my poems have grown extra legs and run away.

I feel so poemless right now.

Radish King said...

t, where is your writing blog?
r

early hours of sky said...

http://teballardwrites.blogspot.com/