National Poetry Month
First, kick off April Fool’s Day and National Poetry Month with the killer song above by Andrew Bird and Martin Dosh, “Simple X.” I’m serious: this tune”ll make you feel good.
Next, note that you can actively participate in the forging of new poems with a whole lotta other poets who participate in “NaPoWriMo” (National Poetry Writing Month). Read Write Poem provides a ton of prompts for daily ventures; Bloof Books is hosting a poem a day podcast for the sake of it all.
Also, Charles Bernstein’s essay, “Against National Poetry Month and Such,” is still available online via Chicago U Press. Take a gander.
I won’t NaPoWriMo nor will I follow the prompts; the restrictions might undo me. Instead, I’ll write a poem every other day and become only half undone. How’s that?
Here’s my poem for two days:
War Rhetoric from the Syrian Desert
Talk to the guns, so does not
say the French focus on no props, all character.
Your acting chops get
tested on this field, this night, where bullets speak
Their vows deep into the very wind
that envelopes your body, whistles to bring
A thousand metallic glacial deaths
at a speed no flesh nor eye nor sky nor vest
Can persuade your living seconds against.
By this red moon, you own one voice
That sweet-talks the world. All breath, to them,
you are nothing but the gun and its threat.
–Amy King
~~~
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AMY KING View All →
Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She co-edited with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edits the anthology series, Bettering American Poetry, and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
Great music! Thanks!
I’m doing the poems, my eighth year.