Many of you may know that this month is NaPoWriMo month, National Poetry Writing Month. I was reminded of it this is very day, when I went to read the blog post of someone who started following me today. Thank you for joining me, Brenda! You can find Brenda and her NaPoWriMo contribution for today, The Dragon and the Fairies, just click the link.
Some of you may have seen some of my poetry in my past blog entries. Although I haven’t written any poetry in I don’t know how long. I miss it. I miss it a lot.
I was first introduced to writing poetry in middle school. I was a TAG student. For those of you who do not know what that is, TAG stands for Talented and Gifted…not something I saw myself as then.
Anyway, we had a term on poetry. My least favorite teacher, who normally taught social studies, wound up teaching us to write poetry for that term. We had to create a book of our own original poetry.
My book had two wooden covers with the pages of poetry bound in between them with yarn, I believe. I had hand drawn a unicorn or something like that on the cover of the book I don’t remember any of the poems and I no longer have the book. However I can see what the book look like in my mind’s eye. I didn’t think it was that good. And I never really thought of it again.
Many years later I found poetry again as part of my college career. I took an intro to poetry class and that’s when I fell in love with it. I loved the different forms of poetry how it could be visually artistic as well as the beautiful imagery created by the words themselves.
One author whose work spoke to me and which I resonated with on a fundamental level was Sylvia Plath. This is the first poem of hers I remember reading:
I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house.
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
I immediately knew what these metaphors represented. If you don’t know or if you would like a brief analysis of the poem, please click the link in the title.
Beauteous fractalsAbove and beyond the call
Winter’s final wail
The first prompt from the national poetry writing month website for this April, was to write about a piece of art. Now, I don’t have access to a whole lot of art. I’m not a fan of looking at famous art online. I don’t believe it gives it justice. This image is an original painting on a 4×6 canvas by a friend of mine. She did this basically uncommissioned. She’s an amazing artist. Not only did she do this on commission, she did five others at the same time. The most amazing thing about this piece of artwork is that she created it while her home had been without electricity for a week. You can see some of her other art at
The reason it had been without electricity for a week was the same reason why I actually commissioned the piece from her. The electricity was out due to a major snowstorm in Portland that took place in February. I like to call it the Valentine’s Day Snowpocalypse of 2021.
I had to work that weekend. I was on foot and having to take public transportation. And it snowed and iced over enough that the buses stopped running as did the trains. Since I am an essential worker, I had to be at work regardless of the weather. the only way I got there and back home for a couple of days was due to my supervisor and his four wheel drive vehicle. After that weekend I wanted to do something special to think my supervisor and to commemorate the events we had all lived through. That’s why I asked her to do a piece of art.
Have patience to see
Human In Recovery 