Posts Tagged ‘NaPo Guys’
Let us go back in the Wayback Machine, for exactly one week:
So, somewhat against my best judgement (that is, things can pall if they become too routine — but then one can always quit early and who else will know?) I accepted a dare to myself and “joined” NaPoWriMo, the write-a-poem-from-a-daily-prompt challenge for National Poetry Month, a.k.a. April. But the NaPo guys had to know better for April 8, at least for a broad swath of states from Texas to Maine, where there was to be a total solar eclipse.
Thus, for April 8, a prompting for poems of doomed love, of the breakup of couples, on a day when the sun and moon . . . well, of a union that did not last long. Did one sense a subject?
And so for today, as said a week later, the subject matter is stamp collecting or, rather, unusual stamps. Or, well let’s let the NaPo guys say it themselves: Take a look at @StampsBot, and become inspired by the wide, wonderful, and sometimes wacky world of postage stamps. For example, while it certainly makes sense that China would issue a stamp featuring a panda, it’s less clear to us why the Isle of Man should feel the need to honor 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in stamp form. From Romanian mushrooms to Sudanese weavers to the Marshall Islands getting far too excited over personal computing, stamps are a quasi-lyrical, quasi-bizarre look into what different cultures (or at least their postal authorities) hold dear.
The Isle of Man? The Manx? Does one once more sense something obvious (hint: it’s not cats with no tails, though they can be included)? So:
THE ISLE OF MAN
(” it’s less clear to us why the Isle of Man should feel the need to honor 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in stamp form” — NaPoWriMo prompt. 4-15-24)
The Isle of Man honors
2001, the Space Odyssey film,
but is that, then, so odd?
Is not the home of us all, the Earth,
an island of man;
and is not our collective journey
around the sun,
and with that star to who knows where,
an odyssey that would top any other
our minds can conceive?
So, somewhat against my best judgement (that is, things can pall if they become too routine — but then one can always quit early and who else will know?) I accepted a dare to myself and “joined” NaPoWriMo, the write-a-poem-from-a-daily-prompt challenge for National Poetry Month, a.k.a. April. But the NaPo guys had to know better for April 8, at least for a broad swath of states from Texas to Maine, where there was to be a total solar eclipse.
Didn’t they?
You see, Indianapolis — and fifty or so miles south, right here in Bloomington — was smack in the center of the eclipse path. For my own case, I watched it in Dunn Meadow, an Indiana University gathering place, absorbing the wonder of the crowd — here largely composed of cheering students as total darkness approached, then (with a “diamond ring” flash with the first light’s reappearance between two lunar mountains) was re-dispelled, though I must confess with a certain jadedness myself, having observed a similar total solar eclipse in Hopkinsville, KY in 2017 (cf. August 22 2017). But even for me still a thrill, and one well worth enjoying again.
Whereas, for mere poem-writing . . . well, I’ll confess too that I first-drafted this beforehand, this morning, but as I say they still should have known better. You see, this was today’s prompt, for April 8: “a poem that centers around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met – whether due to time, space, age, the differences in their nature, or for any other reason.”
Thus:
ECLIPSE
It was fated to fail,
this joining of sun and moon:
he was hot, she colder —
icy, in fact, when
their relationship started,
his glory hidden
while she had her way —
but only for minutes.
He came to his senses,
his brilliance intact
at their ultimate breakup,
complete,
or at least for the next few
years.
jamesdorrwriter 