NaPoWriMo c’est fin! I hope you had fun — I did, but I am also glad to be able to rest on my laurels a bit. Laurels are very comfy!

Before we say goodbye, please check out Jennifer L. Knox’s picks for the final day of NaPoWriMo over at the Best American Poetry blog.

I will keep the participants’ list, etc. all up probably through the end of May, and then I will put the site back into hibernation until next year. But fear not, NaPoWriMo will ride again!

Well, here we are, folks. It’s the very last day of NaPoWriMo 2012. Thanks to all of you for joining me this year — even if you didn’t get thirty poems out of it, I hope this project got you jump-started in your writing, introduced you to a few new poets and/or forms, and helped to make your April more poetical than usual!

Our featured blog for today is Hannah VanderHart’s 30 poems/30 days. I particularly like her surrealist prose poems, but her work in general exhibits a great facility for twists and turns of diction and expression.

And now, the final prompt. Artist and writer Joe Brainard is probably best remembered for his 1970 poem/memoir I Remember. The book consists of multiple statements beginning with the phrase “I remember,” including:

I remember my first erections. I thought I had some terrible disease or something.

I remember when I thought that if you did anything bad, policemen would put you in jail.

Today’s prompt asks you to write a poem incorporating at least three “I remember” statements. This invocation of memory seems a fitting way to end our month together.

Good luck, and happy writing!

Happy Sunday, NaPoWriMoers. Just one day to go! I will miss seeing all of your poems, but there’s always next year!

Our featured blog for the day is Peter Roberts’ Masonry Design. This is Peter’s second year of participating in NaPoWriMo — and of writing only poems about masonry!

Today’s prompt is to write either a clerihew or a double dactyl. These are brief, usually satirical poems. The clerihew is a four-line biographical poem, with an ABAB (whoops, make that AABB — sorry!) rhyme scheme and no regular meter. Here is an example:

Sir Humphry Davy
Was not fond of gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Double-dactyls are a bit longer and harder, with an extremely rigid rhyme/meter. A double dactyl consists of two four-line stanzas. The fourth lines of each stanza rhyme. But the meter is where it gets complicated: The first through third lines of each stanza must be six syllables, in the form of double dactyls (Stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables). The fourth line of each stanza is only four syllables long, with no particular meter requirements.

Finally, the first line of the first stanza is usually “Higgledy-piggledy” or some other repeating non-sense, like “Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake.” Note that both “higgledy-piggledy” and “pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake” are in the double dactyl form! Here’s one I wrote last year:

Higgledy-piggledy,
One Oliver Perry
Drove Brits from Lake Erie
With tactical ease.

Pressed to explain his great
nautical victory, he
laid all the blame on a
following breeze.

If you’re going to be really strict, one of the lines should consist of a single, six-syllable, double-dactyllic word (like “idiosyncrasy”). I didn’t quite manage that (and my meter’s a bit off), but you might!

Happy writing!

Hello, everyone! We really are in the home stretch now — just three days, and three poems left.

The latest installment of Jennifer L. Knox’s NaPoem picks can be found here.

Our own featured blog for the day is Sarah Burygoyn’s s.s.e.b.. I’m very surprised and gratified at how many of you decided to try the lipogram/beautiful in-law/outlaw challenge, and Sarah’s “mountain coyote” lipogram is a beaut!

And now, the prompt! In 1958, Gaston Bachelard published The Poetics of Space. In some ways, it was a book about architecture. But Bachelard’s book wasn’t about angles and sight lines and how to make sure your roof stays on straight. It was about the experience of spaces, their psychological and perceptive implications. The high vaulted ceilings of the cathedral, the low, cozy beamed roof of the cottage. Drawers, closets, the insides of seashells — all of these reflect and expand on shelter, on our thoughts, memories and feelings. A box that opens, a box that closes — the sense of space revealed and concealed has a powerful emotional core.

Today’s challenge is to write a poem of space. Perhaps you could write about the contrast between the snug confines of a shell and the airy majesty of opera houses. What about a cavern? — it is both airy and oppressive — a vast pocket deep underground! Or you could write about the spaces of your memories — the space formed under the table with its big tablecloth, which was your playhouse and fort when you were a child. (I myself spent happy hours in the space formed beneath two large bushes in the backyard). Thinking about the emotional aspects of space give me the same kind of feeling of inversion and surprise as looking at an optical illusion — here I was, not noticing all of these currents of feeling, but wow! There they are.

Happy writing!

Happy Friday, NaPoWriMoers! We’re in the home stretch now. If you’ve fallen a bit behind, the coming weekend will surely offer opportunities to catch up on those pesky missing poems.

Today’s featured blog is Mark Burnhope’s Naming the Beasts. Check out his “abnominal” poems — a variant on the Beautiful In-Law that adds a host of formal requirements to the normal injunction to only use the letters in a particular name.

Today, I challenge you to write a nursery rhyme or clapping rhyme. Most nursery and clapping rhymes have strong rhythms, use rhyme and repetition extensively, and aren’t overly concerned with making sense. If you’re having trouble getting started, you might start with an existing nursery or clapping rhyme and play with its form, substituting words. Hopefully, this will make for a fun and easy way to end your work-week!

Hello, NaPoWriMoers. After today, we only have four more days to go, and then NaPoWriMo 2012 will come to a close. I hope you’ve built up a nice fat stack of poems!

Today’s featured blog is Volcano Gail’s Rainforest Poetry. Check out her poem for Day 25, One Day in String of Pearls. Its diction, imagery, and humor all made me smile.

Our prompt for today, however, is not likely to induce smiles. For today, I challenge you to write an elegy. Classically, an elegy is a poem written in response to someone’s death, a poem of mourning and remembrance. Your elegy can be about a specific person, a group of people, a pet, a plant, even an idea. Or, like Anne Sexton, you could try your hand at an anti-elegy.

Happy (I think?) writing!

Good morning! I must be off and away, so I’ll make this quick . . .

Our featured blog for the day is Martin Vosper writes. I chuckled at his poem for Day 23, and his twisting, turning hay(na)ku for Day 22 is a lovely evocation of spring.

Yesterday’s challenge was a bit of a brain-burner, so I’ve made today’s a bit easier. Back on Day Ten, I challenged you to start a poem with a line from another poem. Today, let’s go a bit further in our theft and write centos — poems made up entirely of lines from other poems. You could write a new sonnet out of lines from Shakespeare, or just troll about in an anthology for likely lines.

Try to create a cento of at least ten lines. For inspiration, here’s an example. Happy writing!

Happy Tuesday, NaPoWriMoErs!

Our featured blog for today is Baalakavii. The poems there have a wonderful economy of expression, struck through with a gentle, self-reproving humor. I really enjoyed both the poems for Day 22 and 23, and expect I will spend some time today delving further.

Today’s prompt is a bit of a doozy . . . so if you feel like you don’t have it in you, feel free, as always, to take a pass! Today’s challenge is a lipogram/Beautiful Outlaw/Beautiful In-Law. A lipogram is a poem that explicitly refrains from using certain letters. The most classic letter to swear off, at least for English speakers, is “e.” A Beautiful Outlaw is a variation on a lipogram, wherein you refrain from using any of the letters in a certain name. For example, if you chose the name Sarah, then you could not use s, a, r, or h. A Beautiful In-Law is another variant, wherein you only use the letters in a certain name (better pick a long name!)

You might think that any lipogram would end up having to be short, but some people have been successful at virtuoso performances in this vein — check out this excerpt from Christian Bök’s Eunoia, in which he uses no vowels except i. It goes on for nine pages!

Good luck!

Happy Monday! After today, we’ll have just one more Monday together, and that will be our last day of NaPoWriMo. I hope your writing is going strong!

Jennifer L. Knox is still posting NaPoems over at the Best American Poetry Blog — check out her picks for Day 22. Also, this week’s guest blogger is Ada Limon, a longstanding NaPoWriMo participant.

Our featured blog for today is Margot Suydam’s Backwoods Walking. Each of Margot’s poems is linked to a photo taken during her travels . . . a fact which dovetails nicely with our prompt for today! Today, I challenge you to write an ekphrastic poem — that is, a poem that responds to or is otherwise inspired by a work of art. Probably the most famous ekphrastic poem in English is Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, but there is no lack of modern ekphrastic work. Take Auden’s Musee de Beaux Arts or Robert Lowell’s For the Union Dead. So go forth and find a painting, sculpture, photograph, or even a piece of music, and use it to inform your poem for today. Art creates art — it’s so efficient!

Happy Earth Day, NaPoWriMoers!

Our featured blog for today is Kurus. I really like the Kurus’ poem for Day 21, Satellite. The rhthym and rhyme don’t dictate the line and stanza length, which causes the reader to slow down, and also creates a staccato emphasis on stressed syllables. Besides that, the images are quite arresting!

In honor of Earth Day, today I’d like you to write a poem about a plant. Flowers, of course, have been the subject of poems since time immemorial, and continue to be a source of much inspiration. But perhaps you could write about a tree, or a shrub, or grass. Maybe even a fictional or mythological plant. I could really see some good poems about the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary! (In fact, a few poems were written about it, back between 1550 and 1800. I say it’s time for a renaissance!)