Day Nineteen

Happy Sunday, everyone, and happy nineteenth day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month.

Our featured participant for the day is Chronicles of Miss Miseria, where the response to Day 18’s dramatic/operatic prompt goes for pedal-to-the-metal levels of palace intrigue, incipient danger, and rebellion. All it wants is a tenor to sing it as an aria.

Today, our featured resource is Yale University’s free, online Modern Poetry course. The recorded lectures take you though lessons on various American modernist poets, with a couple of swerves into Ireland and Britain. Transcripts and audio files of each lecture are also available.

And now for today’s (optional) prompt. The word florilegium refers to a book of botanical illustrations of decorative plants and also a collection of excerpts from other writings.  In her poem, “Florilegium,” Canadian poet Sylvia Legris gathers together many five-lined stanzas that describe flowers but also play with the sounds of their names, their medical (or poisonous) qualities, and historical aspects of herbalism. Today, pick a flower or two (or a whole bouquet, if you like) from this online edition of Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers. Now, write your own poem in which you muse on your selections’ names and meanings. If you’re so inclined, you could even do some outside research into your flowers, and incorporate facts that you learn into your work.

Happy writing!