Day Twenty-Eight

Welcome back, all, for the twenty-eighth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is the Poet Laureate of the Primitive Planets, which brings us a (gently) hysterical love poem in response to Day 27’s even-stanza-length prompt.

Today’s resource is this short meditation by the poet Barbara Guest, on the tension between a poet’s desire to control a poem, and the fact that poetry is often most moving when it surprises both the poet and the reader with wild and unpredictible moves.

And now for today’s (optional) prompt. Victoria Chang’s poem, “The Lovers,” is short and somewhat shocking, bringing us quickly from a near-hallucinatory descriptive statement to a strange sort of question, before ending on the very direct statement of a “truth.” Six lines, three sentences, and to top it off, a title that I think works for the poem but is only obliquely related to its text. Today, try writing a poem that follows the same beats: three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion.

Happy writing!