NaPo

It Begins – NaPo 2025 day one

The first 2025 NaPo prompt was to write a poem that uses a new-to-me word from either the glossary of musical terms or glossary of art terminology. The new part for me is the use of the word impressionism  in music.

Impressionism was a term at first used mockingly to describe the work of Monet, et al. It was similarly used to describe vagueness, imprecision, and perceived excess of attention to colour in the early music of Debussy.

Hay Fever

One hundred eleven million greenbacks
for a line of fuzzy haystacks,
a sunset or morning sky and blue flowers
where nothing looks real. Art

by a mocked artist who wisely
adapted the moniker to that style
of bright, pure, unmixed colours.
Insults taken to the bank.

Impressionism.
Is it art?
Is it music?
What does it do, say, or mean?

Would Claude be proud now
if he knew how his art
drew a fortune
at auction.

 

Look both ways at music critics and all art.
Mind the gaps because one critic’s trash is another’s needle in a hundred-million-dollar haystack.

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 2)

This is why I refer to these (optional) “prompts” as assignments. But I do them and I learn from that—sometimes about poetry, often I learn about me. I’m realist to the core, but I tried. This poem is a weak-bunt attempt and might be more weird than surreal.

I was supposed to pick words from a list and write questions. I did. Then, for each question, I was to write a one-line (image/surreal) answer. Finally, I was to place all the answers, without the questions, on a new page and make a poem of just the answers. I did that, too.

Words I picked: thunder, generator, river, artillery, cowbird, quahog, and song. I did not use every word, directly or explicitly, in the poem.

Click on the napo button to link up with the page and read about features, resources, prompts, and to read poems by other participants.

The Question to the Answer

When he saw her, he was thunderstruck.
She wasn’t. Thus, rain.

Generators take over worlds
by growing resentments in simple expectations.

Rivers replenish, carry, produce, flood, and feed.
Women, too. So yeah.

Heavy birds with bullets and blivits
—Boom-boom!

White members of the blackbird family watch
as catbirds sit and
the shitbirds go –
somewhere leaves are falling.

If you’re hungry
do that sort of thing
when nobody’s watching.
Just clam up.

Old is forever but
not young time,
so sleep well.
That’s the way I’ve always heard it looked to be.

Look both ways when searching for answers.
Find your tribe but mind the gaps as you live into the questions.