Day Eleven-Napowrimo-Hopeful: A Villanelle

Napowrimo: today’s (optional) prompt. Take a look at Kyle Dargan’s “Diaspora: A Narcolepsy Hymn.” This poem is a loose villanelle that uses song lyrics as its repeating lines (loose because it doesn’t rhyme).  Your challenge is, like Dargan, to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains. 

It's engaging and interesting to try so many different forms. I am learning so much along the process. Two of my favourite villanelles are Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" (which is mentioned in the Napowrimo post) - which I first came across in the movie, In Her Shoes and Dylan Thomas' "Do not Go Gentle into That Good Night".

Day Eleven-Napowrimo-Hopeful: A Villanelle

I can't think of anything tonight

Let alone engage, I am beyond reason in sight,

Darkness engulfs the light.

The sea caves in the tide

Waves catching and sighing in bated breath

I can't think of anything tonight.

She dreams of finer days to hide

The cold air looms with the scent of death

Darkness engulfs the light.

The night showers glide and guide

Each forlorn heart from its gaping depth

I can't think of anything tonight.

She rests inward to confide

Bide by, decide--along the length and breadth--

Darkness engulfs the light.

Hope descends in minuscule kind

Wary hearts, hold on! lean on your strength

I can't think of anything tonight

(Yet, darkness engulfs the light).

Day Ten-Napowrimo-Occam's razor

Napowrimo: our daily prompt (optional, as always). Yesterday, we looked at a poem that used sound in a very particular way, to create a slow and mysterious feeling. Mark Bibbins’ poem, “At the End of the Endless Decade,” uses sound very differently, with less eerieness and more wordplay. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like Bibbins’, uses alliteration and punning. See if you can’t work in references to at least one word you have trouble spelling, and one that you’ve never quite been able to perfectly remember the meaning of.

I am super glad that today's featured poem at Napowrimo is my previous poem - The Night Call. You can click the title to read)

image:2020 Science Archive-a still from the movie Contact

Day Ten-Napowrimo-Occam's razor*

Partly sifting sands

Of time

Maneuvering through the clumsiness

Of decked-up shelves

Of wisdom—

Ancient, medieval, and modern.

The missing clock that once stood still

Was nowhere to be found

I am yet to find time to find it.

Is there a word for a fear of the unknown?

Xenophobia—

Modern meaning is misconstrued

Agnosiophobia—

The fear of not knowing

So many fears, so many variations

I wonder what this tiny mind entails

A list of elaborately complex tongue-twisting names

Besides the unbudging world

Between the real and the imagined

I stand--

Wondering what explanations are best explained

Where words lie and fit

Crumpled and clustered

I stretch--

Each and every word

To pick out what mirrors back the truth

In time.

I wait--

When you dream in colour, is it the pigment of your imagination?

*Occam's Razor: Occam’s razor is a principle often attributed to 14th–century friar William of Ockham that says that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one.

The Image is from the 1997 movie Contact. One of my favourite movies where the reference to Occam's Razor appears and that stuck in my mind ever since.

Day Nine-Napowrimo-The Night Call

Napowrimo: here’s our optional prompt for the day. Like music, poetry offers us a way to play with and experience sound. This can be through meter, rhyme, varying line lengths, assonance, alliteration, and other techniques that call attention not just to the meaning of words, but the way they echo and resonate against each other. For a look at some of these sound devices in action, read Robert Hillyer’s poem, Fog. It uses both rhyme and uneven line lengths to create a slow, off-kilter rhythm that heightens the poem’s overall ominousness. Today we’d like to challenge you to try writing a poem of your own that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths. For extra credit, reference a very specific sound, like the buoy in Hillyer’s poem.

It was fun trying this prompt. In fact, I am loving all the prompts so far this year.

This poem was featured. Check HERE. Thank you, NaPoWriMo!!!

image: finflix-design-jon -Pixabay

Day Nine-Napowrimo-The Night Call

 

A night so long—

an erratically thumping heart!

Where do I belong?

Where do I even start?

 

And then—

 

The sky above,

looming—

the pleasant curve of the crescent

She heard the Greater Coucal

swooning

even at this hour of descent.

 

The startled crickets

chirp to sleep

the blades of grass

framing the curious pheasant

the snapping twigs

weep—

the clarion call, unpleasant.

She sees a silhouette

near the door

darkness bound—

a blue spurt

the lighted match bore—

a slanting scarecrow found.

 

Day Eight-Napowrimo- Seeking You- A Ghazal

Napowrimo: here’s today’s totally optional prompt!

The ghazal (pronounced kind of like “huzzle,” with a particularly husky “h” at the beginning) is a form that originates in Arabic poetry, and is often used for love poems. Ghazals commonly consist of five to fifteen couplets that are independent from each other but are nonetheless linked abstractly in their theme; and more concretely by their form. And what is that form? In English ghazals, the usual constraints are that:

• the lines all have to be of around the same length (though formal meter/syllable-counts are not employed); and
• both lines of the first couplet end on the same word or words, which then form a refrain that is echoed at the end of each succeeding couplet.

Another aspect of the traditional ghazal form that has become popular in English is having the poet’s own name (or a reference to the poet – like a nickname) appear in the final couplet. 

My take:

Day Eight-Napowrimo- Seeking You- A Ghazal

 

I wandered through the streets of my city looking for you

Soaking in the sun, drenching in the rain, immersed in you

 

I walked the hot-red, coal-laden path, half expecting your call

Brushing aside the cob-webbed bushes, seeking solace in you

 

I entered the million-mirror hall with a lamp flickering in my hand

Only to see a million me all elongated, peering back, dazzling in you

 

The ceramic urn held my coiled self, the lost war within—

The dried-up river, the mountaintop, the breathing air—sprung in you

 

Do you remember the first rain after our first summer, O dear?

I carried you everywhere I went, serene ripples blooming in you

 

The night I spent by your side, you took me in your gaze, longingly—

We sat amid the crumpled stars singing songs curling in you

 

You pointed to the indigo sky, naming each star and constellation

I wound up in your galaxy, traversing light-years nestled in you

 

They cast hurdles here, there, everywhere—we found our desire

The arrow that hit the gazelle, lanced me and pierced into you

 

Where are you? The enemies have assembled here tonight

No crying, no farewell—meet me at the horizon, I shall echo in you

 

The knife that killed you lay beside me, Ah! Sakhi*, forlorn in love

Reassembled herself in the palm of God—a jigsaw puzzle, a missing piece in you.

 

*Sakhi is a pseudonym I use for my writing at times

The first time I tried a ghazal was in 2021 for Poetixu workshop. It was fun! So was this though it took some time to complete. So, what do you think?