National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month 2015

As most of us involved in (and out of)  the cyber-world of poetry have already noticed, April is the month of the year in which the spontaneous generation of poetry in all forms is celebrated and encouraged. There are many organizations and sites, blogs and writer's groups which encourage and support writing a poem a day. My own favorite poetry site, the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, will be offering a daily challenge throughout April to help provide inspiration, as will many others. 

I have been blogging here at Verse Escape since October of 2010. Since 2011, I have written 30 poems in April each year, and this will be my fifth year of attempting to do so. I want to emphasize the 'attempting' aspect, as I never know if I will actually be able to do it. I also am adding another goal to the month, and that is to READ a (non-blogged) poem a day, from an actual book, of which I have many, and which too often spend their lives gathering dust. In the event I cannot write a poem for any given day, I will share my daily read here.

During this highly focused period, everyone appreciates and needs support, even though sometimes it's hard to make the usual rounds and leave the usual in-depth comments, so I want to say in advance, I am grateful for just a word to know you have been by, and if you are also doing this project, please let me know, so I can in turn support your efforts, even if not in my usual lengthy and verbose style, to which you have hopefully become accustomed. ;_) For those not involved in the madness, I will still be around to read and comment as usual.

 I look forward to seeing the fireworks that this sort of discipline can produce, and to enjoying the company of those as stressed as myself coming face to face with that blankness Bob Dylan once described when he said: "...if there's an original thought out there, I could use it right now..."

 Happy Poetry Month To All

Photos: copyright joyannjones 2015

 Please feel free to use the 'poetry month' photo if you'd like, any way you'd like.

 

The Flowers of Dorian Gray

Flowers of Dorian Gray

The richest harvest always comes they say

from blackest earth deeptilled in hard worked fields.

Still there’s a freedom in the tumbleweed

the dry unworked and feckless desert yields

or blowing dandelions, golden in the clay.

Now dead machines and poison tend the seed,

make food of sorts for swollen city hives.

The soil sprouts up a greensick paper crop;

where lawless gamblers rule mad killing thrives

while dutiful puppets pirouette and bleed.

But here’s a place I’ve made the circus stop

where seeds fall as they will, where time’s own face

is changed into wild flowers of Dorian Gray

where all deeds past with beauty interlace,

where top is bottom and the bottom’s top.

April 2012

Posted for   real toads

Kerry's Challenge: The Envelope Quintet

And challenge it was. I chose the extended alternate version of the form

abcba, cdedc, efafe in the hated and dreaded iambic pentameter, which has royally kicked my butt up down and sideways for the last 24 hours.

Also posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Karin Gustafson hosts this weekend, with a prompt entitled Duty Calls,

asking us to explore the realms of duty and obligation.

Process notes: In the famous novel by Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a man's evil and dissipated choices are reflected in a portrait which grows older and uglier with each deed, while his face remains youthful and handsome. I've reworked and reversed Wilde's metaphor here a bit.

Image: Flowers of Dorian Gray,

© joy ann jones, 2010, 2012