NaPoWriMo Day 5

The prompt for April 5, 2018 reads as follows:

“Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like the work in Translucence, reacts both to photography and to words in a language not your own. Begin with a photograph. Now find a poem in a language you don’t know (here’s a good place to look!) Ignore any accompanying English translation (maybe cover it up, or cut-and-paste the original into a new document). Now start translating the poem into English, with the idea that the poem is actually “about” your photograph. Use the look and feel of the words in the original to guide you along as you write, while trying to describe your photograph. It will be a bit of a balancing act, but hopefully it will lead to new and beautiful (and possibly very weird) places.

photo credit Norm Swaebe

Half Human

These branches, their crooked bends
shaped by water, touched by the wind
and river drift
rest here just a moment.

Echo the shape of arms shading
under a tent of tree bark,
a being half tree, half human passing judgment
on us here.

Nothing written in your wood.
Nothing that whispers your name.

Carol A. Stephen

I used a poem written in Portuguese, which can be read in both languages at the link below.  I did not include it here to ensure no copyright infringement.

© 2011, Karinna Alves Gulias
From: Maria de Graça
Publisher: Editora Multifoco, Rio de Janeiro, 2011

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/23326/17172/Karinna-Alves-Gulias

NaPoWriMo April 4, 2018

Today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo reads as follows:

“And now for our (optional) daily prompt. Our craft resource today focuses on the use of concrete nouns and specific details, using the idea of “putting a dog in it.” Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like “beauty” or “justice,” but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns. Adjectives are fine too! For example, you could have a poem about sadness that describes that emotion as “a rowboat tethered with fishing line to a willow that leans over a pond. Rainwater collects in the bottom, and mosquito eggs.” Concrete details like those can draw the reader in and let them imagine the real world where your abstract ideal or feeling happens. Happy writing!”

There is no Dog in this Poem

You ask me:
to describe pleasure, baffled
by its abstraction, a simple dictionary
definition equally abstract.

So I ask you:
To imagine the ripest pineapple, its tender
flesh, the intense sweetness as your teeth
crush the fruit, drawing out each
drop of luscious juice.

Imagine heat
the sun on bared flesh, as you
discard the clothes of winter, raise
your face to feel the warmth
of early May on your left cheek.

Imagine cool
a hot day in August, as you
slide into a turquoise sparkle
of a southern sea, the damp sand
and entwined footprints along the whitest beach.

Imagine a Siamese cat
nose tucked under tail tip, curled
in an afternoon sunbeam, humming
its deepest purr song.
You will have my answer.

Carol A. Stephen, April 4, 2018

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