Tag Archives: National Poetry Month

April 16 NaPoWriMo Translation Prompt

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napo2013button2Day 16
The prompt for April 16 was to do a translation poem.
“Go to the Poetry International Language List, pick a language, and then follow it to a poet and a poem. Generally the Poetry International website will present a poem in its original language on the left, and any translation on the right. Cut and paste the original into the text-editing program of your choice (and try not to peek too much at the translation). Now, use the sound and shape of the words and lines to guide you, without worrying too much about whether your translation makes sense.”
Once you have your rough “translation,” you could leave it at that, or continue to shape the poem. It’s up to you. Happy writing!
You can see the whole prompt here: http://www.napowrimo.net/
I chose a poem in Irish by Caitríona Ní Chléirchín.  By clicking here: Craobhlasair
you can view the original poem and its English translation. Here is the poem I came up with as my sound translation. As you will see, the subject is certainly quite different!

Crabapples and Air

Crabapples

Crabapples (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rotting crabapples, three
on the table at
night lying alone.
My bowl, agate
marred and dented
at the rim and all,
a mere bowl
and me always searching.
I, down on my knees,
sneezing
in Nice
at dinnertime.
On the right, a tunnel near the sea
a multitude of
crabapples and air. A cabin, three ghosts, choirs.

Carol A. Stephen, April 16, 2013

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Poem in my Pocket (A Day Late!)

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pocket_logo2Somehow I missed this, likely the auto-pilot function again! Anyway, yesterday I tuned in

Kelly Writers House at the University of Penns...

Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

to the Wallace Stevens reading and discussion at Kelly Writers House, which Prof. Al Filreis has now posted on Jacket2 here, and which I am sure you will enjoy. Some great commentary by the KWH group and by my fellow ModPolians who were lucky enough to attend:

I didn’t catch the title of the first poem at the beginning (The Plain Sense of Things shown here at Poets.org), but leafing through my Collected Wallace Stevens, I happened on The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain (below). It had resonance for me, and serendipitously was the second poem to be discussed! So you could say that I carried this one in my pocket yesterday. I even wrote a poem of my own inspired by the two poems from the webcast.
Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.

Wallace Stevens
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Poems for Days 11 & 13

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napo2013button2Still catching up. I am writing the other poems too, may at some point post them here.

The prompt for Day 11 was to write a tanka using the 5-7-5-7-7 format. A friend of mine is president of the local Haiku group. I’m told that good North American Haiku is not 5-7-5 because the Japanese form does not use syllables. So the English form of syllable is not an accurate measure. This of course confuses me. And then there is the famous “turn” in the haiku, which I can never get right. And the form called senryu by the Japanese has somehow changed for the English version, so that human references are okay in English haiku. This means that I don’t write Japanese forms because I can’t quite get it right.

Nevertheless here is a short poem that somewhat adheres to the prompt at least!

TATTOO TANKA-esque poem

Along the main street
the town is closing up shop
boarded up windows
a new store boasts neon flash
Discount! TATTOOS WHILE YOU WAIT!

Day 13 was to take an observational walk and write a calm poem. I tried!

Early Spring Landscape

Remnants of snow leach back into
the ground, brown with flattened grass,
green still sleeping off the winter weight.
Early flowers poke above the soil, tentative
and shy, face to leaf with soggy mash
of old news, expired flyers. Nothing beautiful
yet, no faint tinge of spring on trees,
no budding bushes, air still damp and chill.
But the front lawn boasts its first robins,
and the population around feeders suddenly
triples with common redpolls stopping by
on their way even further north than here.

English: Common redpoll Deutsch: Birkenzeisig

English: Common redpoll (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carol A. Stephen
April 16, 2013

Day 10 Un-Love Poem

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napo2013button2Day 10 poem. I am so far behind with these. I just downloaded a week’s worth of prompts! I skipped the Day 8 one, will come back to that. Here is the un-love poem, though.

One Way Street

The Wrong Version

The Wrong Version (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Loving you was the wrong way
down a one-way street
All go and no return
Direction south without a north
or east with no west.
And you the centre. And me?
Caught half way round the roundabout
with no exits but the wrong one.

Carol A. Stephen
April 16, 2013

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