Poetry Month

As a recently deposed poet laureate (my term expired March 1, and my successor has yet to be named) I am experiencing a weird sort of withdrawal. This is April! It's Poetry Month! But for the first time in three years, it's not my responsibility, and I'm wondering what to do. I still have a few gigs to attend in the last week of the month, but I am not scrabbling for venues, or looking for sponsors, or having meetings to decide exactly what is to be done to bring poetry to the city of Alexandria. It is strangely quiet around here.

Which probably means that I have the time to actually DO something this year, instead of thinking of ways to involve other people. I have pledged on a poetry website to write a poem a day this month. Since it is now 5:30 PM on the first day of the month, I have six and a half hours to do my first one. Not a good sign to break my pledge on the first day, despite the intervening dinner tasks and other items I've postponed till this evening. Hmm. Maybe I can do TWO tomorrow--it's a light day. Unfortunately, I can't just slip a quarter in the writing machine and have a poem pop out like a pack of gum. That in itself could be a poem. However, what has happened in the past three years is that I have all but abandoned my prose in favor of poems. No one asks me to read prose, and so I have needed to keep up a fresh supply of poetry for all occasions.

I have all but forgotten how to write sentences that don't break in the middle or lead to serious introspective conclusions. Perhaps I will turn that on its head and write comedy for the upcoming year. God knows I have enough material...But, for now, I am updating my blog--which constitutes the junk food of my writing menu. Do you want fries with that?