Monthly Archives: April 2019

Pebble

Barbara Turney Wieland, Flowers, Meditation, Napowrimo, Nature, Poetry, Water

NaPoWriMo Day 30 plus 1

 

Stone

Rings of water

Open like flowers

Blink sink diminish

Stone

 

http://www.napowrimo.net/

I’d like you to try your hand at a minimalist poem. What’s that? Well, a poem that is quite short, and that doesn’t really try to tell a story, but to quickly and simply capture an image or emotion. Haiku are probably the most familiar and traditional form of minimalist poetry, but there are plenty of very short poems out there that do not use the haiku form. There’s even an extreme style of minimalism in the form of one-word and other “highly compressed” poems. You don’t have to go that far, but you might think of your own poem for the day as a form of gesture drawing. Perhaps you might start from a concrete noun with a lot of sensory connotations, like “Butter” or “Sandpaper,” or “Raindrop” and  
– quickly, lightly – go from there.

for my new baby

Barbara Turney Wieland, heartbreak, micro-story, Napowrimo, Poetry, Sorrow

NaPoWriMo Day 30

 

 

Beth’s baby

Shoes. Never

Worn.

 

http://www.napowrimo.net

Prompt:- I’d like you to try your hand at a minimalist poem. What’s that? Well, a poem that is quite short, and that doesn’t really try to tell a story, but to quickly and simply capture an image or emotion. Haiku are probably the most familiar and traditional form of minimalist poetry, but there are plenty of very short poems out there that do not use the haiku form. There’s even an extreme style of minimalism in the form of one-word and other “highly compressed” poems. You don’t have to go that far, but you might think of your own poem for the day as a form of gesture drawing. Perhaps you might start from a concrete noun with a lot of sensory connotations, like “Butter” or “Sandpaper,” or “Raindrop” and  
– quickly, lightly – go from there.

Meditation

Barbara Turney Wieland, Meditation, Monologue, Napowrimo, Nature, Poetry, Spirituality, weather, wind

NaPoWriMo Day 29

 

In the pristine quiet

Stilled by the wilderness within

There is a reflection

I wish to meditate

On this and other sins and yet

I am yearning for the nakedness

Of outside endless distance

Anything but stillness

I hear

It’s the wind, you see, I long for

I admit

Noisy and alone, I want to take it home with me for always, you see

I want to nest in the all the lonely moans all my days and nights

Because, and this is said with tenderness

 

I adore the wind

It lifts my skirt

Shameless

I adore the wind

It lifts my hair

Licks there

I adore the wind

It buffets my thoughts

Playful

I adore the wind

It lifts my spirit

Swept clean

Don’t get me started

On the sun

Burned

On the earth

Birthed

Or the ocean

Drowned

I have no wings for those

I have only ears for breeze

For tumultuous stirrings

For careful cradlings

The invisible force calls

I have no choice but to listen

And be at blustery peace

 

http://www.napowrimo.net/

prompt:- I’d like to challenge you to blend these concepts into your own work, by producing a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully. You might try including a dramatic, declarative statement, like Hass’s “All the new thinking is about loss,” or O’Hara’s “It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.” Or, like, Baudelaire, you might try addressing your feeling directly, as if it were a person you could talk to. There are as many approaches to this as there are poets, and poems.