This haiku emerged from my writing today. Most of the rest of what I wrote I’ll need to think about more, it and didn’t seem to be turning into a draft I’d want to share same-day, so I decided to just go with this. Yesterday’s poem was fresh in my mind, so yes it’s connected to this one:
The table is clean.
All corners: only corners.
Nothing stops the eye.
I also wrote these sentences, and they seemed worth sharing since they’re relevant to grappling with the challenge of writing a poem a day (and giving myself permission to let a haiku “count”). Following some thoughts on my dislike of wearing/owning white clothes: “What is it with the fear of white? Just let half the page be. ”
Yesterday was hectic: a toddler who didn’t sleep as expected for her nap and nightly bedtime, then ten minutes after she fell asleep we had a tornado warning, so after all ended safely I had to do part of the bedtime routine again. I wasn’t able to finish and post my draft until late in the evening, and so I thought just posting the poem itself and getting to bed was best. But now that I have a minute, I’ll say a little about where my writing is coming from at the moment. Lately I’ve been working on writing out of the present: jumping off the now rather than something somewhere someone else. I have a tendency to overthink, and sometimes I feel like I have so much more reading to do before I can write any poetry that matters. But as someone who’s trying to work too much into too little time, at this point in my life I just don’t have the luxury of marinating in the library for hours as part of my writing process. I’ve been thinking lately (and I think Napowrimo encourages this, along with what I’ve been teaching) about developing a writing and reading process focused on doing what I can with the time I have. So, don’t worry about gathering all the best material and reading all the relevant poems before daring to write. I already have what I need, in this moment. Today’s poem might not be any good, but that dissatisfaction can lead to tomorrow’s poem being better. If I’m writing a poem a day, or even “failing” and writing a poem a week, that still leaves me with a good body of work to revise as time goes on.
All that to say that as far as Napowrimo goes, I’ll likely always be off-prompt. They have been tempting me, though, so who knows!