Day Twenty-Three

Welcome back, everyone, for the 23rd day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo. THere’s just one week left in our month of poems!

Today, we have two featured participants, because I just couldn’t choose between their Earth Day Poems for Day 22. First up is Thomas Tilton’s haiku recalling us to the effects of not taking care of the environment. Second, Clairvetica’s commingling of an Earth Day poem with an elegy for Prince.

Today’s poet in translation is Slovenia’s Taja Kramberger, who is both a poet and an anthropologist. A number of her poems, translated into English, can be found here, and six more can be found here.

Our poet in translation for Day 23 is:

And finally, our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I challenge you to write a sonnet. Traditionally, sonnets are 14-line poems, with ten syllables per line, written in iambs (i.e., with a meter in which an unstressed syllable is followed by one stressed syllable, and so on). There are several traditional rhyme schemes, including the Petrarchan, Spenserian, and Shakespearean sonnets. But beyond the strictures of form, sonnets usually pose a question of a sort, explore the ideas raised by the question, and then come to a conclusion. In a way, they are essays written in verse! This means you can write a “sonnet” that doesn’t have meet all of the traditional formal elements, but still functions as a mini-essay of a sort. The main point is to keep your poem tight, not rangy, and to use the shorter confines of the form to fuel the poem’s energy. As Wordsworth put it, in a very formal sonnet indeed, “Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room.” Happy writing!