Day One
On April 1, 2022
Hello, everyone! The first day of Na/GloPoWriMo 2022 is finally here, and I hope you are feeling fresh and ready to versify!
Our featured participant for the day is M. Jay Dixit, whose response to our Dickinson-based early-bird prompt cannily works both a line of Dickinson’s and an echoing “forever” into each stanza.
Today, our featured online magazine is Sixth Finch. Founded in 2008, Sixth Finch publishes new issues quarterly. All of their past issues are easily browsable, and they publish a wide range of work. From their newest issue, I’ll point out Jose Hernandez Diaz’s poem “The Conformist,” which I found quietly funny, and Nicole Callihan’s poem “On the Second Day of the Third Decade in the 21st Century,” which is a very down-to-earth and moving (and again a little funny – what can I say, I like funny poems!) meditation on time.
And last but not least, our optional prompt! I got this one from a workshop I did last year with Beatrix Gates, and I’ve found it really helpful. The prompt is based on Robert Hass’s remarkable prose poem, “A Story About the Body.” The idea is to write your own prose poem that, whatever title you choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image.
Happy writing!
