Day Sixteen

Welcome to the second half of Na/GloPoWriMo 2022, everyone!

Today’s featured participant is, once again, two featured participants. First up, Flutterby’s NaPoWriMo, where the poem involves something that you are either mad for or couldn’t care less about — sports. And second, a rather haunting exploration of cryptocurrency by Katie Staten.

Our featured online journal today is The Leon Literary Review, which publishes a new issue every other month. From their most recent issue (their twelfth), I’ll point you in the direction of Meg Stout’s poem “Hinge,” and Lily Greenberg’s “To the boy who thinks his body, like a woman.”

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a curtal sonnet. This is a variation on the classic 14-line sonnet. The curtal sonnet form was developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and he used it for what is probably his most famous poem, “Pied Beauty.” A curtal sonnet has eleven lines, instead of the usual fourteen, and the last line is shorter than the ten that precede it. Here are two other examples of Hopkins’ curtal sonnets: “Ash Boughs,” and “Peace.”

Happy writing!