Day Three

Time keeps marching on, and so does Na/GloPoWriMo. And so, lo and behold, we find ourselves three days into our poem-a-day challenge.

Our featured daily participant is small burdens, where the response to Day Two’s Anne-Carson-inspired prompt is brings us an endearing little portrait/ode, and the lovely made-up word “flowersome.”

Today’s daily resource is the online art collection of South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. My own art history education is woefully catch-as-catch can, and the little I know of modern art is very much focused on American and European artists. So it was a treat to browse through a collection that is focused almost entirely on modern and contemporary art from outside those areas. I found particular pleasure in looking at Lee Hangsung’s prints, including this 1986 print of a poem in French by Katia Granoff.

And now for our (optional) prompt. The American poet Frank O’Hara was an art critic and friend to numerous painters and poets In New York City in the 1950s and 60s. His poems feature a breezy, funny, conversational style. His poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” is pretty characteristic, with actual dialogue and a playfully offhand tone. Following O’Hara, today we challenge you to write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!

Happy writing!