Day Twenty-Five

Welcome back, all, for the twenty-fifth day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is Wind Rush, which brings us an intriguing meditation on wholeness and brokenness in response to Day 24’s first-line prompt.

Our featured resource for the day is the website of the Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion project, which places posters with poems on them into the transit systems of major American cities.

Last but not least, here’s our optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire,” a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlor games, and adapted by modern interviewers. You could choose to answer the whole questionnaire, and then write a poem based on your answers, answer just a few, or just write a poem that’s based on the questions. You could even write a poem in the form of an entirely new Proust Questionnaire. We have a fairly standard, 35-question version of the questionnaire laid out for you below.

Happy writing!

• What is your idea of perfect happiness?
• What is your greatest fear?
• What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
• What is the trait you most deplore in others?
• Which living person do you most admire?
• What is your greatest extravagance?
• What is your current state of mind?
• What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
• On what occasion do you lie?
• What do you most dislike about your appearance?
• Which living person do you most despise?
• What is the quality you most like in a man?
• What is the quality you most like in a woman?
• Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
• What or who is the greatest love of your life?
• When and where were you happiest?
• Which talent would you most like to have?
• If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
• What do you consider your greatest achievement?
• If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
• Where would you most like to live?
• What is your most treasured possession?
• What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
• What is your favorite occupation?
• What is your most marked characteristic?
• What do you most value in your friends?
• Who are your favorite writers?
• Who is your hero of fiction?
• Which historical figure do you most identify with?
• Who are your heroes in real life?
• What are your favorite names?
• What is it that you most dislike?
• What is your greatest regret?
• How would you like to die?
• What is your motto?