Day Twenty-Four on APRIL 24, 2024
As of today, there’s just one week to go in our annual challenge. We hope you are feeling cool, calm, and
confident in your writing. And if not . . . well, you’re poets. Nobody expects you to be cool, calm, and
confident. They kind of expect you to be more like this:
Our featured participant for the day is Sarah Davies, whose response to Day 23’s superhero prompt
conjures a hero called Imaginarywoman.
Today’s featured resource is this BBC archive dedicated to the poetry of Robert Burns.
You can read about his life, read his poems, and hear them read by dozens of folks, including
former-prince-now-king Charles.
Finally, our (optional) prompt for the day is another one pulled from our 2016 archives. Today, we’d
like to challenge you to write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the
first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry
you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you
haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. The idea is for the original to furnish the
backdrop for your work, but without influencing you so much that you feel as if you are just rewriting
the original! For example, you could begin, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” or “I have measured
out my life with coffee spoons,” or “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster,” or “they persevere in swimming
where they like.” Really, any poem will do to provide your starter line – just so long as it gives you the
scope to explore.
Happy writing!
glazed with rain water,
because you asked
about
the God I
invoke
I will share
simply
what you should know
henceforth
He's not the third
spindle
that you call
only
when things fail
gravely
or prospects seem
dismal
not when gloom is
looming
chances are
hopeless
your vigor
fatigued
and time's urgent
because...
*so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens*
© selma
* William Carlos Williams
A (wheel) Barrowed Line
© selma
The first poem that popped into my head today was a nursery rhyme:
I dance over water
I dance over seas
And all the birds In the air
Could not catch me
Na ah! Not a good day to go down that rabbit hole with Catherine of Aragon,
Henry VIII, and their story about nut trees, nutmegs, and a golden pear:
I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear,
But a silver nutmeg
And a golden pear.
so then, the chance presented itself to me and
I helped myself to the entire WCW poem
(The title is my starter line)
+
((for the prompt. Thanks*))
…Thanks for being here with me as I try to work on these first drafts this month.
Happy Writing.
- Share The Wealth: Joy is Our Natural State - May 6, 2024
- NPM Scavenger Hunt – Poems from Around the World - April 30, 2024
- Day 30: NaPoWriMo 2024–Mary Magdalene At The Doctor’s - April 30, 2024
love these, selma
Aww. Glad you shared these words, Beth. Thanks. xoxo
Okay
okay… thanks, Raj. xo
Beautiful poem.
You’ve been wonderful. Thanks for your readership and lovely comments. I bless you. xo
Thanks,Selma,you Like my little & poor comments. Bless you too. Oxo.
Love this poem Selma
Thanks, most lovely, Sadje. I appreciate your kind heart. xo
❤❤❤
Nicely done, Selma!
Thanks.
I love the way you ended the poem with the William Carlos Williams poem. Your intro fit perfectly. And you even used his format to format you addition. Very smooth.
First off, a hearty congratulations to you. The featured poet—wow! So well deserved. Amazing job, LuAnne. 👏🏽 well deserved.
Thanks for the enthusiastic response to mine
yesterday… 😉 🤗 bless you.
Beautifully written, Selma! ♥️🌹
I appreciate you.
🙏♥️
I appreciate you, too, and I feel privileged to read your beautiful poetry 🥰. Xoxo
Lovely, Selma, both in theme and execution. I’ve used Williams’ poems as springboards for several of my own, including one I’ll be posting tomorrow. Perhaps not just a case of “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but also a sign of how universal his poetry is.
Stephanie, thanks so much for the comment. Universal is Williams’ poetry indeed. Glad we connected this way. Bless you.
Just adding a note because the image randomly picked out for my comment is a strange one and not what I would have chosen. I’m going to include my website this time and see if my own Gravatar image will come up. 🙂
I’m so glad you returned to clarify that for me. I’m wary of strange players here. Bless you. All the best.