It's almost spring. I've got an official countdown going on my Facebook page for that, but I'm also counting down to another "spring thing," which has become as much a sign of spring for me as tulips and Peeps: NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month. Once again this year, I intend to crank out 30 poems in 30 days. This will be my fourth year participating.
In the past, I have (generally speaking) used the "official" daily prompts on the NaPoWriMo site (www.napowrimo.net) for my poems. One year I combined them with a secondary prompt from another site, where each day I focused on a color. For a couple of my NaPoWriMo adventures, I have taken a photograph to go with each poem (or written each poem as a response to a photograph...gray area...)
This year, I'm again challenging myself. I will be using the prompts again this year (for the most part), and also I plan for this year's poems to (mostly) follow a theme:
THE POETRY OF COSTUME.
(Doesn't that look nice in bolded caps?)
One of my jobs is in theatrical costuming, which I love, and which makes me think about all kinds of stuff: identity (both real and imagined), the concept of the mask, of hiding who we are, of becoming who we were meant to be, of otherness, of the insanity of marketing, of the history and weirdness of Halloween, of the way a costume transforms you, of the magic of theatre, and especially of the wisdom of actually gluing gold sequins to your face. It's a veritable freakin' gold mine of material. So that's this year's challenge.
Of course, I'm a poet, and poets lie, so I may not do EXACTLY what I said...but that's the plan!
So the countdown is on! 21 days until NaPoWriMo begins. To get you in the mood, I reserve the right to post random poems about costuming, theatre, Halloween, and other marginally related topics until them, beginning now, with this piece by Michael Collier, available at www.poetryfoundation.org.
See you soon!
All Souls
By Michael Collier
A few of us—Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,
Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky—peer through
the kitchen window at a raccoon perched
outside on a picnic table where it picks
over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.
Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more
dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody
screwdriver puttied to her forehead.
Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble
of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy
to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce,
“What a perfect mask it has!” While the Count
whistling through his plastic fangs says, “Oh,
and a nose like a chef.” Then one by one
the other masks join in: “Tail of a gambler,”
“a swashbuckler’s hips,” “feet of a cat burglar.”
Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt
and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,
wraps his legs around Trotsky’s leg and humps like a dog.
Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold hands
and then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on
the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs
abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room
turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.
The windows buzz. “Who do you love? Who do you love?”
the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.
The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.
We love what we are; we love what we’ve become.
