April 2020 is tipping! Now is the best time for...
You will have a change to write poetry even if you've never done it before—the writing prompts aim to demystify the process of writing a poem. This will not take the place of the 2020 Writing Exercise Series, but will be in addition to it, so there will be a bounty of poetry to feast your eyes upon.
So. Let's begin.
April 15, 2020
National Poetry Month 2020 Activity Pack Day 15
1) Let's begin with Ted Kooser today. He's a poet from Iowa that celebrates the quotidian and nature with conversational verse. He doesn't mire his poetry with obfuscation but instead seeks to convey meaning straightforward, yet with layers of meaning. He won a Pulitzer Prize and has served as the US Poet Laureate. This first video is from a series called "Why I Create" and is Kooser talking about his relationship with poetry and relates some of his experiences.
2) TV TIME! Let's start off with a few of Ted Kooser's poems. First here's him reading his poem Opossum
Here is a Kooser reading his poem "A Man's Voice" from his series of poems about the devastating blizzard of 1888.
Here is a video, well, really an audio recording of Kooser reading his poem "Splitting an Order"
And now for something a little different, but not that different, here is a video of Philip Levine reading his poem "A Simple Truth"
3) Now go read one, or preferably all of the following three 'recently' published poems:
"Twelve Bones of Architecture" by Matt Dennison in Red Eft Review April 9, 2020.
"A Little Thing" by Rebecca Cross in elsewhere Issue 17.
"This Was Supposed To Be A Poem About The Doppler Effect But I Can’t Stop Thinking About How Loud Abandonment Actually Is" by hannah seidlitz in Crab Fat Magazine March 2020.
4) Go read all of the following three short poems that were published more than two years ago:
5) I didn't get enough Naomi Shihab Nye, so here's a video of her talking about poetry that's helped her through hard times, then reading three of such poems, starting off with "Ted Kooser is My President".
And, this is parody, but still quite entertaining. Nick Offerman performing "A SLAM poem to Bacon"
6) The time machine is set to June 11th, 2019 for this "Erasing 'The Crystal Egg' #1" Erasure exercise, using the beginning of HG Wells's classic "The Crystal Egg" to create your own erasure poem.
