I have been looking for things to pull me out of my comfort zone, so to speak. In the comments to that blog post, someone I didn't know responded with this: 'I am a graduate student in literature and creative writing. This exercise was based on borrowing words from a single paragraph from the story 'VIVA!' by Erin McReynolds, which appeared in the Winter 2011 issue of the North American Review, where I serve as Editor. I posted the instructions for the exercise as well as some examples of what my students and I had written during a fifteen-minute period. On May 28 of last year, I wrote in the blog about an in-class poetry-writing exercise that had worked particularly well in my Beginning Poetry Writing class. To move to the next item on today's agenda, let me give you some background on how Catherine and I know each other. At the moment, I still have no idea where it will go. It will surely go through many versions before it's done. It's because of being in the daily poem-writing mode that is NaPoWriMo that I've finally been able to get this down. This is a meditation I've wanted to commit to paper for a long time. That's really more like a notebook freewrite than a completed poem. I lean forward, point my chin toward a fluffy cloud up in beautiful blue sky, and I start to lift off the earth. I stand with my arms down by my side, hands against my thighs. Other livestock I can't ever see or pinpoint but I hear them nearby. Like Dick and Jane would visit with their dog Spot. I'm on a farm but not one I've ever been to in real life. It's a dream like Mary Ann has told me that she has often. Not one I've had but one I'd like to have. Other nights, I'm still at the mall though it's as large as a city, and I take monorail trains that get me more and more lost. Whenever I do get back to the dorm, I get trapped on elevators or can't negotiate the Byzantine elevator system. Some nights I find my way back to the college campus but not the dorm and am lost among institution-like buildings. I just wander and wander, as if in an episode of Twilight Zone. There are hordes of people but I don't know anyone. Detail upon detail pack all surfaces in all directions, like a Steven Spielberg movie gone wild and renegade, out of any conceivable control. Somewhat like the Jetsons but with a lot more gloss and dazzle, shimmer and coruscation. Just that it's all glitzy and space-opera like. There are passageways to an equally gigantic mall, with stores displaying all sorts of colorful products though I can never quite see what they are. It's gigantic with banks of elevators and long hallways. The submarine is in a small lake, perhaps a pond. I climb up to the top of the conning tower, poke my head and shoulder up through the hatch. Absolutely crucial in order to save not only the country but our friends and families. Somehow my friend and I realize there's a war, and it's up to us to win the day. There are twinkly colored lights in banks and arrays on the bulkheads. We board the craft, descend from the conning tower into a control room. We come upon a submarine, moored to the earth, half submerged in dark gray water. We wield toy machine guns with olive drab bandoliers. Sometimes it's Jimmy or Joe other times it's Ronny or Mike. I'm with one of my friends who it is changes from one time to the next. I tell my parents that we must run, but they laugh and converse, ignoring me. The statues descend from their stone pedestals. Then the statues begin to move, creakily and with jerky sidewise movements. There are large metal statues of human figures, probably bronze, green that's almost black, with a patina that roughens their exteriors. The lawns are bordered by flower beds: red, yellow, white blossoms. Mama and Papa and I are strolling through a park. Often firing up old, now familiar, fears from childhood to the present. Not old friends exactly but ones who come around again and again. Not remembrances from everyday life, however, but recollections from the myriad lives we spend behind our closed eyelids. Brava and bravo!īelow is an 'I remember' poem á là Maureen.

Many, MANY poems got written across the world because of your suggestions.

Thanks to all three of you for providing prompts all month.

Take something big and make it small, take something ugly and make it pretty, take something happy and make it sad - any new perspective will do.' Robert Lee Brewer recommends 'a fade away poem' Maureen Thorson suggests a poem with several statements (at least three) beginning 'I remember' and Andrea Boltwood says: 'Write a new-perspective poem. The final prompts of National Poetry Month 2012. Okay, everyone, we made it! Woot woot! Happy Last Day of National Poetry Month.

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