National Poetry Month is almost upon us



So if you don't want to run the NaPoWriMo 30 poems in April marathon, there are many other ways to celebrate poetry every day in the coming month, or so says this New York Times article. Some are a little silly, such as: Identify a poet whose life and work you think children would find interesting. Create the cover art for an illustrated children's book about the poet's life and work.

But some are provocative and stimulating. I dipped into idea #2, the article "The Greatness Game" and found I resonate with Donald Hall's assertion that contemporary poetry suffers from a lack of ambition to be universal and to measure up to past greatness. Too many poems about the dailiness of life. I am starting my own poem about the pervasive sadness in poetry -- a sad note in an art that has so often celebrated exaltation, as well as tragedy. Now it seems so often to celebrate tedium. It made me want to write the other kind of poem.

Okay, Twitter. Who's on it, and what are they doing on it? I have dipped in a toe and don't really know if I can keep up, or want to. Anyone have thoughts on its usefulness or lack of?

Flocks of butterflies lilting through our area the last few days -- so many I thought the winds had kicked up a new round of falling leaves, but they're animated as leaves aren't. Some kind of migration, but in numbers I can't recall seeing before. It's like being in one of those animated fantasy movies, where the leaves grow wings and things grow faces and eyes and suddenly everything around you is more alive and sentient.