Thirty days: 30 paintings, 30 poems

In November 2011, six months after Jeff died and still consumed with grief, I decided to pour that energy into a 30-day exercise of writing a poem each day.

The poet, David Lehman, wrote a poem every day for a year and collected some of those poems in his book, The Daily Mirror.  In the introduction, he noted how it was 'hit or miss', some poems falling flat and some days were complete misses. I'd read those poems a few years ago and found the concept intriguing.

I'm not a prolific poet, I tend to wait for inspiration; the sudden poetic phrase or line.  It doesn't happen often. By that November, I'd written a dozen  poems about Jeff, his death, my grief, increasing my poetic batting average and  I figured there might be another 30 poems wallowing inside me.

It took a couple of nights to realize I would not be receiving divine inspiration every day.  I don't know that I ever did.  I learned to find inspiration; facing the blank page and grabbing an idea out of the air.

I met that first challenge completing 30 poems in 30 days.  Two poems were almost really good.  Another four had potential.  Ten others worth salvaging and the rest would be filed away.  Not a bad effort for a poet.

The following November, I took the challenge again.  I had moved to my native Iowa and it was my first winter in nearly 30 years.  I was enamored of the quiet, the bitter cold, the life and death of seasons, and many of those poems are inspired by Iowa's beautiful but unforgiving winter landscape.

As a seasoned poem-a-day poet, I knew what to expect.  I didn't fret nights when I had nothing.  I would open my notebook, rummage around in my head and start writing.  I had about the same results as the previous year.

I'd written 60 poems in two years (not counting any written the other months) and of those 60 poems, four have been published.  I'm a poet, not a mathematician, but it seems like a good average.

One of those published poems, 'In A Hopper Painting', became the inspiration for this year's November ekphrastic exercise in poetic masochism.  I love the regional realistm of Edward Hopper and in his six decades as an artist, he left an extensive body of work.  I would write 30 poems, each inspired by his paintings.

It has been the most difficult of the challenges.  I read essays on his works.  I spent hours thumbing through books of his collected works.  I read his weighty biography.  I discovered  little-known works; works not typical of Hopper.  His paintings offered an unfinished narrative, a poetic leap. I avoided more linear interpretations and sought out an emotional landing.  Some paintings veered toward a more personal experience.

'Nighthawks' is not my favorite Hopper painting, but as the month closes, I realize it is the most fitting finish to this exercise.

Tonight, in the quiet dark, I'll sit down, open my notebook, stare at the lonely creatures gathered at the counter and imagine how it all will end.

Roadkill Poetry

Each morning, before sunrise, I drive the nine miles into Manchester for work.  These are country roads, and I meet few other cars at 5:30.  It is not other drivers I'm concerned about these days; it is the sudden appearance of deer.

Though I see deer all year in the Big Woods, they are more visible in late fall when the fields have been harvested, fields full of dropped seed corn.  The deer also make their way into the our yards for the grass now that other tender eats have suffered a freeze.


I see a lot of deer.  Last January, I counted 20 head in the field outside my front windows, and for much of the month, they would cross that field heading up or down river.  One afternoon, just after our first snowfall, I took the dogs out for a walk and four deer cut across the driveway, not 20 feet from us.  Two days ago, I had my closest call while driving to work.  I saw the deer dart out of the ditch ahead of me and had just enough time to hit the brakes before the second deer bolted out, missing my car by just a couple feet.

I see plenty of roadkill all year in my drive to and from work.  Raccoons, opossums, farm cats, hawks, Canadian geese.  A large red-tail fox was hit earlier in September and I can still see the traces of red fur on the side of the road.

Roadkill is just another part of living in the Big Woods, and though I hate seeing a fox, or hawk, or barn cat (and please don't let me see someone's dog), but the sight of a struck deer is particularly unsettling.

Deer are large, with a weight between 110-300 pounds.  Hitting one with your car at 55mph will not only kill the deer, but damage your vehicle.  This time of year, I encounter one or two dead deer on my route to Manchester every week.  I hate seeing these beautiful creatures splayed along the roadside; there is always a twinge of sadness.

Last November, a doe was struck in an area I often see them crossing.  On one side of the road is woodland, the other side is a large cornfield.  Her positioning in death was oddly elegant, especially in the cold, autumn sun.  I could not let her beauty, even in death, go without words.

Writing Through November (NaNoWriMo, kids)

October is coming to an end.  In the Big Woods, we saw our first snowfall this past week.  I've brought in the plants, stocked the woodpile, stored the patio furniture, and aired my winter coats.  Later this week, I'll clean the pick-up and then move it into the garage until April, swapping it for the 4-wheel drive Blazer.

Like most folks in the Snowbelt, November is the month to hunker down, to refamiliarize ourselves with long, winter nights; the quiet of a crystalline moon, the indistinct rustle of dried oak leaves still clinging to branches, the kick and comfort of the furnace.  It is a poet's month.

For three years, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  In 2009, I took the challenge of writing 50,000 words by month's end or 1,700 words daily.  I worked on a story idea, set in Cherokee, NC, at the foot of the Smoky Mountains.  I managed just over 51,000 words and haven't looked at it since.

The year Jeff died, my days were full of words and sorrowed poems and I spent that November taking the NaNoWriMo poem-a-day challenge.  I do not participate in the online community, but I did use prompts from Robert Brewer, an editor with Writer's Digest magazine.

For poets, the idea of writing a poem a day is terrifying (I hear this from other poets whenever I mention
doing the challenge).  It's a masochistic marathon, really.  Poets love to ponder words and lines, images and ideas; they wait for inspiration.  If you're writing a poem every day, you're taking inspiration from whatever, wherever you can.

I would read the prompt each morning and then spend the day thinking about it, sometimes an idea would form quickly and other times, nothing.  Some prompt were absolutely meaningless (I don't write political poems or limericks or haiku).  One prompt, that year, on 11/11/11, was to write a math poem.  I'm a poet, for pity's sake, I hate math (but I did write a poem using mathematical terms and it is one of the best poems to come from that year).

Last year, my friend Kathe R. took the challenge with me.  At the end of November, each week through mid-January, we would send one another five of the poems for critiquing.  

I'm a sporadic poet, at best, but in two years, I've written 60 poems.  Most poetry manuscripts are a minimum of 48 poems.  Let me be honest, out of those 60 poems, I consider two of them exciting, and maybe eight poems are good.  Three of these poems have been published.  Another dozen are worthy of a second look and some refining.  At roughly thirty percent (I can do some math); for any poet to write 32 half-decent poems in a year is something to celebrate.

In less than a week, the challenge goes up again and I've had a prompt idea since September (ekphrasis, I bore easily).  I'm nervous about keeping up my end of the bargain, it's not like I can carbo-load for this or do any stretches (I did draft a poem this week just to keep the wheels greased).

Afternoons pass quickly now, and night folds over the Big Woods without much warning, and I will sit in November's chill-black and write poems (and I'm going to participate in Movember).  I say, bring it.