Celebrating National Poetry Month: Poem #1: Filling the Vase

from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock by T.S. Eliot

"Inaugurated by the Academy in April 1996, National Poetry Month (NPM) brings together publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools, and poets around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.Inaugurated by the Academy in April 1996, National Poetry Month (NPM) brings together publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools, and poets around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events." To learn more about National Poetry Month and a whole lot of other valuable information about poetry go to www.poets.org .

This is my third year of celebrating National Poetry Month on this blog. If you want to see the diverse collection of sixty poems I chose the last two years, check my archives under April 2007 and 2008. This year I am going to do things a bit differently. I have been inspired by numerous bloggers that post original poetry on an ongoing basis. I am constantly posting poetry, but not my own very often. This month I plan to post an original poem each day. Some are from the archives, some have been written long ago, and others will be new. I am also going to participate in the NaPoWriMo at www.poets. org. This is an adaption of the National Novel Writing Month contest.

When my brother was our visiting writer at our annual writing retreat last summer, I composed this poem based on one of his exercises:

Filling the Vase

Writing is wandering through the
garden path harvesting morning flowers.
Gathering leaves, finding fillers,
snipping blossoms as they begin to open.
Pausing to reflect and even observe
while paying attention to the smells.

Gold, chartreuse, and deep purple become the wondrous words,
thorny stems phrases cut too deep.
The combination of textures sort the sentence variety
over powered by the sweet scent of similes.

The violet vase is the vessel of form
Aligning the sentences, arranging the words,
Taming texture with attention to audience.

Place the bouquet on the farmhouse table,
or away for a spell to let the contents settle.

inlandempiregirl June 24, 2008