November 2010 Poem A Day Challenge - Day 1

Let the games begin!

Poetic Asides prompt:

    "For today's prompt, I want poets to take one step back and write a "closing the door" or "turning the page" poem. Feel encouraged to get creative with today's prompt (and the other 29 prompts--for that matter), but here's how I interpret this prompt: a poem that looks at where a person (or animal or thing) was and finds resolution with the fact that things won't be that way again."

So here I am again starting a Poem A Day Challenge. Why do I do this? It’s a good way to bring some new ideas to my poems. I can write every day and often do, but writing to a specific prompt- especially one that isn’t my own – keeps me from getting tunnel vision. It also keeps me from getting stuck in a rut and writing on the same topic until I’ll sick of it and have been writing drivel for three days and just haven’t realized it.

It’s also a time to participate in something a bit bigger than me and my little writing world. Face it, a lot of poets are quite happy with being social recluses, even on the Internet. The Challenge gives me a chance to emerge and blink in the sunlight for a while.

On today’s prompt I had to take a while to ponder the phrases "closing the door" and "turning the page", and figure out what they meant to me. What do I want to say about resolution, finality, or the ability to move on? Are we talking conflict resolution or resolution as in “the act of analyzing a complex notion into a simpler one”? When I think of closing a door, am I closing things out or am I closing the door to keep things in?

Does “turning the page” imply a sort of finality? "Closing the door" and "turning the page" can mean the same thing, or there can be some variables between them. I come back to Heraclitus’ quote: “You can never step into the same river; for new waters are always flowing on to you.” Then I thought of turning a page, getting a papercut, the blood dripping on a clean white surface just before my mind turned to cartoons, and the hall full of doors characters chase each other in and out of . . . 

That’s the way my mind started out wrestling with the prompt. Some days the idea for a poem pops right into my head, other days I have to worry it like a dog with a chew bone.

I’ve decided to try and write my tanka or haiku component with the prompt. This time, the prompt was a jumping off point that worked quite well. Here’s hoping the rest of the month is as productive.

10/01 TALLY

Poems -1

Haiku - 1

Tanka - 4