November 2010 Poem A Day Challenge - Day 29

The next to last Poetic Asides prompt:

For today's prompt, write a next steps poem. This might be a good opportunity to try writing a list poem. Or it might be a good time to write about your future plans. It might even be a good chance for you to write about spiral staircases. Who knows?

I wasn’t sure how to approach this one and finally wrote two poems, both introspective in nature. The first was about how easy it is to trap yourself in your own little world (and the steps to getting out), the second was about taking baby steps on the road to enlightenment in a “I want it all I want it now” society.

I’m not happy with either poem, they are too introspective, too narrow in focus and too me centric. I need to approach editing with an eye towards finding the universal and connecting the reader. Of course, that will be the editing goal for all the poems written this month. It’s easy to write about Me, I, and Myself, much harder to put the situation in terms We can understand.

One method I’ve used to shake things up is to look at a poem, if written in first person, change it to third person, and on the rare occasion, second person. It forces you to think differently about word choice and meaning. Sometimes it’s easier to get to the gist of what you wanted to say. Sometimes the poem won’t work no matter what you do, and the kind thing is to pull it from life support – hopefully stealing the good line or two to rework into a different poem.

Two haiku on the prompt, and two tanka, one on the prompt, one on the weather.


11/29 TALLY
Poems - 2
Haiku - 2
Tanka - 2

To Date Total
Poems - 45
Haiku - 35
Tanka - 55


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