Jo Chern

Tag: writing poetry

  • NaPoWriMo: Not Just Late But Dead In The Water

    I have fallen so far behind on my poem a day schedule that I’m likely to end up with something more like a “National Poetry Writing Week and A Half.” But I’m promising myself that I will step it up and get back on the horse: more mixed metaphors anyone? So I go back to…

  • NaPoWriMo: Too late, too late; no time, no time!!

    Sunday. Isn’t that supposed to be a day of rest? Apparently not for a Jewish-Taoist because I was running most of the day. For good purpose. My late afternoon QiGong class was attended by lovely people who needed the unwinding at the end of the day: a woman who works with dementia patients; another who…

  • NaPoWriMo Day 4: Prompt-ly

    I didn’t think I’d be prompted by NaPoWriMo’s daily prompts but, indeed, today’s I especially like: writing a “lune,” a three line stanza reminiscent of haiku but not forcing our non-syllabic language into syllabic form so natural for Japanese. Instead of the 5-7-5 syllable count, lune uses a 3-5-3 word count. And since that reminds…

  • NaPoWriMo Day 3: A Descent Into Silly

    Back to my original plan of dabbling in forms, rhymes, rhythms, poetics. While an appreciator of limericks, I–quite simply–suck at them. I can never get the saucy air, the lilt that carries the reader along line to line hanging off the side of the horse, as it were. But I need to write one so…

  • Why Write If You Can’t Write Anything Nice

    NaPoWriMo: Day 1. Oh, grand. I’m supposed to write a poem a day in April and I’m already out of ideas. But that never stopped me before. So I’m going to start with a short rhymed–abacadaea–piece about something I heard listening to an audio of a Alexander McCall Smith story the other day. Is it…

  • “The time has come, the walrus said…”

    Eve of NaPoWriMo. Poetry exercises done: 0. Ah, yes, the cruelest month, indeed. My favorite book on writing poetry came from an unexpected source. I’ve been a fan of Stephen Fry since he and Hugh Laurie did their sketch comedy show on BBC and can’t read P.G. Wodehouse without his voice as Jeeves. But when…