NaPoWriMo Day 9 – The Maple Speaks

Today’s prompt draws inspiration from Marianne Moore, a distinctive voice in modern poetry known not only for her style, but for her fascination with the natural world. Many of her poems step into the lives of animals or closely observe them—works like The Fish, The …

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NaPoWriMo Day 8 – EMT, I am! I am Not!

NaPoWriMo Day 8 Prompt for the day is… Use repetition as your driving force today. Choose a simple phrase and return to it throughout your poem. Each time it appears, let it shift—contradict it, unravel it, or deepen its meaning in a new way. Allow …

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NaPoWriMo Day 7 – Pebble, Pocket, Skip

Today’s prompt took me somewhere unexpected. Back to childhood, to the sounds of playgrounds and sidewalks, to those simple rhymes we used to chant without thinking. Clapping hands, skipping rope, counting nonsense into something that felt like magic. There’s a kind of music in that—something …

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NaPoWriMo Day 6 – Monday, More or Less

Monday comes whether we welcome it or not, but during NaPoWriMo, even the start of the workweek carries a different weight—something lighter, stranger, more willing to bend. Today’s prompt leans into that looseness, taking a cue from Louise Glück and the idea that truth in …

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NaPoWriMo Day 5 – The Unforgivable Sock

Sunday settles in, and NaPoWriMo turns toward something sharper—something almost playful in its irritation. Borrowing from the spirit of Catullus and even the grumbling honesty of Charles Darwin, today’s prompt invites us to exaggerate our dislikes, to take something small and make it thunder. Here’s …

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NaPoWriMo Day 3 – What the Fire Really Is

Friday finds us at Day 3 of NaPoWriMo, where each prompt asks us to see the familiar from a different angle. Today’s challenge invites us to reshape a profession—to strip away the polished image and reveal something truer, rougher beneath it. This piece is my …

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NaPoWriMo Day 2 – The Shape of Leaving: Childhood Memories

April opens its doors, and with it I step into the quiet ritual of NaPoWriMo—a month of daily poems, of dusting off memory and letting it speak in its own weathered voice. Today’s challenge turns back toward childhood, toward those early moments that quietly foretold …

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NaPoWriMo Day 13: The Gold Light in Quiet Rooms

By @RWhiteAuthor 🌿 NaPoWriMo Day 13: Inspired by Donald Justice’s “There is a gold light in certain old paintings” Today’s poem explores memory, art, and the way moments—like brushstrokes—blur and echo in the mind. Following Justice’s self-invented form, each stanza holds six lines of twelve syllables. …

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NaPoWriMo Day 2: From Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Drawn from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this blackout poem explores the philosophy of self-overcoming. Nietzsche famously wrote, “One must have chaos within to give birth to a dancing star.” This piece embraces that tension—how darkness, struggle, and the unknown shape transformation. The erasure leaves behind fragments of existential battle and ascent, mirroring the journey of one who dares to evolve beyond their former self.

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