Day 16: Art likes to make more of itself

Challenge 16: “Today, I challenge you to write a poem that uses the form of a list to defamiliarize the mundane.”

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

Charles Bukowski

Don’t you like the sound of that? This can be everything! I loved something else from today’s prompt: one sentence that I made into the title of this post and my poem. Thank you!

The poem is a cento. If you don’t know what it means, try to see if there is anything familiar about certain lines. All will not be familiar to all but read carefully. You never know…

Art likes to make more of itself

There is no point to this poem. 1 
I would like to walk around
in a small coat of words 2
through the meadows  
where no grass has ever grown. 3
I keep forgetting what
a tired country this is. 4
Worms worm,
seeds sowing. 5
When you go back to your home town
you realize you no longer have one. 6
You complain to the photos,  
but it doesn’t matter. 7
There is not a single spot in this world  
that still deserves to be called peaceful. 8
It is the hour when from the boughs
Union beer’s high note is heard. 9
Everything is broken up and dances. 10
Even now, in the blues, there is a beauty
and options. 11
People have lived here for 6000 years.
At the beginning, women ruled. 12
I could feel waves of hatred and
I was confused. 13
I wait for the return
of conversation. 14
Don’t wait for the want.  
Just do and be gentle. 15
Wear a mask
which exactly resembles your face. 16
I know too much
and not enough 17
to wear red lipstick but not a bra. 18
I’d give myself
one more day with you, 19
the known positions in which  
familiar lovers arrange their limbs, to sleep. 20
We are glad that we are not trees  
for in that case we could not be as close. 21
A perfectly obvious deception: 22
The coward does it with a kiss,
the brave man with a sword! 23
Willie waters the world, 24
cold water cascades over. 25
“Look, Mon Cheri, it’s your friend!” 26
Bummer, you have a black curl.
Bummer, it’s a girl. 27
The horse knew well why he got scared. 28
We leave when we die.  
Until then there is work to do. 29
I’ve taken
to rearranging books on the shelf. 30
I have six really good poems.  
I hope I will write more of them. 31
I wish to eat cake every day. 32
And hope felt strong,  
and life itself not weak. 33
Wish you were here
moving mountains with me. 34
Thank you for stopping here  
to see me at home in my home. 35

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And now a big reveal: This poem is entirely made up of words by 35 other people! Some of them you have studied, others not unless you are Slovenian because they are local. Some are family (father, mother, uncle), some are friends and followers, and a special surprise: nine of them are you, NaPoWriMo participants, the ones who gel with my perception of what poetry is the most.

As I said, I’m keeping score and poems that I really liked in the first half were written by 136 different poets!

The nine with best scores are (alphabetically) Angela Smith, Angela van Son (ProcrastinationCoach), Charlotte Hamrick, Emily Ramser, Jane Dougherty, Mary Beth Frezon, MD Kerr, Ming Liu and Nataša Božić Grojić. Out of 15 poems by each of you I loved 11 or 12. The best thing about it is that I only know Charlotte, all the others are new to me.

After you come ten with ten loved poems apiece but I couldn’t include them as well or the poem would be too long. One half to go! End results could be different!

Here is a list of all 35 poets with links to their poems from which I borrowed the lines. They are in the same order as above in the poem. The links lead either to their blogs or mine if the poems are translations from Slovenian (usually done by me) or to an external page with the poem in full:

1. Erica Jong
2. Srečko Kosovel
3. Kajetan Kovič
4. Ming Liu
5. Jane Dougherty
6. Lidija Dimkovska
7. Duke Miller
8. Aleš Mustar
9. Matic Kovič, uncle (he takes familiar poems and rewrites them on the subject of beer, for example he tackled Byron and his Parisina)
10. James Douglas Morrison (aka Jim)
11. Patrick Jennings
12. Nataša Božić Grojić
13. Charles Bukowski
14. Mary Beth Frezon
15. Angela van Son
16. Angela Smith
17. Allen Ginsberg
18. Emily Ramser
19. Charlotte Hamrick
20. MD Kerr
21. Branko Maksimovič, father
22. Miha Avanzo
23. Oscar Wilde
24. Boris A. Novak
25. Dane Zajc
26. Maggie from What Rhymes with Stanza?
27. Bojana Stojcic
28. Vitomil Zupan
29. Kara Coryell
30. Romana Iorga
31. Tomaž Šalamun
32. Meta Maksimovič, mother
33. Christina Georgina Rossetti
34. Susanne Fletcher
35. Claudia McGill

Thank you and I love you all because you rock!

Here are some topical photos and then sleeep. It’s almost 4 am. What I give up for poetry! 😉

Mother’s poems for children. Title: Present. I translated it into English but so far mom got the only copy for her birthday.

Father’s poem in a newspaper when he was a student. From this poem come two lines in today’s poem. The link is above under “father”.

A rare meeting with a proper poet. With Boris A. Novak.

He did, and he does repeatedly. And now I obey, finally. Spotted in Trastevere, Rome.

Keeper of the Word.

Some of my stash. Not so many poems.

A bit high but from the heart.

A certain Kara the cat wording beautifully.

As does mom. She likes to write poems for birthdays. This was for mine.

Claudia’s books of poems in my olive tree.

Greatest Slovenian poet for 1 euro. Slippers were new too.

Last year my parents surprised me for my birthday with my April poems in not one…

…but two books! This one is deluxe edition. 😀

The back of mom’s book. When it’s finished, children can colour it.

For Day 16 of NaPoWriMo