National Poetry Month 2017

Dear Readers,

It’s April again, which means this project is back in its eighth (!) annual incarnation.

The rules are simple:

- In the morning I will draw a card to select a prompt

- I will then roll the dice to select a poetic form (system detailed below)

- Whatever prompt and form I land on, I have to write and post by the end of the day - whether it be a Limerick about Hillary Clinton or a Haiku about Charles Shaw Wine

- I will write and post every day in April

This year's prompts are a selection from the last seven years of projects:

  

2	c	Silver Alerts
2	d	Making America Great Again
2	s	Palate Cleansers
2	h	Potential Energy
3	c	Noble Lies
3	d	Three Buck Chuck
3	s	Scratch Tickets
3	h	Subway Alliances
4	c	Female Pattern Baldness
4	d	Running into the Little Brother of an Ex-Lover
4	s	Furies
4	h	Furries
5	c	Sleeper Cells
5	d	Invisible People
5	s	Triremes
5	h	Idylls and Epics
6	c	Ebbs and Flows
6	d	Cicadas
6	s	Catharism
6	h	Constellations
7	c	Bay State Road
7	d	Blue Monday
7	s	The Yoke of Fame
7	h	The Crescent Express
8	c	Early Departures
8	d	Late Arrivals
8	s	Foreplay
8	h	Afterglow
9	c	Bonfires
9	d	Stage Kisses
9	s	Mint Juleps
9	h	Melanin
10	c	Water Towers
10	d	White Christmas
10	s	When the Dead Don’t Die
10	h	William Blake References
J	c	An Unspoken History of Family Names
J	d	Angulimala
J	s	Errant Knights
J	h	Resident Ghosts
Q	c	Mitochondrial DNA
Q	d	Hillary Clinton
Q	s	The Moana Surfrider Hotel
Q	h	Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe
K	c	Divine Right
K	d	The Starman
K	s	Fat Elvis
K	h	Thanks, Obama
A	c	Apocalyptic Dreams
A	d	Apocalyptic Realities
A	s	Chosen People
A	h	Small Victories
JOKER		Sean Spicer
JOKER		John Mayer Starts Over
JOKER		Wild Card

I will then roll a six-sided die to determine form:

1	Tweet Length
2	Roll
3	Haiku
4	Iambic Tetrameter
5	Iambic Pentameter
6	Roll

On a 1 or 3: I'm set with what I need - I write and post

On a 4 or 5: I roll a twenty-sided die to determine the number of lines

On a 2 or 6: I roll a twenty-sided die to select from a grab bag of poetic forms:

1	Sestina
2	Free Verse
3	Ruba'i
4	Tanka
5	Folk Song
6	Alexandrine Couplets
7	Beat Poem
8	Prose
9	Free Verse
10	Rondeau
11	Villanelle
12	Triolet
13	Limerick
14	Free Verse
15	Acrostic
16	Prose
17	Hip-Hopera (detail)
18	Bruce Springsteen Song
19	Craigslist Missed Collection
20	Writer's Choice

That's it!

Expect a poem - or a "poem" - here tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, friends (and bots)!

Z