NaPoWriMo Prompt 23

By on Apr 23, 2015 in Blog

Woman painting cherry blossoms

“Woman Painting Cherry Blossoms” by Adam Brill (https://www.flickr.com/photos/adametrnal/)

On day 23 of the NaPoWriMo challenge, “T” is for “Transcendentalism.” This was a poetic movement of the mid-19th Century, outlined by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1836 manifesto “Nature.” According to the Poetry Foundation’s page on the movement, Emerson explained “that the natural and material world exists to reveal universal meaning to the individual soul via one’s subjective experiences. He promoted the poet’s role as seer, a ‘transparent eyeball’ that received insight intuitively through his or her perception of nature.”

So today, draw inspiration from nature. Start with immediate, concrete imagery, using as many of the five senses as possible, but expand the poem into deeper insights about yourself, or human experience, or even the universe.

Feel free to share your poem (or a link to your poem) in the comments.

The NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) challenge is to write 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. Find out more at the official site, NaPoWriMo.net.

About

Alyce Wilson is the editor of Wild Violet and in her copious spare time writes humor, non-fiction, fiction and poetry and infrequently keeps an online journal. Her first chapbook, Picturebook of the Martyrs; her e-book/pamphlet, Stay Out of the Bin! An Editor's Tips on Getting Published in Lit Mags ; her book of essays and columns, The Art of Life; her humorous nonfiction ebook, Dedicated Idiocy: How Monty Python Fandom Changed My Life, and her newest poetry collection, Owning the Ghosts, can all be ordered from her Web site, AlyceWilson.com. In late 2019, she published a volume of poetry by her third great-grandfather, Reading's Physician Poet: Poems by Dr. James Meredith Mathews, which also contains genealogical information about the Mathews family. She lives with her husband and son in the Philadelphia area and takes far too many photos of her handsome, creative son, nicknamed Kung Fu Panda.