NaPoWriMo 2026 Discussion Thread

[Tallyfire]

April 15th:

K. Siva Reddy’s poem, “A Love Song Between Two Generations,” weaves together repetitions, questions, and unexpected similes with plain language. The overall effect is both intimate and emotional, producing a long-form meditation on what love is, what it means, and how it acts. Today, we’d like you to write your own poem that muses on love, but isn’t a traditional love poem in the sense of expressing love between romantic partners.

 

[Tallyfire]

April 16th:

In “Ocean,” Robinson Jeffers delivers an almost oracular, scriptural description of the sea not just as a geographical phenomenon, but a sort of being – old, wise, profound, and able to teach those who want to learn. Today, try writing a poem in which you describe something that cannot speak, and what it has taught or told you.

 

[Tallyfire]

Ocean is a poem I think I’ll have to read again and again. Wow.

One thing I’m enjoying this month is seeing my understanding of what poetry is (and isn’t) change. I’ve always wanted to read more about it and NaPoWriMo is a lovely resource for that.

 

[Woof]

Ocean is a poem I think I’ll have to read again and again. Wow.

One thing I’m enjoying this month is seeing my understanding of what poetry is (and isn’t) change. I’ve always wanted to read more about it and NaPoWriMo is a lovely resource for that.

I agree. There's a lot to love in it and a little extra in each read. What surprises me most is it was written in the 1920s by a guy who died in the 1960s but it sounds like it was born of that beatnik era at the earliest, or even influenced by it.

I think it points to one aspect of what you were saying about feeling your understanding of the nature of poetry shifting the more you explore. For me, it's recognising the simplification of poetry into eras of style is just a retroactive tidying up of fashions through history and is in no way definitive.

 

[Tallyfire]

April 17th:

Sergio Raimondi’s poem, “Today Matsuo Basho Cooks,” plays on the following haiku by (you guessed it), Matsuo Basho:

Crimson pepper pod!
Add two pairs of wings, and look—
darting dragonfly.

For today’s challenge, write a poem in which you respond to a favorite poem by another poet.

 

[Tallyfire]

What surprises me most is it was written in the 1920s by a guy who died in the 1960s but it sounds like it was born of that beatnik era at the earliest, or even influenced by it.

I don’t know anything about beatnik style or eras of poetry, but I was also surprised by its age! I would have guessed much later.

 

[Woof]

I don’t know anything about beatnik style or eras of poetry, but I was also surprised by its age! I would have guessed much later.

I know a little from broken bits of formal study that honestly almost completely put me off poetry. I've been having a bit of a poke around though with renewed curiosity and found this site interesting: beatdom

 

[Socks Fox]

I know a little from broken bits of formal study that honestly almost completely put me off poetry. I've been having a bit of a poke around though with renewed curiosity and found this site interesting: beatdom

What's interesting is the irony of the beatnik scene becoming a prominent and exclusionary group within academia. If you've ever encountered the clique that loves to exclude others due to their inferiorities some of these groups are the archetype. They have become the very thing they sought to rebel against through enlightened and intellectual superiority.

 

[Tallyfire]

April 18th:

When I was growing up, there was a book of poems in my house (I believe it was The Best Loved Poems of the American People) that was heavy on long, maudlin, narrative poems with lots and lots of rhyme – the sort of verse that used to be parodied on Bulwinkle’s Corner. As the twentieth century rolled in, poems like this were relegated to the status of stuff-schoolkids-were-forced-to-memorize, and they plummeted even further into our cultural memory-hole as learning poems by heart fell out of educational currency. But while some work in this style is extremely cringeworthy (I’m looking at you, “Bingen on the Rhine”), they can also be very fun to read. Take, for example, Sadakichi Hartmann’s “The Pirate,” or Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman.” The action is dramatic, there’s lots of emotions, and the imagery is striking.

Today, we don’t challenge you to write all of a long, dramatic, narrative poem, but we invite you to try your hand at writing a poem that could be a section or piece of one. Include rhyme, include unlikely and dramatic scenes (maybe a poem about a bank robbery! Or an avalanche! Or Roman gladiators! Or an enormous ball held by mermaids, where there is an undercurrent (hee) of palace intrigue!) Basically, a poem with the plot of an opera (evil twins! Egyptian tombs! Star-crossed lovers! Tigers for no apparent reason!)

 

[Woof]

What's interesting is the irony of the beatnik scene becoming a prominent and exclusionary group within academia. If you've ever encountered the clique that loves to exclude others due to their inferiorities some of these groups are the archetype. They have become the very thing they sought to rebel against through enlightened and intellectual superiority.

I know exactly what you mean unfortunately. Grey areas, fluidity, that becomes suddenly very absolute once a little bit of power is added into the mix. It's the inevitability of recognition, remuneration and the endorphins popularity releases I think.
I like to believe I'd do better but that's spoken from a place of never having had to test that theory and I don't expect to