Poetry Month Scouting Wrap Up

These two questions come from a survey sent by the Found Poetry editors:

1. What did you like best about the project? What parts came easy to you?
   I appreciated the challenge of the prompts; some were more challenging than others (a couple using websites as resources were especially frustrating).  But I felt a sense of accomplishment in over coming these challenges.  Any prompt that asked the poet to use the source material as "word banks" were the easiest.
   Having a goal of completing at least half the prompts (15 out of 30) was freeing; I felt very successful in completing 28 out of 30.
2. What did you like least about the project? What parts were difficult for you?
   I remember three websites that were challenging for me: the one for Haiku Anew, the erasure tool for Redacted, and the diastic tool for Spelling B.  I'll admit some of that challenge was likely due to my own time limitations, and concurrent impatience. I knew the "Out and About" prompts would be challenging – and the editors warned us these prompts would challenge our comfort zones.  As it turned out, I completed all but two of those "Out and About" prompts (the two which required the highest level of interaction with the public). 

I chose to take on this project with two goals: to flex my poetry muscles, and to generate more content for my blog.  The prompts have forced me to think of poetry in new ways (e.g., it doesn't necessarily have to tell a coherent story), and have given me some ideas for how to break writer's block in the future.  Since I was essentially writing a poem a day, I had to accept that many of these poems would be mediocre at best - some might not even qualify as poems. It was a good way to enforce the William Stafford method of writing a poem a day - I lowered my standards, of necessity.

As for generating content, I've had more posts this month than in some time, through writing about the process of responding to the prompts.  The links to the PoMoSco site will remain available to the general public through the end of May; after that point, I'll decide which poems to repost on this blog.  Flexing those muscles may inspire me to set myself a modest goal of writing at least one poem a week (or month).

I especially enjoyed the prompts which directed the poet to use text(s) as a word bank. I tend to get stuck on images and words, and this was a good way to break out of that habit.