NaPoWriMo 2011 Prompt & Poem for April 27, 2011 27/30

And then there were 4….   27 days or writing and sharing a brand new poem.  Wow.  Been doing it every day?  Most days?  Thinking about it?  Reading some poems?  FANTASTIC!!!

Write an Anaphora poem. An Anaphora is defined as  “the repetition of a word or expression several times within a clause or within a paragraph”.   It’s origin is Greek and the word means a” carrying up or back,” and it refers to a type of parallelism created when successive phrases or lines begin with the same words, often resembling a litany. The repetition can be as simple as a single word or as long as an entire phrase.  In poetry the repetition of the phrase can be just at the beginning of each line, setting the tone as a meditation or a mantra, or it can be utilized more subtlety within the poem.   It’s one of the oldest literary devices and you’ll find it used in Biblical Psalms and William Shakespeare frequently wrote Anaphora poems…some merely repeat the word AND at the beginning of each line.   Hopefully you’ll be more creative than that.  (Yes, you are now going to be MORE creative than Shakespeare!)

Other examples of poets using Anaphora include  Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” Section V of “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot, and “From a Litany” by Mark Strand.

So write one  your poem can be free verse or prose style.

If you use the repeated words at the end of the line it is called:  an epistrophe.

As an additional double dog dare challenge  use frog and frogs in your poem more than once….and write a poem longer than 10 lines.

Ready?  Begin.

Tonight’s the night!

by Chris & Teresa Jarmick

Proud, the old reptile flexes, croaks, “tonight’s the night’ before leaping into the darkness.

Distracted by the news, the music; a haunted memory

he imagines the treetops sweeping the clouds away from the rising moon.

The too-loud voice from the radio commercial screams; ‘A diamond tells her: ‘Tonight’s the Night!”

Yes, Tonight’s the Night she thinks brushing her hair, anticipating the phone call.

An owl dives through the trees into brush after his rodent prey. Tonight, he eats.

Confused, faithless, youth steps out onto the ledge

‘Tonight’s the night’ he says entering the club taking a deep confident breath.

Herons follow the sounds of croaking frogs anticipating a feast.

Then again, maybe tonight’s NOT the night.

© 2011

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