{"id":29166,"date":"2016-08-14T20:22:15","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T00:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=29166"},"modified":"2016-08-14T20:22:31","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T00:22:31","slug":"poetry-marathon-2016-my-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/poetry-marathon-2016-my-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Marathon 2016: My recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I participated in my first poetry marathon<\/a>. Well, technically the half marathon. Twelve new poems in twelve hours. This morning, I\u2019m very tired.<\/p>\n

The whole exercise was deceptively difficult\u2014not that I thought it would be so easy, but when I sit down with my big sketchbook to write, I often will write three or four poems at a time, taking maybe twenty minutes or so. That\u2019s what I was thinking would happen when I signed up.<\/span><\/p>\n

The way it actually worked was that I would spend time writing my poem for the hour, then edit until I was satisfied with the result, at which time I would then post the poem to the website (and to my own blog).<\/p>\n

The first couple of poems came very easily; it did not take me very long to get what I wanted. I posted my first poem at 6:17, and my second at 7:08.<\/p>\n

With hour three, I hit a wall. The words did not come as quickly, and I spent more time editing than I did writing. I posted my third poem at 8:32.<\/p>\n

I started on my fourth poem a few minutes before the hour. It was shaping up to be another slog until I checked the prompt; after that, it went smoothly. I posted this poem at 9:17.<\/p>\n

The next three hours dragged; as soon as I finished one poem, I\u2019d be thinking about the next. Though I didn\u2019t have much trouble coming up with something to write about, I still spent most of hour five on my poem, posting the finished piece at 10:47. Hour six was just horrible: I started and erased a couple of different poems before writing one I liked\u2014finishing just under the wire, at 11:58. Hour seven wasn\u2019t much better: it took seeing a couple of pennies on my desk for me to come up with a poem worth posting; I finished that one at 12:52.<\/p>\n

The prompt posted for hour eight\u2014write a pantoum\u2014saved me a lot of trouble. Since I had spent the month of March doing just that, I was able to get right into it; by 1:17, I had my finished piece.<\/p>\n

Hour nine was another sticky one. It was only after I made myself write a haiku in order to simplify things that I wrote something I was happy with. I posted my ninth poem at 2:32.<\/p>\n

For hour ten, I decided to save myself a lot of trouble by turning to a book on film posters that I\u2019d bought at the library for a buck. I opened it up to a couple of pages, and started underlining phrases here and there; after adding a couple of new lines, I posted my poem at 3:17.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I finally felt like I had enough time to pause for a shower. Before that, I had kept putting it off, reasoning that I wanted to be ready when the next hour came around.<\/p>\n

Refreshed, I started hour eleven by checking the prompt, which was to write a poem from the point of view of someone without a home. I dusted off a phrase I had come up with many years ago (\u2018neither neither nor nor\u2019), and finally did it justice. I posted my eleventh poem at 4:16.<\/p>\n

For the final hour of the half marathon, I again chose to follow the prompt, which was to use at least five out of a list of eight words. I wrote the poem in a few minutes, then spent about twenty minutes to re-arrange lines and polish. I uploaded this last piece at 5:31.<\/p>\n

Then I went to a poetry reading. The open-mic portion went two rounds, so I was able to read five of the twelve poems I had written over the course of the day.<\/p>\n

Overall, I\u2019m happy with the results of the day\u2019s work. I did make small edits to a couple of the poems after the fact, but otherwise I ended up with twelve complete poems that I like. More importantly, I was able to accomplish this in a single day.<\/p>\n

There is a very good chance I will do this again next year; it\u2019s a creative exercise well worth doing. I\u2019ll stick with the half marathon, though\u2014I still value my sleep\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I participated in my first poetry marathon. Well, technically the half marathon. Twelve new poems in twelve hours. This morning, I\u2019m very tired. The whole exercise was deceptively difficult\u2014not that I thought it would be so easy, but when I sit down with my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":793,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/793"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29167,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29166\/revisions\/29167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}