I’ve surpassed my goal of writing 5-10 poems for the PAD Challenge and have written 16, which includes today’s prompt. On 4 out of the past 5 days I was able to write and submit poems on the same day the prompt was posted. I’m feeling pretty good about myself: I’m writing again — I can’t remember the last time I wrote a poem — maybe 7 years? And now I have 16. 
They aren’t all great; I mean, this challenge is more about quantity than quality, to just get yourself to write. After all the trouble I’ve had writing anything creative these past few years, this is working.
Yesterday’s prompt is to take the title of another poet’s poem, alter it, and use it as the title for your own poem, though you don’t have to write it in the same style as the original. Mine’s called “Barber at the Green Mill,” which I did style after the original, but in my own way. (Patricia Barber is a Chicago jazz pianist/vocalist who usually plays Monday nights at the Green Mill.) I won’t post mine here, but here’s the poem I chose to switch up the title. Anyone who may think they don’t understand poetry, I hope, will be surprised.
From the William Matthews book, Time & Money
———
“Mingus at The Showplace”
I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen,
and so I swung into action and wrote a poem,
and it was miserable, for that was how I thought
poetry worked: you digested experience and shat
literature. It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since
defunct, on West 4th St., and I sat at the bar,
casting beer money from a thin reel of ones,
the kid in the city, big ears like a puppy.
And I knew Mingus was a genius. I knew two
other things, but as it happened they were wrong.
So I made him look at the poem.
“There’s a lot of that going around,” he said,
and Sweet Baby Jesus he was right. He glowered
at me but he didn’t look as if he thought
bad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do.
If they were baseball executives they’d plot
to destroy sandlots everywhere so that the game
could be saved from children. Of course later
that night he fired his pianist in mid-number
and flurried him from the stand.
“We’ve suffered a diminuendo in personnel,”
he explained, and the band played on.
Go, Barb!
I think you have inspired me to try the poetry thing. After all as a future teacher, I will have to teach this too as part of Language Arts. I will have to think about this one. I like the prompt idea. Thanks!
@ Ayprel: Thanks!
@ Julie: I’m happy to hear that.
As I said before, a part of reading poetry is being able to recognize poetic devices (metaphor, simile, imagery, etc.), in order to fully appreciate a poem. Even line breaks are important!
Matthews is now a dead poet, but he wasn’t one of those DEAD poets we’re exposed to in high school. What attracts me to “Mingus at The Showplace” is its narrative style; it tells a story but the imagery is also vivid, and I also like the story’s irony.
I feel like such a heel, but I have never gotten poetry & I didn’t get that one, but trust me, it’s ME, not the poem.
I’m glad you’re writing, that is what’s important… you’re writing!
Don’t feel like a heel!!! For someone with a psych degree, I definitely don’t think it’s you, especially because I think that you could read so much into this particular poem, like, what’s going on with the “speaker” (the writer), you know? And anyway, don’t worry about it!
I’m glad I’m writing, too, and yes, that’s what’s important. Thanks for the support, Jane!