I completed Poetics Aside’s April Poem-A-Day Challenge 2009, having written 30 poems in the last 30 days. I’m exhausted both mentally and physically (more on that in a few days — it’s my sprained ankle, basically). I set out to write at least 5 poems, and I wrote 6 times that number. Yay!!! 
It Is Done
April 30th, 2009 | Goals, On Writing
Congratulations!
Thanks, Megan!
I’m happy for you! Well done!
Hope your ankle is better.
Thank you, Sini.
I’ll let you know about the ankle.
Kicking a little ass, are we Barb?
Metaphorically speaking!
Get it? 
Barb! That is great news. Now let’s hope that one of the poems gets into the e-book.
You wrote 15 times more than I did; I only got 2 poems done, and I wrote those on the last two days for two earlier prompts an animal poem (4/4) and a sestina (4/28).
Sorry to hear about the sprained ankle. I hope you didn’t sprain the ankle writing a poem! I didn’t realize writing poems could be so physical or dangerous.
Damn. I thought I typed a dash between “prompts” and “an animal poem” above. Here are three dashes, just for fun: — — — Ha!
Uh, thanks for the dashes, Vince.
Well…think about it: you teach a full load in addition to everything else you do. I pretty much do whatever I want (sometimes nothing because of the frickin’ depression), and that includes writing. I’m doing my best to get back into it full force. In fact, while cleaning out file drawers, I found a thick “Works in Progress” folder that has a lot of good stuff in it! Plenty there, including revisions of the PAD poems. I have to admit, the sestina took a lot out of me — mentally, not physically!
I didn’t realize I never posted here about my sprained ankle. It’s in an FB note where I only tagged my hockey friends, but I’ll re-post it here.
P.S. – To leave a dash, type a space after the word, 2 hyphens, another space before the next word.
Yeah, yeah. Ha ha. You’re right, though, the spaces before and after are really important, otherwise the text could wrap between the hyphens.
That’s great you found that “Works in Progress” folder. Will working on that stuff help your depression?
About the sestina, did you peek at my sestina in the PAD challenge? It’s called “How to Write a Sestina,” with tongue firmly in cheek.
I’ve wanted to write a sestina like that for years, as a response to Tom Disch’s excellent how-to-write-a-sestina sestina titled “Thirty-Nine Articles.”
In that poem Disch says one should, for the sheer challenge of it, use the six words that first come to mind (or something like that). So in mine, I use “one two three four five six.”
For what it’s worth, though, Disch still kicks my ass. I’ll have to try again another time.
Hope the ankle and the depression are both getting better.
It was a gold mine finding that folder! As for whether or not it’ll help with my depression, I don’t know. The larger part is getting past my anxiety over writing and that, in turn would help a lot.
Congratulations on your sestina! Sad to say, or maybe you already know this, James Merrill wrote a sestina using the same end words as yours. It’s called “Tomorrows,” but I don’t think it’s about writing sestinas.
And I don’t have a copy of the poem. Or maybe I do; I’d have to dig around.
I agree, though, that coming up with the end words makes it, for me, anyway, a lot easier.