The 23rd Day 0f the 3rd month, in the second year of the C-19 era.
Dateline El Paso Texas … Home of the Amigo Man! H. W. “Bill” Sparks
The world was already awake and a half-step ahead of me when I awoke this morning. The air outside was crisp and the skies were clear in my corner of the Universe.
As I sat and read the newspaper with my ubiquitous coffee and navel orange, I was pleased with myself at how quickly I was able to complete the Jumble Word Puzzle and the daily Cryptoquote. I was raised to believe that pride is a terrible thing but a mental pat on the back should be ok, huh?
There was a short piece in the paper that caught my attention this morning. Normally, I scan through the pieces from USA Today writers that show up in the El Paso Times. But this one had the word “poetry” in the headline: Can parents find poetry in the mundane? So, I stopped for a moment to read the article.
The article was by Caleb Harris, a writer from the Austin American-Statesman, another paper that is part of the USA Today network.
For those that know me, I profess to be a wannabee Hemingway. I regularly attend the local creative writing workshops at The Tumblewords Project, created by local poet, Donna Snyder, on Saturdays. Many of the writers that participate in these workshops are poets and they have inspired, or infected me, to write some open verse poetry of my own from time to time.
April is National Poetry Month and there will be a strong emphasis on poetry writing during the upcoming workshops. As a teenager, I was fascinated with some of the works of G. K. Chesterton, so when Mr. Harris threw in poetry and Chesterton in the same article, I was hooked.
The answer to the question in the headline was a challenge. Mr. Harris called it the Chesterton Challenge, that is, to take the idea that any object, even “the most prosaic everyday object can be (or rather is) poetic in nature.” That, according to Chesterton, “sense that everything is poetical is a thing solid and absolute” and “ascertainable.”
My challenge is to rise to my aspirations. I will use the month of April to take whatever poems I have scattered around my home office and computer and put them together into a chapbook.
My challenge to all of you is to gather up your imagination and your close family and friends and write some poetry of your own about everyday things in your corner of the Universe.
Ready – set – GO!
National Poetry Month | Academy of American Poets
