To NaPoWriMo, or not to NaPoWriMo? Much of my time in the last few weeks has been spent in queasy contemplation of this question. Every few hours, I felt the familiar vise of fear and terror and joyous expectation that accompanies any contemplation of a plan to dedicate myself to writing a poem a day for a month. And not just any month: April. April, that most hellish of months, when the papers pile up, the exams demand to be made and administered, the students realize that spring has sprung and each class requires one hundred and sixty times more energy in order to get them to focus on Krapp’s Last Tape and The Wasteland rather than the sight of seventy or more of their closest friends sunning themselves on the lawn outside the window. April, the academic’s nightmare, the month that usually leaves me comatose on the couch watching America’s Next Top Model marathons for days — and a poem a day, on top of this?

At the end of NaPoWriMo last year, I felt like Martin Sheen at the end of Apocalypse Now. I had traveled down the terrifying river, I had seen the horror, the horror. There’s no sequel to Apocalypse Now, and there’s a reason for that. I decided no, no thank you — I might try this in a more amenable month, like June or even August, but NaPoWriMo during NaPoMo? No thank you. No thank you very much indeed, sir.

Or so I thought. My mouth, of course, often does not first discuss things with my brain, and this leads me into trouble — this time, of the poem-a-day-during-the-busiest-month-of-the-year kind. Yesterday, I drove to Valley for my outreach program. Whitney and I had decided to find a way to ease the students into form, and I designed a whizbanger of a class plan based on Nice Hat. Thanks. It went remarkably well. Miraculously well. You could practically see the light bulbs flashing in a fluorescence brighter than they’d ever flashed over the students’ heads. Poetry was fun! Poetry was sheer joy! Poetry was exhilarating! And at the end of class, Whitney and I talked to the students about the importance of regular practice, of writing even when the school is overtaken by the testing aliens.

And then it happened. My mouth opened. My tongue went into position to form sounds which would make themselves into words. And the words were as follows: “April is National Poetry Month, and a lot of poets do this thing called NaPoWriMo, where they write a poem a day. Let’s do it together! I’ll do it, if you’ll do it! A poem a day! For a month! Who’s interested!” And the hands shot up, waving with joy — my hand included.

D’oh.

So, it looks like I’m going to be part of the NaPoWriMo crowd again, this time, sadly, partnerless, as Ross White has abandoned me, cruelly, on the side of the road with no shoes and no map. Oh, the horror. The horror

I do have to post some of the poems from our Nice Hat. Thanks. exercise, as they’re hilarious. Here’s an example written by Whitney, my co-teacher, and myself:

Your patchwork overcoat
got you thrown in the well.

And one from a student and I:

Flawlessly the man walks
into a power line.