NaPoWriMo 2019 - Day 5

As I mentioned in the previous post, Day 5's prompt is quite a doozy. It has three possible parts: (1) form = villanelle (tricky tricky, but I like form prompts because I tend to defer to free verse), (2) lines taken from a different text, (3) opposing phrases. Maureen assures us that we can just do one or two or all three. Being a glutton for punishment, I want to attempt all three which may mean this poem doesn't get written . . .

P.S. Maureen explains what a villanelle is on the NaPo post for today, but I always like to look around for another explanation because sometimes a different explanation works better for me. Typically the poetry foundation is helpful. You can read their brief explanation of a villanelle (reiterating what Maureen has already told us) with a few more examples of the form here. "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas is a good, and perhaps well-known, example of the form.


These dreams started singing to me out of nowhere
Listening to that siren song, I started to think there might be another way
Till human voices wake us and we drown

I was living an average life
Nose to the grindstone working my days away but
These dreams started singing to me out of nowhere

Our generation was told if we worked hard anything was possible
So we dreamed big and set our sights high
Till human voices wake us and we drown

I've got loans to pay that keep me buried
I've got expectations that I need to meet but
These dreams started singing to me out of nowhere

Sometimes I want to walk away from the mundane
Believe the magic of happiness, dreams, and improbability
Till human voices wake us and we drown

I dreamed big, set my sights high, thought I knew how and why
But human practicality is inevitable
These dreams started singing to me out of nowhere
Till human voices wake us and we drown





Quick thoughts after writing:
It turns out when you borrow your repeating lines from other work; a lot of the poem writing is done for you. This was fun and I like the result. Putting those two lines together was somewhat like putting together a puzzle. Fun stuff. I THINK I may have ticked off all three of the prompt boxes hoo-ah!
I italicized the borrowed lines in the first stanza: the first is from the Switchfoot song "Awakening" the other is from my favorite stanza of a really well known poem by T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

Hasta la pasta (that's from something I think)

Sharon