NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 4th): Under the Gaze of Blue // The Portrait Above the Sink

From NaPoWriMo 2025 (Day Four): Hello, all, and welcome back for the first Friday of Na/GloPoWriMo 2025.

Our featured participant today is Marilyn Letts, whose response to Day Three’s “why I am not a . . . ” prompt is full of wordplay, and wonderfully lyrical.

Today’s daily resource is the online exhibitions page of the International Folk Art Museum. I have a particular predilection for folk art, in which the strange and boisterous so often finds itself going hand-in-hand with practical objects of daily use. But the museum also showcases work of other sorts, like 100 Aspects of the Moon, a series of woodblock prints completed by the Japanese artist Taiso Yoshitoshi shortly before his death in 1892.

Last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. In her poem, “Living with a Painting,” Denise Levertov describes just that. And well, that’s a pretty universal experience, isn’t it? It’s the rare human structure – be it a bedroom, kitchen, dentist’s office, or classroom – that doesn’t have art on its walls, even if it’s only the photos on a calendar. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem about living with a piece of art.

[I wrote two poems.]

# Under the Gaze of Blue

Each morning,
I wake to the silent gaze
of the woman in the painting,
her eyes a deep, unfathomable blue,
like the sky just before dusk.

She does not speak,
yet her stillness fills the room,
whispers of untold stories
hanging in the quiet air.

I wonder what she knows—
does she ever tire of the frame that confines her?
Does she long for the brushstrokes of time,
the movement of a world beyond her borders?
Perhaps she is content,
anchored in this corner,
offering her gaze as a quiet companion
to the noise of my morning.

The light shifts,
and she changes with it—
now warm, now cool,
her face caught between shadows
and the stretch of the day.

I leave her each time I step out,
but when I return, she is always there,
waiting,
as if nothing has changed
except the passing of light,
the turning of hours,
and my own quiet passage through her world.

# The Portrait Above the Sink

It’s a woman in a bonnet,
her eyes too soft to see the dishes,
but they do, somehow—
like ghosts in the mist of morning steam.
I don’t know who she is.
Maybe she’s the ghost
of all the lost mothers whose hands
never stopped scrubbing.
Maybe she’s the wind,
a hurricane that swept through her hair,
wild and uncut.
Maybe she’s me, in ten years,
looking at the faucet,
wondering how the water got so brown.

I live with her now,
her face a quiet hum behind my shoulder
while I dig for last night's spoon.
We’ve both seen the same kitchen
too many times—
her, locked in paint,
me, dragging my body
through the same repetitive motions
of pouring cereal,
scraping the pan,
scrubbing the counters
as though nothing changes,
but her eyes—
they always remind me
that something else might.

- Oizys.

NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 3rd): Why I Am a Poet and Not a Park Ranger

From NaPoWriMo 2025 (Day Three): Time keeps marching on, and so does Na/GloPoWriMo. And so, lo and behold, we find ourselves three days into our poem-a-day challenge.

Our featured daily participant is small burdens, where the response to Day Two’s Anne-Carson-inspired prompt is brings us an endearing little portrait/ode, and the lovely made-up word “flowersome.”

Today’s daily resource is the online art collection of South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. My own art history education is woefully catch-as-catch can, and the little I know of modern art is very much focused on American and European artists. So it was a treat to browse through a collection that is focused almost entirely on modern and contemporary art from outside those areas. I found particular pleasure in looking at Lee Hangsung’s prints, including this 1986 print of a poem in French by Katia Granoff.

And now for our (optional) prompt. The American poet Frank O’Hara was an art critic and friend to numerous painters and poets In New York City in the 1950s and 60s. His poems feature a breezy, funny, conversational style. His poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” is pretty characteristic, with actual dialogue and a playfully offhand tone. Following O’Hara, today we challenge you to write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!

Why I Am a Poet and Not a Park Ranger

I could’ve been a park ranger,
but I don’t like to wear hats
and the trees don't answer me when I talk to them.
I tried once, you know—
stood in front of a birch,
asked it how it was doing,
if it needed anything,
but it just stood there, rooted,
looking like it had a million years to think about things
and didn’t feel like sharing any of them with me.
So I became a poet.
I’m much better at listening to things
that don’t speak.

I could have been a sculptor—
but I don’t trust clay.
It’s too soft, like it knows it’s going to be something
but can’t quite decide what.
I tried to shape a face once—
ended up with a blob that looked like
a melted marshmallow on a bad day.
It sat there, glaring at me,
and I couldn’t decide if it was disappointed
or just indifferent.

I could’ve been a chef—
but the kitchen smells too much like work,
and I prefer when my ingredients are sentences,
not onions.
I once tried to make a cake,
but ended up with something more like a question
than dessert.
So I write—
I’m good with words,
better at letting them be messy and soft,
letting them rise without rules.

I could’ve been a librarian,
I do like rules about silence
and I really do like when the dust settles.
Books, though,
I could’ve worked in a bookshop.
Ah, books.
I think I was born in one.
Like the words just folded around me
and I came out blinking.
Books are my map,
my compass,
but in poetry—
the pages are still wet.
The ink spills,
and I get to say,
“See, this is how it feels to live inside a story.”
No dust, just the warmth of the next page.
So instead, I steal a bit of their rhythm
and make them talk back to me,
a poem is like a conversation,
except you don’t need to know how to cook
or use a Dewey decimal system.

I’m a poet because I’m in love with confusion,
with things half-said,
half-finished,
half-forgotten,
and because there’s no need to make them neat—
I can just scribble them out,
and maybe later—
they’ll look like something you can’t quite touch
but will never forget.

So, here I am,
writing about things that can’t be touched,
but need to be known.
A poem has no expiration date,
and you don’t need an oven or a telescope
to make it work.
All you need is a quiet place to sit
and a pen that doesn’t complain.
I can handle that.

- Oizys.