Day 3: Will

I live in the space
Between thinking and acting
Power in the pause

For day three, the three line poetic form of a Haiku seemed to be natural. Defined as a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression.

This poem focuses on the Stoic practice of Hesitation to allow will, choice, to be activated to direct virtuous actions.

Day 2: Fear

Seize errors. The sound mind acknowledges inadequacy. Do not ever cease from stretching beyond contentment.
Be confident when taking the stumbling steps forward. Your true character also grows from your defeats. Always strive.

For day 2, I have chosen to do a a specialized Oulipo, specifically a Syllabically incremental thesauric reflective septet, based on a saying on fear by Benjamin Franklin.

An Oulipo is a fairly open form of poetry (invented in the 60's) which applies numerical restrictions to the construction of the poem. It also encourages the use of existing phrases or poems as the basis for new works.

I am conceptually paralleling the original saying and breaking it down into seven concepts:

Do not fear | mistakes. | You | will know | failure. | Continue | to reach out.

By syllabically incremental, I mean that the number of syllables in each parallel concept increase by one until it reaches the set number. In my case I am choosing to limit myself to seven concepts.

To satisfy my interpretation of the challenges requirements, I have repeated the exercise to create a second line, but with a modification. In the second line continue to parallel the concepts but reflect the pattern by reversing the cascade, beginning with seven syllables and working back to one.

Here is the conceptual breakdown (going from one syllable to seven, then seven to one.) The first concept of each line below aligns to the first concept in the original phrase, onto the seventh.:

Seize | errors. | The sound mind| acknowledges | inadequacy. | Do not ever cease from |stretching beyond contentment.
Be confident when taking | the stumbling steps forward. | Your true character | also learns from | your defeats.| Always | strive.

Day 1: Change

"Epictetus

Though all is changed by time and tide, yet only I, the man inside."

Along with my personal challenge, I thought that I might take the opportunity to explore different poetic forms throughout the 66 days. I will need to repeat some, of course, but the idea is to expand and express.

My first poem, one line, is written as a basic epigram. An epigram is described as a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. In modern times, the epigrams has been codified by various authors as rhyming couplets (the line above is easily divisible), of varying lengths, though the form has ancient roots, dating back to Greco-Roman times.

The Challenge

This challenge was born in the fertile imagination of my son Adam. He has been putting himself through a fairly rigourous physical regimen and tracking his results. He decided to extend this effort of self-improvement to his creative side as well, and instituted the 66 Day Poetry Challenge. This blog will be the record of my attempts to complete the exercises.

His original description of the challenge follows:

For the next 66 days, I'll be writing one poem a day. Each day's poem will be one sentence longer than the last (configured however). Which means that new formats will become available as time goes by!! It's about cultivating the creative habit, and constraints help, and 66 days is the average for habit acquisition.

I'll add topics as we go, and they'll be drawn from the group, but to start here's the first week:

1. Change
2. Fear
3. Will
4. Winter
5. Family
6. Quiet
7. Hunger

Have more ideas? Submit them! :D And the more the merrier on the poems themselves! Also, feel free to invite more people, on one condition : they need to either provide a topic, or join the challenge! This is not to show off, this is to flex our writing muscles!! So feel free to fail, flounder, and fly! 

 So here we go, Day 1 is the 17th of December, 2012.