Day One’s challenge is to write a poem like Kay Ryan.  I will do my best.  In a way, however, I think this sort of thing is almost self defeating.  To me, poetry should be about finding one’s own voice and speaking it to the universe… or at least a few close friends who will humor you and tell you that maybe, just maybe you have something worth saying.  So what exactly is  a Kay-Ryan-esque poem?  It is described as “short, tight lines, rhymes interwoven throughout, maybe an animal or two, and, if you can manage to stuff it in, a sharp little philosophical conclusion”.

I took a little gloss over the following linked interview and came up with the poem following the link:

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5889/kay-ryan-the-art-of-poetry-no-94-kay-ryan

Survival Class
by Michael Romani

One day it just arrives
As each day shucks and jives
Wishing you could take a pass
You find your own survival class

Though you wish it could be passed
For all those times you have sassed
There is a sense you have persevered
It's that sense that leaves you cheered

In an employment of recombinant rhyme
Hidden verbal jewels out of time
Utilize the things we find fanciful
Clinging to this world we find wonderful

There we were just putting on our airs
Sitting stolid in comfy electric chairs
Waiting for our self imposed execution
The sentence read death by electrocution

And so we find ourselves spreading outward
Never knowing on the net what's too forward
Self expectations of writing like a great poet
But if we did, just how would we know it?

(c) April 3, 2017 Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved