by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 26, 2026
Day 26: National Poetry Month
Writing a Z to A poem seems like a good way to wrap up the A to Z Challenge. There are, of course, still three days in National Poetry Month, so don’t get your hopes up. This isn’t the last day of questionable verse!
Last Curtain Call
Zealous, we begin the month! Another
Year of blogging A to Z – a perfect month for poetry – no
Xenoglossiphobia, we’ll borrow – steal – our
Words, so shamelessly! Come April, we will
Vow to entertain you with our posts
Unmatched and only loosely organized around a
Theme. Perhaps. By now, we ought to have a plan. We
Seek, instead, your approbation as you
Read. Your silence, lack of comments,
Questions, echoes deafening against
Petrosal basement walls. We’re not, in truth,
Omniscient. Our characters appear to be, but
Never think that we can read or guess what’s on your
Mind. Each day we fight against our innate
Laziness to write, to share. We walk the
Knife-edge of a line where fiction leads to truth and truth to
Justice. All the world’s a stage – all players cast an
Incandescent light. They are an honest mirror
Held for those who would prefer the
Grace that’s offered by the dark; they never have to
Face harsh truths when gentle lies are
Everywhere and everyone will
Delicately dance to spare their toes.
Can we ever find our equilibrium, our
Balance? In dusk’s penumbral
Astral light we end the month, and let the curtain fall.
Other National Poetry Month Posts
Your Turn!
Take a hint, leave a comment!
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 26, 2026
Day 25: National Poetry Month
Ars Poetica
I am a time-traveler. I reach into the void of tomorrow and pluck a prompt: “to write your own ars poetica, giving the reader some insight into what keeps you writing poetry, or what you think poetry should do”—but by the time it’s posted, it is a relic of the past and overripe. I tuck myself into the velvet folds of time. Coffee-scented present lures me—shoving me into the harsh light of “now.” Reality is a bruising, concrete block of time, a fixed and aching point. The coffee grows cold and bitter. Ink is a river traversed with my pen, its winding tributaries flowing, branching, turning, rushing rapids, slowing – in conversation with a gathering of stones.
Poetry Forms Challenge: Prose Poetry
What is a “prose poem”? I dive down rabbit holes and come up for air in great gulps. “Nobody knows.” No matter how many burrows and warrens I crawl through, I keep arriving at the same conclusion—a prose poem is…a painting in words. It isn’t a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It is more what publishers once called a “slice of life vignette,” usually preceded by the word “no.” It is a fragment, a moment, a mood, an emotion. It is visual and visceral, but it doesn’t do all the work for the reader.
And isn’t that what all good writing ought to be, or at least to include? Isn’t that what the writer does? Paint images in a reader’s mind to show the reader what’s in the writer’s mind? Surely not with long, narrative passages describing each dust mote as it sinks and rises through the thermals of a slanted sunbeam to settle on a baby’s toes. Not short and choppy, like the heavy thwack-slice of a guillotine as the pale head with its slender neck and wide-open eyes hits the hay for the last time. It doesn’t tell a story, it unfolds one. It is not a destination; it is the red pin in a map that proclaims to the reader: “You are here.”
I once asked James Matthew Wilson, “What’s the difference between a prose poem and flash fiction?” He suggested that if you wanted to write prose poetry, you ought to call it flash fiction if you want it to sell and be read. That’s a good point. I see so many submissions guidelines and contest requirements that say, “NO PROSE POEMS” and yet, flash fiction is still popular. Write what you will; just be sneaky if you write prose poetry and call it something else.
People love to ask writers, “What do you write?” As someone who has written technical manuals, non-fiction articles, short fiction (any and every genre), children’s books, flash fiction, erotica, blogs, poetry—it might be simpler to ask, “What don’t you write?” Because I finally figured out an answer to that one: I don’t write about finance. I would rather wax poetic about the sound of paint drying.
Other National Poetry Month Posts
Your Turn!
What are your thoughts on prose poetry?
What don’t you write?
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 25, 2026
Day 24: National Poetry Month
X is an interesting challenge, isn’t it? It isn’t really a poet’s friend, at least not in English. I can’t think of X without thinking of the Echthroi in Madeleine L’Engle’s books A Wrinkle in Time; A Wind in the Door; and, A Swiftly Tilting Planet. The Echthroi were the antithesis of good, corrupting or unnaming and unmaking what they couldn’t corrupt. Antimatter. Antispirit. Anti-everything.
X seemed an appropriate name for the site formerly known as Twitter, to those of us who’d read L’Engle. People who haven’t will not understand why we worry, you know, about…Space. In L’Engle’s work, X is a visual symbol for unnaming and annihilation.
But of course, L’Engle got the word from classical Greek—from Aristotle’s analysis of tragedy, where echthros, philos, and medeteros equate to antagonist, protagonist, and neutral character to the New Testament, where Jesus commands his followers to “love their enemies.” The word for enemies is “echthroi.”
Echthroi
Across the universe, expanding, characters
demanding understanding of their foibles,
flaws, and peccadillos—”Love me, love me
take me as I am, as Christ commands”—
Their river only flows one way. There is no dam
to save us from a decade’s drought,
no drought to dry the hot, indifferent tears—
not grief, not loathing tearing down
the gates of Hell, but apathetic nothingness:
true emptiness, the opposite of love.
To satisfy the Blogging A to Z Challenge without cheating, I’m going to give you a different sort of tidbit in this post: I’m going to explain how to create an index in Microsoft Word.
X is for XE (Index Entry)
Creating an Index in Microsoft Word:
- Open a document containing text you’d like to index.
- Highlight a word to include in the index.
- Click References on the menu at the top of the screen, then click Mark entry.
- Click Mark. This creates an Index Entry (the field is called { XE } in Microsoft Word – which is why I’m showing you this for “X”! Now you know.) In this example, it creates a hidden text field that looks like { XE “Submissions” }. TIP: In order to see hidden fields while you work, click Home on the top menu then click the button that looks like a paragraph marker ¶.
- When you are finished marking index entries, move your cursor to the location in your document where you want to place the index, then from the menu at the top of the screen, click References, then click Insert Index (to the right of Mark entry). Choose your formatting options, then click OK:
I suggest playing with this in a copy of any document you want to index so that you can play around with various options before indexing a whole book.
Creating Multiple Indices in One Document
Here are a few useful tips for poets who want to create multiple indices; for example, let’s say you want to create an anthology arranged by topic, but you want an index of poems by author:
- Turn on hidden text: click Home on the top menu then click the button that looks like a paragraph marker ¶.
- Create an index entry field on each poem that has the author’s name as the Entry and the poem name as the Subentry. Edit the XE field to add \f “authors” between the final quotation mark and the space before the closing bracket }.
- Create an index. Edit the index field to include \f “authors” between the final quotation mark and the space before the closing bracket }.
“authors” can be any name you want to apply, so long as the \f “name” in your index entries match the \f “name” in the index.
Other National Poetry Month Posts
Your Turn!
What are your favorite “X” words – or “ex” words?
They say that hate isn’t the opposite of love—indifference is. Do you agree?
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 24, 2026
Day 23: National Poetry Month
Prompt used today was “to write your own poem that takes place at night, and describes something magical or strange that happens but that no one is awake (or around) to notice.” One of the first things to come to mind was my grandmother’s hall clock.
I loved that clock and learned to “wind” it by pulling the chains that lifted the counterweights and tapping the pendulum. I loved the chimes and started to anticipate them as if the clock had climbed inside my head. But an odd thing happened, years after I’d moved out of state – I heard those chimes. And I knew it was those chimes, because that clock was always getting ahead of itself.
I called my grandmother and asked if her clock was off by ten minutes. It was. From then on, I took to calling her whenever I heard the chimes, laughing and telling her to set the clock to the right time. It happened fairly often until after she died.
With my grandmother and my mother, this wasn’t odd or “spooky”; it was the most normal thing in the world.
Waiting for the Chimes
When in darkness chimes the clock that stood
below her stairs, I know. For it has never kept
good time; it wanders through the hours. I hear
the ratcheting chains, their heavy counter-weights,
each second ticking, pendulum clicking, until
they can no more—the dreadful silence like
stilled breath. I hold mine, waiting, half-expecting
shadow-stirring, sickle-flashing Death.
Other National Poetry Month Posts
Your Turn!
Have you ever experienced anything “odd” or “haunting” in the middle of the night? Or the middle of the day, for that matter?
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 23, 2026
Day 22: National Poetry Month
Well, spit.
V is for Vince Gotera, who is probably laughing his butt off at how the universe has conspired against me, today. We all know, by now, that today is Day 24 – but also “V” – and Day 23’s prompts had me stubbornly dragging my feet. Write a villanelle? Grrr. You first. Fine. Fine. And lots of other F-words. You can read my feelings about the form, and my earlier attempts at it, in Villanelle the Vote! If you are unfamiliar with the “rules” of the villanelle, Vince helpfully posted the following:
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Try your hand today at your own take on a villanelle, and have the poem end on a question.” Here’s a great page on the villanelle: https://poets.org/glossary/villanelle
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today’s prompt, write a juxtaposition poem.”
Villainous Villanelle II
Some forms of rhyme and meter I would ban -
the evil villanelle, of course, is one.
I only write one now to prove I can.
Repeating lines and rhymes - can I enjamb
this one to fit, around the line to run?
The villanelle? I never was a fan.
I fantasize: Were I a laureled man,
I'd take this form and yeet it to the sun.
I only write one now to prove I can.
The critic reads this thing and says, "Madame,
To end its misery would take a gun."
The villanelle? I never was a fan.
I think of running, going on the lam —
I'd give it up, and yet it isn't done.
I only write one now to prove I can.
I toss my pen across the room, yell, "BAM!"
I'm finished now. This wasn't fun.
The villanelle? I never was a fan.
I only write one now to prove I can.
Now go read these fine examples by Vince Gotera and Thomas Alan Holmes. I read Alan’s in the same tone of voice I muttered while writing mine.
Other National Poetry Month Posts
Your Turn!
Do you think my determination to write a poem in a form I can’t stand (I mean, let’s get real, I’d rather write a sestina) manages to encompass the idea of “juxtaposition,” too?
Want to try your hand at it? I’d love to see your villanelles – please post them, or links to them, here!
