The Prologue (not by Wordsworth)

I am a teacher who has been given a half-year sabbatical during which I'm supposed to write some poetry.  In order to keep myself honest, I am starting this blog on which I plan on posting one poem of mine per day.  Some of them will be poems I have already written, but most of them will  be new poems or major revisions of old poems. (They will have to be new; I don't have that many old poems lying around.)  A few prose/poems or pieces of flash fiction may slip in here as well.

If I'm counting correctly, my January through June sabbatical should total 181 days- and 181 poems- thus, the title of this blog.  (I thought it was an original twist on the Billy Collins Poetry 180, but I now realize other people have made that twist, including, perhaps, Billy himself.)

During my sabbatical, I will also be doing some traveling and may not have Internet access all the time.  When that happens, I will try to give anyone (if there ends up being anyone) who reads this blog a heads-up that there will be no postings for a while.  I will write in my journal, though, and post the dated poems once I can get back to the Internet.  (I tend to write short poems anyway.  We'll see if this exacerbates that tendency.)

Here's one short invocation before I begin, an old poem of mine that seems appropriate. (It might also help you- if there is a you out there- decide whether you might want to read what I write.)  As you can tell from the poem, I'm a cyclist and starting to write feels a lot like starting to ride- a first rush of energy and then the long slog.

                                              Cycling at Sunrise

                                    I ride a poem this morning,

                                    my cadence crisp, my line lean,

                                    as I swoop down the hill

                                    between dawn and the gas station-

                                    drafting my Muse, inviting her to dance

                                    on my pedals when the road rises

                                    and the real climb begins.

                               

Happy New Year.  Wish me luck.