This is a project I started years ago and have performed off and on without much dedication or discipline. The idea was to use Dictionary.com’s word of the day e-mails as inspiration for epigrams to help me remember the definition of the words (although I never did it daily and occasionally piled multiple new words into a single poem). Sometimes serious, often sarcastic, and too frequently making me look like a jackass, the project has always been one of my favourite poetic endeavours. I’ll do my best to post one a day and to use the website as inspiration to write more (not just epigrams) for my Daily Poem.
The accursed persiflage of those
Who can’t appreciate my art
Will tear apart
My meaning because they, of course, prefer to read my prose.
per·si·flage
[pur-suh-flahzh]
2. a frivolous or flippant style of treating a subject.
write with lightning 
April 18th, 2010 at 11:28
Huh. Considering how many more views my prose pieces (Thor’s Day Flashes of Lightning) are getting than my poetry (Woden’s Day Poems, 24 Poems), I think I was right!
April 19th, 2010 at 13:49
sorry, dude. if you want us to connect some of these poems to our own personal experiences then i’m sure we can do that.
open to us responding with poems of our own?
April 19th, 2010 at 15:34
Please do! I certainly enjoy a good poetic dialogue.
April 19th, 2010 at 22:04
here is a poem in the form of three sonnets, dedicated to all those who lose sleep over unleashing their creative writing on a public rendered unappreciative from our internet culture.
***
Onto the salty waters of the Qwerty Sea,
(From perilous coves off the Northern Blogosphere,)
Bustles the armada of ships, courses unclear,
Laden with fine treasures of English B.A. luxury;
Lovingly christened with online thesaurus names
Their captains steer from the amateur flotilla,
Embarking with verbose maps, dreams of scintilla,
And into crippling calms, veiling fogs, howling gales,
To join below the surface fallen vessels same
That reefs of the Ocean of Persiflage now claim.
Come, dive down with me, mermaid and merman we be,
To visit forever lost voyages maiden
Betwixt mottled coral mountains whose foundation
Is forlorn webpages, HTTP debris;
The captains had escaped this deep watery grave,
To navigate some other treasures some other day,
But you and I with their abandoned riches play,
(Tsk, captains valuing only their pride to save;)
A simple, tender poem I find in the abyss,
Crown you with this jewel, and offer it with a kiss.
From this reverie I open my brackish eyes,
Survey the café, the grotto where again I write,
See faces glazing steady from laptop light
Digits darting with text messages to “lol”-ize;
The storm of muddled verbiage roars all around,
Mellow jazz plays in a continuous loop
Drowned by cacophony from the frivolous group,
And stare down into scalding black coffee profound.
My notebook is open, I clutch my pencil tight
And brace for the telecommunicated fight.
April 20th, 2010 at 16:12
Splendid response! I take it that the hexameter comes from your interest in Greek tragedy, and the reforming of the sonnet into 10 line stanzas reminds me of what Keats did for “The Eve of St. Agnes” (although he uses English quatrains rather than Italian as you have here). I’ll respond poetically to this soon and will try to make the poems more prominent on the site.
April 20th, 2010 at 17:14
it’s just something i threw together. i mostly followed the petrarchan sonnet form, but took a few liberties with the rhyming scheme.
you sure know your poetry. 🙂
i’m oh so tempted to write a response to “a poet is a vampire” as well.