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National Poetry Month 2026, day 26: Parsing Ars Poetica

April 26, 2026
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Parsing Ars Poetica

To Rosemarie Dombrowski

Horace

Rhymes with chorus

A crowd

Thinking or singing out loud.

There are ridiculous and sublime

Ways to rhyme,

To codify oceans

Of notions,

Tracts

Of a mix of fancy and facts.

A poem need not rhyme

With every pair of lines

Or even ever

But in order to be a poem it needs to roam

Realms of thought

Skylines of rippling emotions

To yield a encrypted description

Or a wearable narrative

Or a profound or slight insight

That brightens

Or darkens

What has come before.

You want to know more?

Grow some of your own;

That will teach you.

..

Afterword: Rosemarie, first Poetry Laureate of Phoenix, once had a spoken-word event at the now-defunct Urban Beans in which she discussed the Art of Poetry.

now write a poem

November 5, 2024
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here we are again/we wrote a po/m on July 25th/and then the rest of july

we wrote a poem every day in august

we wrote a poem every day in september

october too/and november so far

and it’s eight in the morning/and the nagvoice says “now write a poem”

and there’s plenty to write about/it being election day/and the most crucial moment in the history of our country

or if we’re burned out on politics/we could write about our hand surgery/coming up in january

or about the charming kid-drawings our aunt diane found

hell we could even write about how autocorrect just changed hell to he’ll

or how we are one person/but we keep using the “royal we” right now

but let’s talk about what a poem is/and what distinguishes a poem/from other arrays of words

it doesn’t have to be tricky

write something and call it a poem/and behold it IS a poem/and no one can tell you otherwise

it just may not be a GOOD poem/he’ll it may not even be a WORTHY OF READING poem

but in our book of life a poem not worthy of reading (and we have written some real stinkers) is not worthy of posting

the posted stuff has a chance of making readers see or feel or think and be grateful they did

and/dispensing with that pompous “royal we”/you o reader/can read my mind

and that is miraculous

Acrostic Portrait of the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, Arizona, Rosemarie Dombrowski

September 25, 2021
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2021 0924 rjd ii with texts
One of the blessings of being poets in the Valley of the Sun is that we have in our midst a talented, hard-working, generous Superstar.  How talented? Read her poetry and gasp. How hard-working? Try teaching for twenty years while caring for a child on the autistic spectrum. How generous? She is lavish with her time, having hosted and/or participated many events, both live and on Zoom; lavish with her praise, as I found out when I did an illustration for her publication The Revolution; and lavish with sharing her wisdom, as exemplified by her series of spot lectures under the umbrella “Ars Poetica.” (Latin for “Art of Poetry” and the title of an awe-inspiringly contradictory poem by Archibald MacLeish. Its first line is “A poem should be palpable and mute” and yet the poem is not Mute at all.) (I long ago abandoned my ambition to be any sort of Poet Laureate, but I think I’m an excellent candidate for Arse Poetica. 🙂 )

Rosemarie believes that writing poetry is therapeutic, and frequently she hosts a Therapeutic Poetry workshop. I’ve written a few poems exactly because she says so.  Under that aegis the poems become intensely personal.

In a wonderful demonstration by the Universe that sometimes miraculously fine and good things can and DO happen, some time ago Rosemarie became the first Poet Laureate of Phoenix, Arizona. She was the perfect choice.

Rosemarie Dombrowski

Resilience will meet a special need
Occluding Tragedy, though, offs the feed./O
SEcrets are anathema for whom
Maternity goes far beyond the womb
And so Non-Silence reigns, with child in tow/For
Righteous storytelling makes it so
It makes a fine and free-flow
Ecstasy/To TEACH to Touch to Thrive and with verse Ski