Today is April 1, the start of National Poetry Month. In 1996, the Academy of American Poets proclaimed this month to celebrate the amazing wealth of emotion, humor and human experience found in poetry. Liz Garton Scanlon, a poet I love admire and proudly call a friend, turned me on to it many years ago and I joined her in creating haikus for each day of the month. Funny little bits of the human experience. Then, for several years, I explored the works of other poets and shared their poems. Last year, I posted a poem a day of my own. That was fun. A little scary, but fun. I thought I might rejoin Liz in the land of Haikus this year but then I had another idea. A scarier one. Why not create 30 prompts, draw one each day, write a poem and post it? Eeeps. It’s a bit of high dive. Naked. But hey, we’re celebrating the human experience. Let’s jump in.
Aspirational Life
Have you read this phrase?
Have you seen this word?
It seems to be everywhere.
Aspirational rooms
Aspirational design
Aspirational living.
Who was this human
Who stumbled upon this word and texted
In an aspirational fever
Probably
OMIGOD This word describes exactly what we are trying to do: create beautiful spaces where people feel the desire to achieve something greater than who they are or what they have. It’s not glitzy or glam or rich or bougie. It’s ASPIRATIONAL. We’re giving them an idea of what they WANT to be.
Everyone in the text chain blinked hearts and exclamation points
And here we are:
With lives, somehow deemed less,
By being given treats and glimpses of how we can be more.