Poem prompt: “Today’s daily resource is the online art collection of South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. My own art history education is woefully catch-as-catch can, and the little I know of modern art is very much focused on American and European artists. So it was a treat to browse through a collection that is focused almost entirely on modern and contemporary art from outside those areas. I found particular pleasure in looking at Lee Hangsung’s prints, including this 1986 print of a poem in French by Katia Granoff.

And now for our (optional) prompt. The American poet Frank O’Hara was an art critic and friend to numerous painters and poets In New York City in the 1950s and 60s. His poems feature a breezy, funny, conversational style. His poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” is pretty characteristic, with actual dialogue and a playfully offhand tone. Following O’Hara, today we challenge you to write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!”

Handwriting

I am a poet because words 
are also brushstrokes. 
Lines in patterns 
create images in imaginations. 
I am an infinite artist. I design 
tapestries & textures 
in language, a thesaurus my solitary palette 
and clean-up is a breeze. 
Mild ink-stains on the underside of a pinky. 

The mess is all in my mind. 
Iduna holds it in her eski to bless 
Scribbles—the art of pinched fingers. 
Bragi dictated me to be and breathe just so. 
I leave silent traces in brains 
like Park Seo-Bo's impressions 
in off-white watercolor circa 1981. 
Our Écriture 
our visible thoughts.