Unlike me, many of you probably completed the 30 poems in a 30 days challenge. That is awesome! Now for even more fun: editing those poems! Below is a Twitter discussion that I found really intriguing. The original conversation began as quirky ways people approach reaching poems and novels, but then poet Julia Beach explained why she first reads The last three words of the fourth line from the bottom in other people’s poems and in her own as the poem’s key.
Take one of the poems you’ve written recently, or perhaps one that has never really come together, and try seeing if this “map” helps you cut and expand the rest of the poem to fit that vision.
Here is the prompt: use this same reading process of using the last three words of the fourth line from the bottom of a poem and use them as your opening line and build a poem from there. See where you end up. You can then choose to erase those three words so that they function as a ghostline or you can keep them, using italics or quotation marks. Either way, be sure to give the poet credit.
Bonus prompt: what does this tree remind you of? A key, a warning, the devil’s spork? Write a poem or story about coming across this tree in an abruptly silent forest. What does it mean?