Show, Don’t Tell—Prompts Inspired by Javier Zamora

We have all heard the advice “show, don’t tell”—and some of us may even give this advice too. Javier Zamora’s “Dancing in Buses” is an amazing poem that demonstrates that adage perfectly.

So now you have an example, try to create your own poem that needs no exposition. Perhaps write the movements of a lover turning away and closing the door. Include no dialogue or even expressions; just the actions. See where it takes you.

For the second prompt, write a poem using the following words “boom,” “shoulder,” “hands” “right,” “orange,” “sweep,” “ladle,” “breathe,” “ground,” and “mouth” but don’t shift to a fearful tone. If you can do so without paraphrasing the original, go ahead, but it may be extremely difficult.

For a third prompt, use the line “Look at the ground” as a ghostline. See what direction you go (pun intended, sorry).

For more great poems, check out Javier Zamora’s website.

As always, give credit to the poet for your inspiration. Good luck!

Letter to a Deity—Prompts Inspired by Traci Brimhall

These prompts are inspired by Traci Brimhall’s two poems entitled “Dear Thanatos,” and “Dear Thanatos—“both of which address the obscure Greek god of peaceful death. Choose a minor deity, one that calls to you, and write a letter addressing the god/goddess. If you wish to also write to/about Thanatos or another Greek deity, this link is a good resource.

The next prompt is a word list compiled from both poems for you to use in your poem: “bridge,” “coiled,”bruise,” “fossil,” “damn,” “ease,” “liver,” “feast,” “testament,” and “wracked.”

The third prompt is to use the line “Damn the daylight, too. Dream me” as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line after you finish and credit the poet for the inspiration.

If you wish to read more of Traci Brimhall, check out her website. I love her book Rookery and have her next two on my list to buy.

For a final prompt, write an ekphrastic poem from the image below. You can be historically accurate (refer to the link provided above) or whatever you wish.

Good luck!

https://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Thanatos.html

“For All The Deer” Who Wandered in Our Writing: Prompts Inspired by Noah Stetzer

We all do it: use our own or another’s pain and mortality as subjects, smearing our interpretations across the canvas of history and current events. For this prompt, let’s acknowledge our hapless muses. Especially those leggy herbivores who seem so graceful in the leap and bound yet so sorrowful in the bloodied tangle alongside road and woods. Read Noah Stetzer’s poem below and check out the entire sixth finch issue.

For the first prompt, use the poem’s ending: “as if it waited / there to mean something” as a ghostline (the first line of your own poem as a jumping off point). Remember to delete Stetzer’s line but still acknowledge the poet for the inspiration.

I particularly love the reference to the deer in Stafford’s poem “Traveling Through the Dark” as if the deer in his poem stares at Stafford’s deer and another and another in parallel mirrors. Notice how the repetition of “straight“ and “twist” also echo Stafford’s “swerving” in his poem. What image/object/person is reflected repeatedly in your own work? For the next prompt, address your muse directly. Apologize if need be, or offer thanks. Use an ode if possible.

For a third prompt, write a poem using the following words from “For All The Deer”: “found,” “straight,” “knot,” “foregone,” struck,” “force,” “twist,” and “waited” but do not use any references to the act of writing. Instead use these strong verbs to an entirely different action or process.

Btw, I read this poem several times and each time found some new detail to enjoy. Notice the wordplay here: the combining of writing metaphors with those of life/death/path/highway, the juxtaposition of “twisted” and “straight” (and repetition of both), the deliberate use of “musing” here. Even the use of “found” seems to refer to a found poem.

First Day of the Decade—Delayed Prompts

Forget about New Year’s Resolutions, let’s resolve to make the decade a better one for everyone. For the first prompt, make a list of last year’s and the last decade’s regrets and mistakes. Limit yourself to only the first ten that come to mind. Take that list and burn it. Write a poem about the flames and the smoke rising from the fire, the beauty in letting go.

For the next prompt, tell us how you will make us—and yourself—proud as the poet Alberto Ríos instructs in “A House Called Tomorrow,” published by the Academy of American Poets. Believe in your own goodness. Hold onto that belief gently, lovingly.

For the next prompt, describe your “house called tomorrow.” Is it sleek chrome and mirrored glass, or it your future a crumbling two-story with your childhood bedspread frayed on a too-small bed, or do you move toward a simple ranch in endless looping cul-dul-sac? Is there a white picket fence or twisted wrought iron or a hedge of thorns? Do you knock on the door, ring the doorbell, or push it open? Does the door open easily for you, or do you stumble over the threshold?

For a third prompt, write a poem about all who came before you. What is your family tree? What flowers bloom in spring, what fruit falls at its feet, and what sings in its branches. What feeds upon it, and what remains?

The last prompt is a word list: “centuries,” “march,” “breaking,” “bridges,” “charts,” “forward,” “cure,” and “applause.”

Reverse a Life, a Death, a Tragedy—Prompts Inspired by Sean Shearer

I know I spend too much of my life retracing steps and looking into the rearview mirror. If I wore cologne, it would be named regret and smell of a struck match, rubbing alcohol and old, water-stained bills.

But the poem “Rewinding an Overdose On a Projector” is achingly beautiful in its attempt to reverse disaster. Thanks to Victoria Chang for sharing it.

For the first prompt, reverse a catastrophe or a mistake. Perhaps describe the bride and groom each sliding the wedding bands off fingers, the bride walking backwards up the aisle, and ushers emptying the church one by one.

For the second prompt, writing a poem using the following verbs from Shearer’s poem: “floats,” “twitch,” “wakes,” “seals,” “pushes,” “fluffs,” “shrinks,” “grows,” “grows,” “rains,” “spill,” and “remains.”

For the next prompt, notice how the lines reverse not only the time sequence, but also the agency: “The wet cotton lifts” and “The water pours into a plastic bottle.” Experiment with changing the receiver and the doer of an action in a poem. What effects does the change create?

For the fourth prompt, use the line “The heart wakes like a handcar pumping faster and faster on its greased tracks” as a ghostline. Remember to use that line to jump off from and then erase it from your poem. Still give credit to the poet though.

What changes if the viewer is looking down rather than up? Write a poem or short story in which directions are reversed, and the reader is kept in suspense until the end or is never certain.

For the last prompt, notice the delicacy of the mold. Describe the un-blooming of this mold and resurrect the fallen tree upon which the mold sprouts. Which is more sacred: the life of the consumed or the consumer? Try to cast the metaphysical in scientific terms. See what the dichotomy creates.

The Form of Hope—Prompts

For the firstt prompt, take the line “All poetry is a form of hope” (midway in the poem) from Dean Young’s “Small Craft Talk Warning” to use as a ghostline. From there, create a list of items that somehow are the form for hope. Play with the idea of poetic forms. Perhaps include an image to represent morning for an aubade (a love song or poem associated with dawn). See what connections you can make between poetic forms and personal associations. Bend, blend, and reform however necessary.

I appreciate this poem’s disparate images. I have not yet found the through line but am not disturbed or disappointed that I haven’t. Instead, the poem feels like each image is a separate treasure or is akin to people watching and trying to explain the relationships seen among a group.

For the next prompt, take five concrete nouns from the poem (e.g., “hive,” “ornaments,” “ghost,” “dosage,” “space station”) and five verbs/would-be verbs (“miscalculate,” “thaw,” “forces,” “probing,” “counted”) and mix and match. See what creates friction and write in whatever form—sonnet, free verse, flash fiction, etc.— works in the moment.

As always, give credit to the poet who inspired you and be careful to write in your own voice. Good luck!

Bonus prompt: create a dialogue between the two small piles of stones and lighthouses in the distance.

Prayer for a Kingdom—Prompts Inspired by Todd Smith

For the first prompt, read over this beautiful poem by Todd Smith published by Quarterly West (and check out other great poems in the issue). In three parts, write a prayer to allow entry in a kingdom you have sought entry—whether you gained access or not—or a praise poem for the what simply is separated into past, present and future. Define “is” in your poem. Define what longing or yearning or want or need is for you, or change the tense: what one of these was once or will be. End your poem on a beginning.

Second prompt: write a poem using the following words: “overtures,” “shadows,” “cast” “perch” “skylight,” “frequency,” and “begin.”

Third prompt: Make a list poem of your seven mistakes. Do they correspond to the seven deadly sins? If not, create a new category of sin and pray for forgiveness to an appropriate saint or deity.

As always, give credit to the poet for inspiration (using “After” is one way), but even if you do acknowledge the poet’s influence, be careful that you still aren’t simply paraphrasing another’s creation. When in doubt, have someone else read the original poem and yours especially before submitting for publication.

Best wishes! Please share your creation! I’d love to read it!

The CDC’s 7 Forbidden Words—Another Word List Prompt

As you may have read, the Trump Administration is prohibiting officials at the CDC from using seven words/phrases in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

The list of forbidden words:

1. Evidence-based
2. science-based
3. vulnerable
4. entitlement
5. diversity
6. transgender
7. fetus.

Several poets have suggested using these seven words in a poem. I first read of the prompt from Cathy Park Hong on Twitter, but several others posted the idea on Facebook.

Here is an opportunity you might like: Sarah Freligh and Amy Lemmon invited poets to submit poems in any form but using all seven words (preferably in repetition) to CDCpoetry@gmail.com for publication on their blog. Check their blog out for updates, more prompts and poems.

Femme Fairy Tale Word List

Word lists, yes, word lists. While all of us remember having to write out vocabulary words, exercises using words from one poem or by a particular poet can propel some useful freewriting or even lead into a poem or short story. Just as a form can force our writing into a new direction by its restrictions, word lists and ghost lines can offer a starting point. Sometimes a box opens into a whole new room.  

Below is a femme fairy tale word and phrase list from “Little Red”in Double Jinx by Nancy Reddy.

Choose eight and climb in. See where it carries you.

Gorged                                                                       Kindling

Grainy                                                                         Hearth

Swallowed                                                                  Framed

Rib cage                                                                      Rumbling

Papered                                                                       Hidden

Shelved                                                                       Pinned

Belly plump                                                                Vivisection

Gobbled                                                                      Pink

Roast                                                                           Fall

Cracking                                                                     Inside

Nancy Reddy

Rather than reading the poem that originated the list, which may restrict your own originality, check out the fabulous "The Case of the Double Jinx" by Nancy Reddy.