Persistence in Failure to Success—Prompts Inspired by Elaine Ewart

Perhaps Elaine Ewart’s “Take the collared dove” best embodies the April 30/30 challenge for me: just persist. Writing every day this month will not lead to thirty poems that I can publish or perhaps even three poems that I can edit to something I am excited aobut, but instead this process will be thirty starts, thirty attempts, thirty practice sessions in which I made myself write and kept writing.

Notice that I omitted “leads” or its synonym in the blog post title since success reminds me too much of the South Park Underpants Gnomes profit meme. How I get to “success” or what success even is changes daily and may involve a Venn diagram, the map to a corn maze, a stranger’s blessing or a larger cup of coffee.

If you would like to visit Atrium for her poem, click on this link: https://atriumpoetry.com/2025/03/14/take-the-collared-dove-elaine-ewart/. Do check out more poems on the journal’s website; I really enjoyed what I found there. You can also find more of the poet’s writing on her blog: http://flightfeather.wordpress.com/.

For the first prompt, follow a similar structure (perhaps even a modified sonnet) with a kind of adage illustrated by some animal’s behavior or a specific example in the news or research and ending the poem with your current life.

The second prompt is to simply describe animal behavior—nesting or delivering its young or caring for them. Let your own experiences as parent or child color the description without overt comparisons.

The third is to write use the line “All they do is persist” as the first line of a poem or short story, remembering to credit the poet even if you later erase the line.

For the next, write a poem or story about “clumsy angels.”

For the last prompt, write a poem or short story using the following word list from the poem: “success,” “collared,” “twigs,” “shell,” “bracket,” “throng,” “clatter,” “hinge,” “unmade” and “carry.”

For a bonus prompt, write an epistolary (letter) poem addressed to this mother whose nest was provided for her. What could society provide for you or parent? If you would like sample poems, check out https://poets.org/glossary/epistolary-poem.

Good luck writing! Remember that the April challenge can be to create the practice of writing every day or to write more frequently. Just persist in trying to write more, and you will succeed (this of course is reminder to myself).

I hope you enjoy the process!

What Is a Sonnet or a Poem?—Prompts Inspired by Diane Seuss and Gatekeeping Trolls

Sorry for the delay but a busy week and a head full of fluff. So this post is in response to Twitter drama in which a poet who has elected herself gatekeeper for what is a sonnet or a poem directly attacked Diane Seuss for attention. I doubt I could respond as gracefully and as kindly as Diane Seuss did. Btw, her critic is also the same poet who proclaims erasures and centos are not poems, so while this poet is someone to ignore, asking what makes a poem a poem or a sonnet a sonnet is a good exercise for poets.

While the individual answers differ among poets and readers, most people know what a poem is even if they do not have specific criteria—perhaps it is density of language, rhythm (even if rhyme and meter aren’t needed for most people now) or simply a sense of awe or wonder from reading it. For me, adherence to a form or to accepted conventions is less important than the sense of wonder or surprise created in the reading or hearing of it. There are some poems that are fit all the requirements but are forgettable and others that push the boundaries in such a way that I don’t care if it is technically prose or poetry, I am lost in the world it created. What are your requirements or characteristics a piece of writing must have before you consider it a poem? Do you use the requirements/ingredients when you edit?

Some people have stricter requirements for a sonnet—must be fourteen lines in iambic pentameter in the Shakespearean or Italian/Petrarchan form. Contemporary poets such as Seuss and Terrence Hayes have moved the sonnet into new directs. Other poets, such as Donna Hilbert, have poems that feel like sonnets to me even though they do not consider them as such.

Note that the poem above has fourteen lines but certainly doesn’t follow the classical form. For many modern writers, the key requirement is the volta, or turn, in the poem. For me, there is such a turn in the poem where the narrator says, “what’s to be sad about” and then explains the reasons for sadness. I think on a quick, careless read, this poem could seem stream of consciousness without much craft (as described by another sour-ass gatekeeper), but the language is deliberate, with a thread running throughout and repetition carefully used. I have to admit I am biased though: reading Diane Seuss and getting to hear her read aloud brings me joy. I heartily recommend Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl and frank: sonnets and plan to read her earlier collections.

For the first prompt, decide is required for a sonnet and write your own. Decide if you want to go full Petrarchan or modernize the form for yourself.

The second prompt is to write a poem to illustrating what “done for good” means to you.

The third prompt is to write about a “sad day / though not a tragic day.” Let the poem or story build from minor or not-so-minor inconveniences to what underlies most sorrow for you (or humanity in general) but overall keeping the specifics in.

The last prompt is to write a story or poem (a lament?) from the perspective of the taxidermied bear.

Bonus prompt: write about the real Elvis joining this group or what makes Elvis real as an archetype.

And just because I like this photo and the memory of that day with Don and my parents, here is a picture of a canal.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

Gratitude—Prompts Inspired by W. S. Merwin

I am awed by this praise poem by W. S. Merwin. I have not learned to adapt to the tragedies, the injustices and sorrows of life and certainly cannot feel gratitude for them. Perhaps it is enough to feel grateful for the small kindnesses, to smile at strangers on the street and at doors, to wave at a car that lets me in onto a busy road, to thank people during our brief interactions, and to mean it when I say, “Have a good day.” Or perhaps these small courtesies simply allow us to sink deeper with a smile.

For the first prompt, make your own praise poem of resentments, fears regrets and tragedies, thanking each one. Remember to give credit to the poet for your inspiration.

The next prompt is to take one tragedy or hurt in your life and see it through the perspective of gratitude. As much pain as the stillbirth caused me, my daughter would not been conceived if her brother could have lived. I cannot imagine my life without her in it.

A third prompt is to use the line “with the animals dying around us” as a ghostline. See where it takes you. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet.

For a final prompt, create a list poem with the last word or phrases repeated. Don’t use “thank you” though; use an endearment, a curse or a phrase you commonly use.

Bonus prompt: write a story or poem in which the photo above is the setting. Choose whatever time period seems appropriate, although this is a photo I took this week of an old barn on the gravel lane to my parents’ house. What does it say about time when a modern photo could seem decades old? Why does black-and-white still convey the past, as if time is a bleaching or fading of events?

Good luck writing! Have fun!

Abecedarian Your Saturday—Prompts Inspired by Laura Kolbe

I love the abecedarian form—it offers so many possibilities. Although a very old form that can be found in religious texts, the abecedarian with its lines, or even stanzas, arranged in alphabetically, has fabulous modern examples, such as Natalie Diaz’s “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation.”

Your first prompt is to write your own abecedarian. Abecedarians are often relegated to poems for children, but they certainly can have dark themes and complex structures. Nor do they need to be acrostics, as Laura Kolbe demonstrates in her “Buried Abecedarian for Intensive Care.”

The second prompt is to explain a medical procedure or to define a related set of medical or scientific terms. Use repetition and play with the structure. See what happens when you use quatrains or couplets and then compare to a single stanza or a prose poem. What works best for you and why?

For a third prompt, use the line “when you hope the machine lied” for a ghostline. Or perhaps use another of my favorites “when the gauze smells like gin and tonic” or one that resonates with you.

Good luck writing!