Secrets—For Whom We Tell

Secrets—we all have them. Sometimes we hold our secrets, or those of others, tightly as if they were the handrail beside icy steps, and at other times, we spill them like the third glass of red wine on a white skirt.

For this prompt, don’t tell us your secrets; instead, tell us who knows each one, or all of them. Who witnessed that white lie last Wednesday? Who watched your last transgression? Who knows where all the bodies are buried and who has kept the shovel? Is your secret safe? Are you? Who knows, and more importantly, who will tell. If someone tells, will it be with a whisper or a roar? Tell us more about who knows. Check the poem “Secrets about Nothing” by Katherine Soniat and the anonymous poem “The Secret” published in 1947 in The Golden Book of Poetry.

Friday the 13th—The Embarrassing Epitaph Prompt

Bonus prompt: make a list of five bad omens (vultures circling whenever you leave your house or the Tarot’s Death card appearing in all of your games of Solitaire) and then make a list of five embarrassing deaths (Darwin award-worthy offings, particularly those involving hunting or masturbating). Compare the two lists; see what “sticks” or create a poem using of all the bad omens and one particularly spectacular death. Or create an epitaph for the ages—the death no one would wish on anyone. Go big, go broke, go blushing into the void.

FYI, the workshop I attended included a slow death by hungry turtle. Beware

Speaking Up and Speaking Out—A Prompt

Last week I attended the Poetry Lab workshop run by visiting author Julayne Lee. Julayne led a fascinating discussion on how society silences children and certain groups of people and how politeness and often even our own families reinforce suppression.

She noted how often we spend years regretting what we didn’t say because we were told not to and feared retribution. She offered us a chance to mitigate that regret with the following prompt: Begin a poem with the line “What I wanted to say was...” That line can be kept as your first line or even your title, or you can use it as a ghostline and erase it after the poem is finished. So for your prompt, spill. We want to know what you’ve kept quiet for too long. 

Julayne has a new book out,  Not My White Savior. Be sure to check out her website to find out when her next workshops and readings will be. 

Arse Erotica or Poetica Scientifica—The Poem on Sexing or Science-ing

Last time the prompt was to write a poem on your poetic philosophy or technique or process and try to incorporate other subjects. Today’s prompt is to write a poem on the theory of science, the application of sex and the process/techniques of either. Be didactic and philosophic. Pretend you are Alexander Pope explaining the mechanics of friction, proper installation of a dildo, the first law of thermodynamics or the concept of reproducibility. To get a feel for the style and tone you may wish to use, you can read a little of Pope’s “Essay on Criticism”; remember he was only 23 and set guidelines for criticism that remains relevant today. Put on your expert hat. Get started writing! Enlighten us.

Meta Poetica—The Poem-on-Poeming Prompt

The term ars poetica means “the art of poetry” and is a poem about poetry. Homer may have started the tradition, but poets have long continued it. For more information, check out this discussion (and links to poems) from the Academy of American Poets. Modern poets usually seek less to prescribe or define than to reflect upon their individual writing, often with humor. I particularly love Dorothea Lasky’s “Ars Poetica” (so much so that I used her line “I want to make my face a poem” as an epigraph). Sharon Olds with “Take the I Out” and Terrance Hayes with “Ars Poetica With Bacon” demonstrates how much range a poet has in creating this type of poem (and how creatively and beautifully it can be done).

Your prompt for the day: write your own ars poetica. Bonus points if it includes another field of study (perhaps physics or law)  or references pop culture (perhaps Kids in the Hall or The Simpsons or My Little Pony, anything you like). But, you earn all the points if you write the poem. I promise.

Sign on the Dotted Line—Prompt

We all make promises. Sometimes we even write them down and sign our name on the dotted line—perhaps this is only a promise to pay a bill in full or to agree we understand the terms and conditions of a service or maybe this is a promise to stay together, a wedding vow, or simply to stay in the living world. Take a promise you’ve made or that someone made you and treat it as if it were written in blood on paper crumpled and torn. Words are missing. What fills those spaces?

You can make this a true erasure poem or rearrange the words if need be. Perhaps use the form as a word list and restrict yourself to only those words and phrases.

The poem, “Book of Memory” by Rebecca Hazelton doesn’t really fit the prompt, but I like it and hope you will too.

If you wish, you could use this customer agreement for your word list.

Good luck!

National Poetry Month 30/30 Challenge

April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate it (or punish ourselves), everyone is challenged to write 30 poems in 30 days. Purists believe the challenge requires writing one poem each day in April; procrastinators understand that April 29th is the 24-hour catchup slog with haiku and caffeine. 

As you may have noticed,  I slacked off for a couple of weeks. I am now ready for challenge. The last two years I did write 30 poems (NOT 30 good poems, mind you, but 30 poems anyway). Previous years, I got about 15 or so. The goal is to increase your writing frequency and create a daily writing habit. I usually like a couple 30/30 poems after revision and find that I can use lines or images from many of the others for new poems. Alas, I still don’t write every day, but I certainly procrastinate writing every day.

Since I am obviously not a prolific writer—either as a blogger or as a poet—I won’t pretend I will provide daily prompts as well as write 30 poems this month. I will include a couple of prompts a week but will provide links to sites that do or that have done so in the past. To get you started, check out the official site for National Poetry Month (NaPoWrMo), which will post a new prompt every day and has already posted one for the early birds and for writers in earlier time zones. You can of course check out the site’s prompts from previous years. 

On the Other Hand—Prompt

At the last Poetry Lab workshop, we were given the exercise to write a poem using our nondominant hand. What would our other hand have to say? How would writing with my left hand (since I am right handed) change how and what I write?

Obviously I wrote much more slowly and wrote less—as did everyone in the group. Because I wrote so slowly, I revised more in my head as I was writing, and threads I had intended to follow were changed mid-word into new directions. Ambidextrous people obviously have an advantage here, although I would be curious if they notice a difference in what they wrote too.  

So let’s use the same Poetry Lab prompt (thank you, Danielle Mitchell) and write a poem using the line “I tried to tell you” as the first line or as a ghost line. Use your other hand. What does it want to tell you?

As you can see, this is a VERY rough draft of a poem. I am not sure my left hand told me anything new or contrary to what my right hand would say more quickly and more legibly. I would love to know if you feel that writing with your other hand changed your writing and if so, how.

Surface Reflections—Prompt

We see ourselves or portions of ourselves relected in mirrors, panes of glass, Buzzfeed quizzes, our children’s mannerisms, our daily horoscopes, Tarot readings and the reactions to our presence in the faces around us. We trust the accuracy of some reflections, but other surfaces—fun house mirrors and Instagram selfies—are either distorted or are carefully edited versions of ourselves.

Choose a surface—the most unlikely the better—and describe what you see of yourself, what is missing, what is true and what is changed. How much do you trust yourself as viewer?

If you need ideas to get you started, read these powerful poems, “Taking Aim at a Macy’s Changing Room Mirror, I Blame Television” by Marcus Wicker, “Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear” by Alice B. Fogel and “Mirror and Scarf” by Edmond Jabès. And of course I could not omit Sylvia Plath‘s famous “Mirror” poem.

The water adds part of itself to its reflection of the trees with its ripples. The light and tint differed between this photo and from my sight. A viewer adds assumptions, past experiences and expectations to whatever viewed. Reflect upon yours.

Superhero—Save the World in Stanzas

We all want to be the superhero—to look good in tights, soar like a bird, lift up a car or a world, wear a cape and boots for work, order a sidekick to pick up the pizza, you know, fight crime and save the day. Choose a superhero or make up a new one and write from the hero’s perspective. Is it ever not fun outwitting the villains with one-liners and superior strength and logic? Does the responsibility wear on you eventually? What is it to be the first choice to every problem and the last hope of the helpless? Save the world or just save yourself. 

Need inspiration? Read Gary Jackson's "Fly" or buy his book, Missing You, Metropolis. Need more idea starters or just having fun? Check out A. Van Jordan's "The Flash Reverses Time" and Amy Nezhukumatathil's "What I Learned From the Incredible Hulk" although the latter isn't a persona poem. Whatever. Break the rules or some walls or whole city blocks.

If you enjoy poetry about pop culture, read the latest issue of FreezeRay.

Wishing Well—prompt

You get three wishes and one lamp to rub. Or maybe you are offered one last wish. Nah, you get all the wishes you want. Write a poem or a short story about that one wish, the three, or the many. What did you wish for? If it is a wish for wealth, be sure to specify what you want the money for. Who does your wish help? Only yourself? Does it harm anyone? Who suffers? What are the consequences for you and for others? Check out this fantastic poem “wishes for sons” by Lucille Clifton. Or if you wish (pun intended, sorry), explore the world Clifton created and flesh it out in a short story or a poem of your own. For more world building and gender shifting, read the amazing Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness .

  

It’s a Trap!

Yes, it is a trap, I mean, prompt from Steve Ramirez of the Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug. His prompt even has its own samples poems from Reginald Dwayne Betts and an introduction by Jericho Brown.

If Steve’s prompt doesn’t spark anything, let’s ask more questions until the answers start new questions. Think about the cages or the boxes we build for ourselves or allow others to put us in. What is it made of? Concrete and iron, cardboard, a picket fence, a closet? Why did you stay there? How long did you remain? How did you finally get out? Or are you still waiting for a key, a pair of scissors, a Facebook post, a zeppelin, a lit stick of dynamite to help you escape? What will it take for you to free yourself, or can you only hope for a rescuer? If so, who is that person(s)? What are they wearing, and do they ride in on a horse or a dragon, a VW Bug or a pet fish to release you? Do they bring a toolbox or a lockpick or a chainsaw or a blowtorch?

Husband, wife, lover, friend—forests, seas, houses

We are more than our bodies, and our lover’s bodies are more than their hands, more than their breathing in sleep. What is/was your lover’s or your spouse’s body to you? Was it a table spread out for a feast, for you alone or for a town? Was it a cardboard box that wouldn’t keep out the rain or cold? Was it a forest filled with spiderwebs and poison oak? Did you wander in there anyway, lost and itching for a decade? Was it a cathedral that rose-colored the light you saw with? 

For inspiration, look at the first line from Danielle Mitchell’s  “Imposter & Imposter” poem: “A husband is a labyrinth, made of trees that clones themselves into forests.” 

Or write of a friend’s body or that of a sibling. Was that body a lighthouse for your ship, the Lassie to you trapped in a well, or a birthday card you never sent?

Here is another line from Danielle Mitchell—this one from the poem “Assembling the Brother” : “My older brother is a conveyer, revolving back to the thing that most deserts him, the woman.”

Or write about a parent’s body. Was your father’s shoulders the tree you climbed to see the world from? Was your mother’s face your daily weather forecast?

If you like the lines I borrowed from Danielle, buy her book makes the daughter-in-law cry from the publisher Tebot Bach or another bookseller. I loved it. And check out her website.

Free Is Good and Possibly a Gateway Drug

Last post, I mentioned Marty McConnell’s #StealThisLine on Twitter. Today I want to borrow one of her prompts. I hope you find her prompts as freeing as I do. Please share what power or ability you would give yourself and how you would transform yourself and your life. I would love to hear from you!

This prompt may be your gateway drug to daily poetry use. Marty emails writing prompts every other week for FREE. Sign up here. She also provides writing workshops, individual critique and artist events. She gives links to her poems too. Yay!!!

Another Line, Another Day-Prompt

Continuing with the theme of lines—either as ghost lines or as epigraphs—this prompt offers two lines from the breathtaking Maggie Smith:

“Because a lie is not a lie if the teller / believes it” 

“Night was a secret / we kept from the children.” 

Take one of these lines and run with it. If you wish, you can read the original poems: the first is from “Parachute” and the second from “Illustration”; both appear in the book Good Bones, which I cannot recommend enough. You can read more of her poems at her website.

If neither of these lines sets you off, then check out Marty McConnell’s #StealThisLine on Twitter. She provides so many good lines to choose from. 

Night Madness: Prompt from The Poetry Lab

Recently I was told that I frequently use epigraphs. Very true. I use lines and phrases from other poets and writers and quotes from political figures, scientific researchers, historians and even random Twitter users. I also have been experimenting with centos—a poetry form that is composed entirely of lines from other poets. And I like ghost lines. An earlier blog post already explained ghost lines and used a prompt from Rachel McKibbens.

Why do I search for and use so many ghost lines and epigraphs? Using lines from other poets feels like sharing a conversation rather than simply borrowing. It is also a way to honor those poets whom I consider mentors and heroes. Politicians of course provide useful fodder for mockery. I seek out scientific abstracts and historical papers that can provide a deeper context or another layer to my poem as well as offer me a catalyst.

So, yes, let’s look at lines from other poets and discover where they can take us. This next ghost line prompt comes from the Poetry Lab’s “Night Madness” writing exercise and offers several lines from the the incredible Sandra Cisneros to choose from.

Tonight!!! Poetry Lab workshop: The Wisdom of Fear and Prompts

235 E Broadway, Fl 8th, Long Beach, California 90802

Because I am a slacker who believes in leaving perfection well enough alone, I took this directly from its source:

Elizabeth Gilbert writes:
“I can’t tell you how many people said to me during those years, “How are you ever going to top that?” They’d speak of my great good fortune as though it were a curse, not a blessing, and would speculate about how terrified I must feel at the prospect of not being able to reach such phenomenal heights again. 

But such thinking assumes there is a “top”—and that reaching that top (and staying there) is the only motive one has to create…Such thinking assumes that you must be constantly victorious—not only against your peers, but also against an earlier version of your own poor self. Most dangerously of all, such thinking assumes that if you cannot win, then you must not continue to play. 

But…What does any of that have to do with the quiet glory of making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations?”

Madisyn Taylor writes:
“Fear has a way of throwing us off balance, making us feel uncertain and insecure, but it is not meant to discourage us. Its purpose is to notify us that we are at the edge of our comfort zone, poised in between the old life and a new one.”

Can we ever become comfortable with our fear? The answer may be that the minute we are comfortable with our fear a new and better fear arises, or the distance to conquering that fear moves further off. But fears can be a guide as much as a hindrance. When we feel we’re on the edge of a break through, when we know we’re making something on the boundary of who we once were and who we’re going to be—that fear propels us forward, deeper, stronger, through. 

Jericho Brown writes: 
“We went into this agreement declaring to always have an exciting relationship to difficulty. No, not just the difficulty we find in opacity or that which is hermetic or elliptical or subtle…

When I say difficulty, I mean how hard it is to manipulate into stylized language even that which we avoid. How much do you avoid? How long have you avoided it? Is there anything that made you decide that poetry itself is somehow better than that which wracks your brain? If it has found a home in your head and yours is the head of a poet, doesn’t that mean poetry wants it? You want me to ask you these questions for the rest of your life.”
~
Everyone is welcome
$3 donation requested

Today at 7:30 PM - 10 PM

The Poetry Lab

 Join us tonight for the Poetry Lab Workshop coordinated by the fabulous Danielle Mitchell.

Tonight at The Poetry Lab we will ask the questions:
What is your fear?
What does it have to do with vocation?
What does it have to do with the pursuit of love?
What does it have to do with your strange communion?
What does it have to do with magic?
How much do you avoid?
How much do you dive head-long into?
What does it teach you?
Where does it end?
Where does it begin again?

and then we will WRITE. 

If you cannot make tonight's workshop, use the questions above as a starting off point. Or use this prompt: 

Take an embarrassing childhood fear, the sillier the better, and laugh at it or give that fear a hug and a cookie to make it feel better or empower that fear to be the One Fear to rule them all.

I was terrified of Mary Poppins. Full disclosure: I may still be.

The Kitchen Table

The kitchen table is at the center of a home for many families. Certainly it was for mine as a kid—the table was where we of course came together for meals but also to drink coffee, play Rummy and chat (or gossip and gripe depending upon the day).

Today’s prompt comes from HanaLena Fennel: 

 “Write an unromantic kitchen poem. Right now my kitchen floor is covered in Cheerios. There are no pools of light, no bowls of random citrus. See your kitchen for what it really is. What does this say about your house? Your family? Yourself?”

If you want more prompts from HanaLena and an online community to share poems with, subscribe to her Patreon page.

For inspiration, read Joy Harjo poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here” available at the Poetry Foundation, where you can also listen to her read it.  This poem particularly resonates with me because my hope for the afterlife is a place at my grandmother’s kitchen table where she and my mom’s mom have a chair waiting for me, a cup of coffee poured, and a hand dealt. I would like to again watch them deliberately miss plays so that the other could win. 

Ursula K. Le Guin—Build a World

The amazing Ursula K. Le Guin 

I love Ursula K. Le Guin’s books and the vistas she provided me. I particularly admire that she created a world, realized it excluded women and demonstrated both the difficulty in correcting that inequality and the ultimate joy and freedom for everyone—even the dead—in tearing down artificial walls.

For your prompt, write a story or poem using one of these ideas. If you can (and wish), try to incorporate that mythic quality she employed so effectively in the Earthsea cycle and in other writing. Create a world, the one you want your loved ones to live in. For more opportunites to adore Le Guin, read her poem “The Maenads” and learn more about her life and all of her works on her website.  

Or if you want to use the prompt but not necessarily as a tribute to Le Guin, mix two or more of the items: pet the woods, invent a cat, write the collective dream of a city council or provide the standard operating procedure for an orgy (with a clear timeline—some actions should occur prior, and not after, others). Or perhaps live in a protest. What sign would you carry for life?

Time to Write

Time is a human construct, much like donuts and nuclear warheads. Time always seems to slip out of my hands and into my coffee cup. Why else would drinking coffee run me late in the mornings? Perhaps I swallow the minutes. That would explain the heartburn.  

What is time for you—a calendar of appointments and deadlines? A buzzing alarm clock? A loop of hitting snooze? An endless rushing with dry throat, and constricted chest? Does time ever hush, ever sit quietly for you? Where are you, if and when it does? Have you fallen into the pages of a book? Are you in a conversation seems to bridge your past, present and future to another’s? Are you sitting on the couch and drinking a glass of wine at the end of the day? Are lying on park grass with the heavy afternoon sun blanketing you and insects humming you to sleep?

Write about time and when it stops, if it ever does for you. Use metaphors and sensory images—ticking clocks, rushing rivers, a rustling field of corn, a thrumming engine—however you construct the concept of time. For inspiration, read Brenda Hillman’s “Time Problem” and notice the mix of the mundane and the personal with the theoretical.