The Faces We Make in the World—Prompts Inspired by Lisel Mueller

I love this poem—how it reflects the human need to anthropomorphize the world around around us and the inherent loneliness in human sentience.

As a child, I saw faces in the knotty pine walls of my bedroom and in the clouds; said goodnight to the headboard’s scratch that looked like a duck or a snake, depending upon my mood; and made windows the eyes of houses watch me as I was driven past.

For the first prompt, anthropomorphize an object in your home or one you encounter daily. Give it a life of its own. Or don’t. The contrapuntal could be an interesting structure for this experiment. Here is a previous post on the contrapuntal. I was fascinated by Trace DePass’s discussion of the form (published in Teachers & Writers Magazine).

For a second prompt, take the first line as a ghostline and “and so” it. Move it in a different direction from the original. Or take one of the examples “the country a heart” and explore how that shapes or restricts language and thought. We embody the world with our language, calling our countries motherland or fatherland. Do remember to erase the line and credit the poet for the inspiration.

If you also see faces, do they seem human or animal or simply something alive? To me this seemed like an owl in the rock:

Do you search for yourself as apparently Cookie Monster does?

Are the faces you usually find happy? Or not?

I found this shocked sink on a walk last week.

And of course do you see a face in the moon when you look up? Or look for humanity on other planets?

If you would like more examples of pareidolia (the phenomenon of perceiving specific images, usually faces or animals, in random visual patterns), check out this article from The Mary Sue or read a longer explanation of pareidolia from this BBC article, which also includes a few photos. I can empathize with the worried alarm clock.

Light—Prompts Inspired by Andrea Cohen

I love the simple power of this short poem by Andrea Cohen. So much in so few lines! Tone, language, and form all working together.

For the first prompt, think of a pair of connected nouns like “lamp” and “lamplighter” to set up a relationship between the two that the poem explores. Here are some suggestions: fire/firefighter, garden/gardener or tree/arborist, canvas or paint/painter, cave/spelunker, and safe or vault/banker. See what sparks for you. Do be careful that you don’t follow the poet’s structure too closely, and you may need to provide credit for the inspiration with an “After Andrea Cohen” under your title.

For the next prompt, use the lines “and someone, must in bereaved rooms sit, unfathoming” as a ghostline. Do remember to erase the line and give the poet credit.

The third prompt is also a ghostline. Use the line “Someone must be the ____” as a jumping off point. Again, remember to erase the line and credit the poet.

For a purely writing exercise, simply use the poem as a mad libs exercise. The structure will of course be too close to the original. However, if after inserting your own nouns, verbs, and adjectives, you find that the ideas resonate, you can choose a different form. Make sure to create your own overall structure and syntax/line structure.

Bonus prompt: write a poem as if the photo were your hometown you were returning to after years away.

After—Prompts Inspired by Nikita Gill

Following Nikita Gill on Twitter (@nktgill) has led me to discover so many beautiful poems she’s shared. It seems perfect that another poet on Twitter shared a lovely one of hers.

I love so many of the lines in this poem, and the structure itself is fascinating: how much of it consists of threes (three “afters,” three “pains,” and three “ends.” For the first prompt, trying constructing a poem into three interconnecting sets of three concepts or images. Perhaps structure it almost like a novel as three beginning images (dawn, spring flower, etc.) followed by three conflicts (a fire, storm, or predator’s attack) and ending with images of night. See what happens.

For the second prompt, take one of the “after” lines: “What happens after we meet the light,” “After the grief ends,” or “After we walk into happiness” for a ghostline and jump off from there. What does happen? Create a place that you can touch and smell. Remember to erase the line but give credit to the poet for your inspiration with “After Nikita Gill” or similar acknowledgment.

For the last prompt, use “life promised to be a moving thing” as a ghostline for your starting point. Again, remove the line from your poem and credit the poet.

Bonus prompt: write a poem for the Luna moth I fished out of the Buffalo River too late to save. I did manage to rescue a bee and place it on the river bank.

Matryoshka Doll a Poem—Prompts Inspired by Faylita Hicks

For the next prompt choose a poem that resonates with you and imitate its structure. If you need another example, look at Faylita Hicks’ “#LoveMachine”and notice how each line leads to the next through a repetition that drives the poem forward.

For the first prompt, using “#LoveMachine” as a guide, write a statement, perhaps a commonplace one or a quote from someone else, but follow it with an image.

For a second prompt, create a Matryoshka doll of your stanzas as the poet did in her last stanzas. Using repetition, cut the lines down so that one runs to a smaller line nesting inside it.

For another prompt, use the line “the small body of my machine” as a ghostline and go from there. Remember to erase the line and give credit to the poet.

Bonus prompt: write a phrase and do an image search of it and write about that.

Prompts Inspired by Gregory Orr

So much said in so few words. Amazing

For the first prompt, write an origin story. For ideas to write about try to keep a folder of odd animals facts, weird news stories, photos of lost places and bizarre objects (and NOT fifty tabs in your browser).

For the second prompt, use the line “Let them go, let them be ghosts” for a ghostline. Write from there. Remember to erase the ghostline but still give the poet credit for the inspiration.

For the third prompt to just practice writing, take “Origin of the Marble Forest” and replace all the nouns and/or verbs with antonyms. See what happens. Remember that this is just an exercise since it will be too close to the original unless you completely restructure the poem and rewrite the lines.

Good luck! Good writing!

Ekphrastic This—Prompts to Embarrass My Mother

The first prompt is to write an ekphrastic poem of the bottom photo, or a comparison of the two.

For the next prompt, write an ekphrastic poem on the next photo or a meditation on how we so often see what we want to see rather than reality. Throw in some muppet references.

For the next ekphrastic prompt, write about either view or a combination.

Last ekphrastic prompt:

Bonus prompt: write a list poem of art in your daily life or the things you find beauty in that others do not. Be as serious or as ridiculous as you like.

Good luck!

Pay Homage to Your Heroes or Parody Famous Poems for Fun and Writing Practice—Prompts

If you are feeling dry—both in writing and in editing—sometimes a fun exercise is to riff off of famous poems. It’s a good way to keep practicing craft even during the dry periods, and you can give joy to others.

Twitter had a trend of people spoofing the famous William Carlos Williams poem “This is Just to Say” a while back. Recently, artist and illustrator Dawline Oni-Eseleh offered her own version on an @AITA thread (Am I the Asshole). Perfection! Follow her on Twitter (@Dawlinejane_Art) and check out her website. If you are inspired to write an ekphrastic poem for one of her artworks, make sure to name the piece and give her credit.

For your first prompt, write your own version of the poem. Bonus points if you can write a poem that skewers an asshole.

And, yes, I have offered this same prompt, but I have a soft place for this particular poem because my maiden name sounds like “plum” and have written multiple versions of the poem.

For the next prompt, choose another poem to follow the structure but using your own words and experiences. Be careful that instead of paying respect to a poet or parodying a famous poem, you aren’t simply plagiarizing. If you feel that your intention may not be completely clear, don’t share the poem as your own but consider this as just an exercise. Not all poems need to be published or performed.

Bonus prompt: write an ekphrastic of this monument to my culinary skills. Or a horror haiku. Your choice.

Revising and Recreating—Prompts

April was the month for writing new poems, and this month is for editing and for recreating.

Using Kristen Baum’s cutting-up method of revision (see here for her explanation and demonstration), print one of your poems that you feel needs to be rearranged and cut it up into the phrases you want to keep together and into individual words. Give yourself plenty of space—a table or even the floor—to play around with the order. Find out which words and phrases you can leave out. You may need to add more words into the mix, so make another printout, cut them out, and include them. See what works. Experiment and play.

For a writing/editing prompt, let’s cento a new poem out of those you’ve left sitting in folders. Take several of those 30/30 poems that you are unhappy with and any older poems that you have also given up on further editing and cut each line up into separate strips of paper. Since these are your own poems, you of course can add words and punctuation as needed, but first try to use each line as is to see if that constraint can push you into a new direction.

I hope these suggestions help you give new life to a poem you’ve abandoned.

For a bonus prompt, write about a place you had left behind but discovered it grown new life when you returned. Perhaps you visited a childhood home and saw new trees and flowers planted in the front yard or maybe a tire swing or play set. Has the tree limb you broke climbing it grown another branch? Describe these new possibilities, or look for the ghost of your child self and those of your family that seem to remain. Is your name carved somewhere?

May You Edit All Month Long—Editing Prompts

So you’ve completed the 30/30 challenge and have aa April-full of poems. Or perhaps you are like me, never finished even two weeks’ worth of poems. Now what? Continue writing. Maybe make the first half of May your time to finish the poems you started, or had planned to. I didn’t get out blog posts regularly either. Sorry!!!

So you can catch up on writing, or you can start editing. Some poems you may need to set aside for a while. You may instead want to edit old poems. You may find that some poems—those from April and others from years ago—are unfixable. If so, pull what you like from them and start collecting those lines and phrases in a document for later use.

For those poems you’re ready to dig into, try some of the techniques discussed in previous posts. To find the heart of the poem, try looking at the fourth or fifth line from the bottom. Begin the poem there and continue.

You could try switching the first half and second of your poem, and either begin writing after the original ending or try to create a beginning for the former first half. See what happens.

You could play with the structure. What happens if you take a prose poem and divide it into stanzas and shorter lines, or vice versa, make a prose poem from the original. Experiment with line length and stanzas. What works?

Perhaps the structure works but the language is imprecise or bulky. What is redundant? Look at your verbs. Do they stand out? What about the last word in the lines? Conversely, are small words stacking up at the beginning of lines? What can you cut? What images are you conveying? Are they relevant? Does the poem need a clearer sense of time or place?

I will try to post more editing suggestions later this month, along with generative prompts. And remember some poems (and revisions) won’t succeed, but the process of writing is to keep practicing and experimenting (and continue reading and learning from others too). And if you end up with an epic failure of a piece, you can take comfort in your shared experience.

Ekphrastic This—Prompts from the Wordless and Flaking

In spite of good intentions, I am behind on giving prompts during 30/30. Yikes! I will say that sun poisoning does not increase my productivity. If only I shed words onto a page in the same quantity as I am shedding skin. Or if I could molt my way into a more organized existence. Alas.

Since I am the equivalent of chaos in a beige cardigan, let’s start off by writing about a moment when stars do align, when the universe seems to dance to the tune you are singing in your head. And here is an actual alignment of the stars:

For the second prompt, write about a once-in-a-thousand-years event, and you were as witness. For an added constraint, make the focus of the poem on a trivial part of your day—what you ate, hello Pepys!

Bonus prompt: write a persona poem from this strangely muscular-legged bird.

Just a few more days! Keep on writing!

Or do what I do: get more than a week behind, write several shitty poems, and decide to finish sometime in May and then edit the crap out of them (or flush the really stinky ones). It’s all good.

Belated Easter Prompt

I meant to post yesterday but didn’t have any ideas and then I saw this reposted. For your first prompt, write a poem about what this Easter bunny gives you.

For a second prompt, repurpose the Daphne and Apollo myth into this metamorphism. What was chasing the rabbit, and who transformed the rabbit to save it?

For the next prompt, write about the creature that hatches from this seed pod. What—or who—does it eat? What does it want?

And the final prompt, what do you wish would hatch from these eggs?

The Science of Capturing the Invisible—Prompts

Sorry for missing last week’s prompt. It has been a rough week. I hope you are writing; I am managing only a couple a week. I may try to do a binge day, but the results are likely not to be very useful, even for editing projects.

Rather than using a sample prompt, let’s try to science a poem.

For the first prompt, write a love poem using the following terms: “hydrogen,” “subatomic,” “cloud chamber,” “bubble chamber,” “supersaturated,” “superheated,” “electromagnetic,” “recompressed,” “collider,” “interactions,” “voltage,” “amplifier,” and “positron.”

If none of those words resonate with you, try reading CERN article “Seeing the Invisible: Event Displays in Particle Physics” or the “Bubble Tracks: A Window on the Subatomic” from PhysicsCentral. Or use one of the articles as the subject of an erasure or blackout poem.

Finally write an ekphrastic using one of the images above. What messages or sigils do you see in the patterns?

Prompts Inspired by Caroline Bird and Levitation—with Thanks to John McCullough

Follow John McCullough for the great insights and poems he shares. So, yes, the line breaks in Caroline Bird’s “Mid-air.” So much yes.

For the prompt, use the first line “There is a corner of the city where the air is” as a ghostline and describe your city. Make it a love letter to your hometown or the city you still daydream of when the days are a slog and the nights the ceiling stares back at you in bed.

For the next prompt, write a poem in which your line breaks recreate the moment a trapeze artist let’s go of the bar. Break them in the middle of the sentences, even in the middle of exclamations, and pair the breaks with music or movies—think of the note held as a victim looks back at the killer during a chase scene.

For a third prompt, write a poem describing a kiss as “If composers kisses were scored by composers.” Make it a full orchestra or perhaps a jazz duet of saxophone and trumpet, or a trill of flute and clarinet. Make each breath count.

And the final prompt, create a poem from the following word list: “corner,” “hardens,” “suspended” “scored,” “breath,” “tightens,” “tongue,” “locked,” “ caught,” and “landed.”

First Day of 30/30–Prompts Inspired by Nicky Beer

Let’s start this April short and brutal. Thank you, Suzanne Richardson, for posting this poem! So much said in so few words.

For the first prompt, write a poem that is limited to just nine words or that is consists of variations of the same line. For poems this short, you will likely need the title to provide the context.

For the next prompt, use the first line “they want it to be true” as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line. Or use the line as your title, and go from there. Either way, give credit to the poet.

Tomorrow Starts NaPoWriMo!

Tomorrow another April arrives and with it the 30 poems in 30 days writing challenge. I will try to post a prompt every week (sorry for the slacking), but there are many places to find prompts. Check out the official NaPoWriMo site for daily prompts and past years’ prompts. There’s even an early bird prompt posted today.

Come this Sunday to Gatsby Books!

Hi everybody! Just wanted to invite you to hear me Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Angela Narciso Torres, Jesenia Chávez and me at Gatsby Books (5535 E Spring St, Long Beach)! Come listen to Adrian read from his most recent book and from his other collections. I am excited to hear him, Jesenia, and Angela!

I hope to see you!

It’s World Poetry Day—So Many Great Poems!

Celebrate World Poetry Day by reading poets from around the world. It’s important to support your local poetry community and learn from its members, but don’t forget to explore new perspectives and new techniques.

For your prompt, read the selection of poems at the Academy of American Poets site and write a response to one of the poems. Be sure to credit the original poem that inspired you, especially if you use a line from it as a ghostline.

Bonus prompt: discover new poets and analyze their techniques. Try one of their forms they’ve perfected or particular style.

Happy reading and writing!

“The frame is a door”—Prompts Inspired by Paul Tran

This week’s prompts are inspired by Paul Tran’s “Let me be clear./Inside this story is another story” from their All the Flowers Kneeling, shared by Victoria Chang whose book Barbie Chang is one you should check out.

For the first prompt, write a sonnet about your language choices, or be truly ambitious and write a sonnet crown in a modified terza rima. I found this interview with the poet in Electric Literature fascinating.

For the second prompt, use the line “Inside this story is another story” as a ghostline. For an added constraint, reference another story within the poem. Look into the “box” of the story.

For a third prompt, think what your purpose is and lead the poem up to explaining what that purpose is.

The fourth prompt is another ghostline: take the line “Behind the door is another door” and describe the room within. Or use the line “Behind the door is another door as your title (crediting the poet) and jump into an immediate description.

These prompts of course reflect my own obsession with boxes—the ones others place us in as well as the boxes we trap ourselves and the gaps between the boxes inside boxes.

Ars Poetica—Prompts Inspired by Aracelis Girmay

I know that I have a previous ars poetica prompt, but I so love this poem: its depth, the lack of pretension, its humanity. I have written a few, but most of them are self-deprecating, one of them even titled arse poetica. But this poem is truly lovely.

For the first prompt, write your own ars poetica. Keep to a single image, unrelated to actual writing techniques and paraphernalia. Let it open up to your own life and hopes.

For the next prompt, use the line “Everywhere I go” as a ghostline and say what you have left of yourself.

Hybrid Times—Prompts Inspired by Boris Khersonsky

Like many of you, I am following events and spend evenings doomscrolling. It’s not productive nor helpful, but impossible to look away, and I am afraid if I were to close my eyes to events, people will try to tell me it never happened. We’ve been lied to so much, so often. Remembering becomes an act of defiance.

These next poems are inspired by Boris Khersonsky’s “They Printed in the Medical History.”

For the first prompt, choose a number that represents a significant period of time for you. Connect that number to your own life or a historical event and end by alluding to a passage or event in a religious text.

For the second prompt, use the structure of the line “It was a time of hybrid hospitals. Now is a time of hybrid war.” but replace “hospitals” and “war” with your own nouns. Remember to give credit to the poet.

For the third prompt, use the last line “because they don’t exist” as a ghostline, erasing the line after you’ve finished the poem. Again, remember to acknowledge the poet by using “after Boris Khersonsky” under your title.

For the last prompt, write what you were told never happened. No matter how small or seemingly insignificant, write it down for yourself. Keep these records. Don’t let anyone take your history away.