Pandemics and Panics—Prompts for the Beginning of 30/30 the Challenge

Moving in the rain into a house without consistently functional indoor plumbing did not lead to frequent blogging (or anything else) last month, but today begins the April National Poetry Month Writing challenge (NaPoWriMo): writing 30 poems in 30 days.

But the lockdown and the move made me more aware of what our homes mean to us…especially when they become our perpetual living space and our confinement. If you live alone, I hope you are able to connect with loved ones. Likewise, f you are surrounded by loved ones and roommates, I hope you find some solitude.

For the first prompt, people your home with spirits, gods and goddesses. Let them live in your cabinets. What do they want to say to you? What do you say back? For a sample poem, check out “What the Medicine Cabinet Said” by T. J. Anderson III.

The second prompt is for all of the parents of young children and for those who are shifting into full-time playmates and teachers as their children are kept home from school. Set the scene of one of your interactions with your kids—is it a battle over a homework assignment, a repeated request for quiet during a conference call, a plea for some downtime? Make a list of five objects and another of five sounds. Try to incorporate at least three of each into the poem. If this is a recurring event, try to balance the immediacy with a sense of repetition. I particularly love Jenny Factor’s “Battle of Will & Exhaustion, Mother & Child.”

For the final prompt, choose a page from a novel—horror or suspense—and block out words until you find a poem that resonates with how you feel during this time of quarantine, sorrow and uncertainty. This prompt was inspired by this beautiful erasure poem by S. J. Sloat.

For more poems and illustrations, check out poet’s blog and upcoming book.

Add Your Adages in a Row—Prompts Inspired by Sara Miller

Maxims and pithy sayings bear repeating over and over and repeating them can be overbearing, but my favorite poems often employ an aphorism as a metaphor or subvert one. “Countermeasures” by Sara Miller takes the familiar and tweaks it. I love both the resulting imagery and comparisons.

For the first prompt, choose an aphorism and use it to create an extended metaphor as Miller did. Here is an online list of aphorisms. I may have already posted a similar prompt—and probably will do so again since my ducks usually are upside with their butts showing while their heads are underwater looking for their car keys.

The second prompt is to take the line “My point is that we all exist, wetly, in the hunt” for a ghostline, or if you prefer, use it as an epigraph (although one Twitter discussion indicated that some editors don’t like epigraphs and the challenge for a poet is to not have the epigraph overshadow the rest of the poem). Either way, don’t forget to give credit to Miller.

For another example of a poem that takes a common saying and “turns it on its ear” (sorry!) is “In the Ear of Our Lord” By Brendan Constantine, one of my favorite poets. Do check out his website for his upcoming performances, and I sincerely recommend his workshops. For the second prompt, deliberately botch the aphorism or perhaps mix two together and see what happens.

Good luck!

Ghostline for Death by Wedding Dress in a Forest Fire—Prompts

A second move in less than a year—especially when it was unplanned and unwanted—does not lead to productivity in other areas, so I am once again behind on posting and will probably continue to be lax for some time to come.

This next prompt is inspired by a Tweet, and while Twitter itself is political hellscape, I still find inspiring prompts, amazing poems and animal pics and videos.

For the prompt, use the following Tweet as a ghostline. What exactly does this show? Remember to delete the line but still give credit to the writer.

While I obviously didn’t find a sample poem that exactly fits this scenario, I do have beautiful poems linked that I hope you enjoy as much I do. Check out “Self-portrait as Thousandfurs” by Stacy Gnall, “Boy in a Stolen Evening Gown” by Saeed Jones, “Brute Strength” by Emily Skaja and “Ekphrasis on My Rapist’s Wedding Dress” by torrin a. greathouse.

For a second prompt, choose the last line or last two lines of one of these poems for a ghostline. As always, erase the line but give credit to the poet for your inspiration.

Photo taken from the online clothing site Gem and modified with the PaperCamera app

For a final prompt, use the image to write an ekphrastic poem.

Good luck!

Imitate Your Friends and Influence People—Prompts

For the first prompt, write in the style of your friend or someone in your local poetry community (if you have one). Try to choose someone who writes in a very different style. If you tend to focus on imagery, then pick someone whose lines you admire for their sound and rhythm. Try to use similar themes as the person you are imitating. If person tends to write about the sea and vicious mermaids, use a similar subject matter. Also try to replicate line lengths and word choices.

The main purpose is to notice the techniques another poet uses and practice them in your own writing. The secondary purpose is to show another writer you admire their skills. Remember, this prompt is an exercise. The goal isn’t to write a poem to publish since you are imitating someone else.

For the second prompt, weave multiple styles/voices in a poem. I have never been able to do this, but Sarah ChristianScher is amazing at this. If you come to the Ugly Mug, ask her for advice and then explain how to do it to me please.

Imitation as a Form of Flattery and Fun

The last post focused on imitating others and repeating their words and style. Let’s repeat ourselves and others again—without the mockery though.

Most of us know of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”—it was an anthem for a generation—but Amy Newman’s version of “Howl” provide a younger generation of women with their own. I found her poem cheeky and humorous but not derogatory to Ginsberg’s. I hope you enjoy it too.

So if imitation is the highest form of flattery and to err is human, let’s take a poem we really like and muff it all up. Choose a poem whose structure you admire and use it for a template for your own poem. Here is Jack Spicer’s amazing poem “Psychoanalysis: An Elegy.” The full poem is found here.

Now below is my attempt to reproduce a similar format in a poem (full link here). Note that this poem is too close to its original (not in quality but in structure) for me to feel comfortable submitting it for publication). I think of this as an exercise poem only. After recent controversies with outright plagiarism and imitation in the poetry community, I hesitate to use others’ structures even with clear attribution. Parody of course is fine, but that is not the goal of this exercise.

For your first prompt, use the structure of Jack Spicer’s poem (his questions) but provide your own answers. See where it leads you. Again, this is just an exercise poem.

Painters and other visual artists often learn techniques by imitating the masters. It is expected and an accepted method of instruction. Writers, however, are supposed to pull from their own lives so that using another’s words is a betrayal of self and a theft. Most beginning writers imitate though—it is part of the process, which is why open mics usually have at least one poet using antiquated language in a rhyming sonnet that echoes the poems from an English lit class.

For the next prompt, choose a poem with a distinctive format/structure—a poem that you love down to your marrow.. Write a poem that matches the original’s structure but work to maintain your own voice. Again this is just an exercise.

For the final prompt, unleash your silliness. Let the painting below be your inspiration.

Good luck!

Yes, this prompt isn’t about parody, but I couldn’t resist this painting.

Imitation as Parody, Painting and Prosody: Prompts

Playground taunts often involve imitation, and parody can be the most pointed of insults, so choose a poem that irks you or a good poem from a [insert profanity here] poet. In grad school, I had a poetry professor who hated William Blake and would read Blake’s poem’s in the voice of Bullwinkle (the Moose of the Squirrel and Moose duo). Fabulous. Here is a link to

For the first prompt, find a poem (or poet) you dislike and mock a poem to all your dark heart’s joy. Dance on those bloated stanzas, bonfire that crude rhyme scheme, shout down its narrator, delight in the destruction! Go all in.

More about this painting the artist Toulouse-Lautrec can be found at this link.

Not all parody is cruel in intent though. I felt utterly seen and loved when a friend of mine included me in a poem composed of lines in the style of local poets. I immediately knew my own lines without being named (I think she wrote “my” lines better than I do though).

A recent post featured deer in poems and linked William Stafford’s famous “Traveling Through the Dark.” Let’s look at Rae Armantrout’s parody of his poem with her “Traveling Through the Yard,” both of which are helpfully provided by the blog 32degrees.

So for the next prompt, choose a poem you love and parody it all in good fun. Try to keep to the original’s form as much as possible.

For a third prompt, take a famous poem and completely desecrate it. Perhaps switch its form to a limerick as Wendy Cope did in her “The Waste Land: Five Limericks.” Introduce cats, muppets or cartoon characters. Please check out Robert Wynne’s Museum of Parallel Art for more sample poems.

Go all in! Good luck!

Bad Optics—Prompts for the Deluded and Denuded

We have all been there looking at a photo and mistaking a cat for a crow or a bunny for a raven (such tricksters) or arguing about the color of a striped dress. We’ve looked at a rusty cardoor and seen an ocean but mistook an ocean for a door. We often cannot find the exits in this complex life or follow the storyline. We have been there when the denouement occurs: the love interest has been the villain all along, or we were playing detective but found ourselves both the body and the butler holding the murder weapon in our bloody hands. We do it to ourselves…with help from others.

The animal is a raven (appropriately named Mischief), not a rabbit, petted by his trainer, but the pic but was captioned with “Rabbits love getting stroked on their nose.” Check out the BBC article for other optical illusions and context.

For the first prompt, remember a time when an enemy seemed like a friend, a predator pretending to be prey animal. When did you first suspect the talons, see a hint of fang behind the smiling lips? How did you escape? Or did you? How much innocence, time, flesh did you lose?

For the next prompt, write a poem about losing a long-held assumption. For a poem, try to create a modified or traditional sonnet with the reveal as the form’s turn. For fiction, emulate O’Henry or Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” so that the reveal occurs at the very end. Or for a challenge, begin with the reveal and work from there. Discover where it leads you.

For the final prompt, write a poem or short story in which you are both perpetrator and victim? When did you realize that it was you all along? Did you get away with the crime? Did you ever forgive yourself? Will you?

“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.

The Lamb of Ghent IS Watching You—Judgmental Prompts

So the Ghent Altarpiece was restored, and look (hide from!) what was underneath (the right is the original, restored version):

For the first prompt, write a sonnet specifically addressing the first Lamb. Let the turn be the response from the uncovered (original) Lamb. Whereas the painting on the left seems more realistic, the restored original looks directly at the viewer, and the eyes are more human-like (befitting the Lamb of God) but also more predatory. Twitter users compared the restored Lamb to Shrek (the ears) and to Mark Zuckerberg (seriously, there’s a likeness), so feel free to let those comparisons influence your response.

For the second prompt, write an ekphrastic poem however you wish (ekphrastic poems describe a piece of art in vivid detail. For a sample poem, read Linda Paston’s “Detail of the Altarpiece at Ghent,” which focuses on three angels from the painting.

For the next prompt, write a poem begging forgiveness from the Lamb. What did you do, and how can you repent?

And for the final prompt, write a persona poem for this Lamb that judges and refuses to follow. What tweets do you expect this Lamb to offer followers? Hyperbole welcome.

The Sevenling—Poetry Form and Prompt

In honor of Roddy Lumsden, let’s experiment with the poem form he created: the sevenling. The form consists of seven lines (duh) with two stanzas of three lines and one line at the bottom. For a really great explanation of the form and an absolutely beautiful sample poem by Anna Akhmatova, check out the sevenling writing challenge found on the YeahWrite blog.

So for the prompt, write a sevenling. For an added constraint, use a flower, a weapon and chemical compound or element in your lists.

Other examples of the sevenling are published on D’verse Poets Pub. Here is an interview with Roddy Lumsden you might find interesting.

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.”

Holiday Horrors—Prompts

We have all been there—sitting awkwardly with relatives or a dinner party when a monstrosity is brought out: the inevitable meat-suspended-in-gelatin dish of our nightmares and/or the Jello-Cool Whip-Mayo “fruit salad” from your now-least-favorite aunt. For the next prompt, write a sonnet describing this dish. Let the sonnet’s turn be either your decision to try it or your survival after the mandatory taste test.

For inspiration, see the following picture:

And because I just had to know more and assume you might too:

For the next prompt, reimagine the universe as a Jello ring. Write a narrative poem or a short story as an explorer—whether astronaut, cosmonaut (Russian), yuhangyuan (Chinese), or of some other nationality. What equipment allows for breath? How do you navigate through tuna? Are the cucumber chunks a relief? Describe the flora and fauna.

And here is one more for your amusement, terror, an emotion not yet named by anyone other than the Germans….

Good luck!

Monsters and Mythical Beings Have To-Do Lists Too—Mundane Tasks for Magical Creatures

Yesterday, I ran an impromptu poetry workshop with people who couldn’t really say no. The exercise was a list of five monsters and mythical creatures and a list of five daily tasks.

Here are some possible prompts taken from those lists:

• Medusa washing her “hair”

• Cyclops getting an eye exam

• Minotaur stuck in traffic

• Grendel eating a midnight snack

• Siren talking to a telemarketer

• A Fury filling out tax forms

• Centaur buying apples at a farmer’s market

• Office poltergeist shredding receipts

• Big Foot taking pet to the groomers

• Demons sharing work gossip

Here is your sample poem (written by my supervisor):

Go Rube Goldberg Yourself—Machine Yourself a Revenge, a New Life, or just a Damn Poem

A Rube Goldberg machine (named after the cartoonist) is the creation of a complex (usually messy and often destructive) chain-of-events to perform the simplest task.

Just look up Rube Goldberg on YouTube and enjoy the obsessively ordered chaos. And of course here is Ok Go’s Rube Goldberg video (thanks, Steve, for the new obsession).

The first prompt is inspired by David Guzman’s “Instructions for Building My Rube Goldberg Machine” in McSweeney’s. Write a poem in which you create a Rube Goldberg machine of revenge, knocking down naysayers like dominoes and launching belittlers into the blue beyond.

For the rest of the essay, click this link.

For the next prompt, again write a Rube Goldberg machine for creating a new life. Perhaps write a poem or story in which you rewire your neural pathways into a glowing smiley face, construct a system of mental pulleys to unload leftover regrets and needless doubts, or build a feedback loop of positive reinforcements in your morning routine. Or maybe you want to describe creating an alter to a dark god out of Legos that takes up a city block and steal your enemies’ shoes (thanks, Twitter, for the best curse I’ve ever heard).

And finally create a poem as if it were a Rube Goldberg machine. Perhaps it is. What is your ending? How do you set up the first line and the subsequent stanzas to get us there?

Ok Go Ghostline Yourself a Poem—Prompts

Blame the Ugly Mug, particularly Steve Ramirez, for my newest obsession: Ok Go. Yes, yes, I am behind the times, out of step, calendar deficient, day unplanner, and time deficient.

For the next prompt, I want you to use the the following line from Ok Go’s song “Upside Down & Inside Out” as a ghostline: “Yeah when you met the new you, did someone die inside?”

Think about all of those former selves or even the phases you went through during your teen years and various periods of your life. Did you have to kill a former to become the current version of yourself? If so, did you feel pity for that self as you murdered it? Was it a violent destruction? A mercy killing?

Or do all of those former selves follow you like a shadow, longer with each passing year as if you are moving through the late afternoon of your own consciousness? Does the weight of all that self history sink you lower to the ground? Is it hard to keep your head up when it is so full of echoes?

Or use one of the other lines from the song as a ghostline:

• “Gravity’s just a habit that you’re pretty sure you can break”

• “So when you met the new you / Were you scared, were you cold, were you kind?”

• “Don’t know where your eyes are but they’re not doing what you said”

For the next prompt, write a conversation among your former and present selves and maybe add a future self too. Will it be an argument, an interrogation or accusation, an explanation, an apology, or advice? What do you wish your former self could tell you? What do you wish you remembered? What advice would you give a past self? Would the knowledge erase your current self as if un-birthing your present consciousness ? Would you share that advice anyway? Or would that death be your intended purpose?

Here is Ok Go’s video for “Upside Down & Inside Out.” Write a poem about being in zero gravity. Try to narrate the video as a sonnet or pantoum. Or write from the perspective of one of the piñatas. Write. Discover what happens.

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.

Mad Lib a Meme and Odd Conversations: The What-Were-You-Thinking Prompts

Lately all of my poems have been serious (depressing), and the novel is just a no-go right now, so let’s be silly.

For the first prompt, take the old meme shown below and change the nouns and verbs. This is your chance to be as ridiculous as you have always wanted to.

For the second prompt, choose any poem and mad lib it. Use the antonyms for nouns, adjectives and verbs. See what happens. If you use another poet’s work, make sure you have truly created something of your own if you plan to submit it for publication. This is probably best used for an excercise to jumpstart a workshop or personal writing session.

For the next prompt, personify and write a conversation between the burnt branch and the twig. Are they two selves of the same individual, a parent and child, or master and protege? What happens next in your story?

Or write a poem and use the burnt tree and the new twig to represent the past and the future, outcomes and expectation, 2008 vs 2019, or perhaps again two selves of the same person.

Magic Realism Bot for the End Times—Stolen Prompts about Stealing, Libraries and the End of Time

For the first prompt, write a poem about the end of time using the format of a mathematical word problem. Bonus points if you provide the solution. Or offer a suggestion on who could.

For the next prompt, write a story about the queen’s attempted theft of the amethyst carnation using the pacing and storyline of Ocean’s 8.

For the next prompt, write a poem or short story about this world of libraries. Be sure to explain how the Dewey Decimal System has been applied to the nature and the animal kingdom. Are the oceans kinder under such a classification? How does the platypus fit in a stacked world?

And, finally, write a poem or story from the psychiatrist’s perspective. What would you tell this star (now that the best pun has been taken)?

NaNoWriMo Has Been a NadaNoWriNo

This month has not been productive. Obviously not here but certainly not on the novel. Leaking pipes and dripping ceilings aside, the lack of progress is all self-(un)directed. So if you are working on the challenge, how is it going? Let me know!

For this month, I will focus on fiction prompts (although it’s always a bonus if a poem comes out too). For this prompt, I am borrowing Alan Cheuse’s writing exercise from Naming the World. Cheuse recommends pastiche—or imitating other writers—to help newer writers improve their techniques. He assigns students a famous story such as Checkhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog” and has the student write from the viewpoint of Anna’s husband or another character.

Alan Cheuse

Bonus prompt: Write from the perspective of this lion. WTH did you do to make him look at you like that.

Work Terrors—What Follows You Home into Your Dreams That No Raise Can Put Down!

So the other day I went to the dentist and asked her what kind of workplace nightmares she has—you know, the normal conversations you have with someone you have drooled on for 30 minutes (and apologized for, repeatedly).

“Blood. Lots of Blood,” she replied.

Then she described the true horror: “You know when you are eating watermelon and spitting out the seeds. My nightmares involve spitting out teeth. More and more teeth.”

Yep, her workplace dreams sure beat my forgot-to-wear-pants-hope-the-students-don’t-notice nightmares. Or the recent one in which I brought only a pillow and a notebook to a knife fight. Even in my dreams I am unprepared…

So for your prompt, write a poem or short story about the last nightmare you had. Fill in the gaps where necessary. Color in the blanks. Make them red and dripping, or surreal and disturbing as that cooing baby sun from the Teletubbies.

For added difficulty, create a turn in the story; for the poem, make it a sonnet with the shift coming either at the 9th line (Petrarchan) or at the 13th (Shakespearean).

Good luck!

Bonus prompt: This is your head; now tell us your memories from inside the jar.