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?

Strange Impulses Book Event This Saturday in Downtown Tustin

If you are in the downtown Tustin area this Saturday, please join me at the Sip & Stroll where some of the other authors in the e-book box set Strange Impulses will be available to sell their published books (because they are not slackers and have other books). The event starts at 1:00, and we will be set up at Kelly's Irish Gifts (located in the back lot next to Morning Lavender, 330 El Camino).

The Sip & Stroll in downtown Tustin offers a walking taste tour of delicious food and wine, cocktails, craft beer and other beverages and live music. All ages welcome. Wine and chili will be available at our location with purchase of an armband. Save $10 with pre-sale tickets. Here is the link to learn more about the entire Sip & Stroll event and to buy tickets.

Come meet the authors:

Kurt Bensworth, award-winning author of two novels, What Love Looks Like and Blurred Edges

Andrea Ring, New York Times Best Seller author with 22 books under her belt (yes, I am in awe)

Steve Ramirez, a published author and host of the weekly reading series "Two Idiots Peddling Poetry"

My co-author Kristin won't be able to make it, nor will Peter Jessup whom Texas stole from us. Peter writes sci fi, fantasy, horror and humor.

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. 

Persona Prompt Without Excuses—Proclaim Your Crimes

We are not interested in the meek today. The meek may inherit the earth—eventually—but only after all the good parts have all been trashed. Choose a historical figure with a closet full of skeletons, perhaps a whole field or a city block full of them, and rattle their bones. Assert your sins. Let us smell the fires of the cities you razed and hear the lamentations. This is not the day to be on the right side of history.

Check out April Bernard’s “Bloody Mary”  Where else can you hear “strappado” used so perfectly? Notice how crown beheaded is crow. 

Perhaps Men Are from Mars and Women Are from Venus, but Fatimah Asghar IS Pluto

Time for another persona poem. Now you are not just a natural disaster, you are an entire planet, or maybe you are feeling humble, make yourself a moon or a comet.  Feeling superior today, make yourself the galaxy.

Read Fatimah Asghar’s brilliant poem “Pluto Shits on the Universe” to show you how it is done.

A Universal Message

Since I am still not quite over the flu, I am cheating today and using a poetry prompt from Poets & Writers: imagine that the universe is trying to tell you something. Click here for the prompt.

If that prompt doesn’t strike anything for you, let’s tweak it slightly by adding the condition that the universe is writing you a love letter. Perhaps the universe is burning part the world just for you. Why else would every store window advertise matches and kerosene? Maybe the trees are bursting into reds and golds even in winter. Don’t be afraid to be selfish; after all, the universe is mouthing promises against your throat. Give in. Write a poem or flash fiction piece or even a personal essay. You know the universe wants you to. 

To-Do List Prompt

The last prompt—before I got the flu—was about New Year’s Resolutions and lists of what we didn’t get done. Now let’s write a poem for what we plan to do. Use your daily to-do list and make a poem. Let’s get some real use out of that list.

Listen to C. D. Wright’s poem “Living” for inspiration. Notice the frequent repetition of the phrase “If this is Wednesday.” Repetition of a word or phrase that occurs at the beginning of a line is called anaphora. This literary device can be extremely helpful in generating writing. Brendan Constantine recommended it in one of his workshops. If you have a chance to take a workshop with Brendan, do so. I have learned so much from him, and he is truly fun (and brilliant, kind and generous). His next workshop is with poet and novelist Maxine Chernoff on Saturday, Jan. 13th, in Santa Monica (Camera Obscura Art Lab, 1450 Ocean Ave.) at 1-4 p.m. Click on workshop for the link to buy a ticket ($30).

I am so grateful to Chelsea Dingman, Hannah VanderHart, and other poets recommending C. D. Wright’s work on Twitter. I had read a poem or two of hers previously but am rediscovering how much I like her writing.

New Year’s Resolutions—To-Do’s and Did-Not’s

Most of us contemplate the new year with a to-do list of promises: exercise more, read more, write more, worry less, binge Netflix less, etc., most of which we will break within the first weeks. I am not here to judge you—honest. I am too busy stressing about my own ever-growing list of expectations and likely failures. If hope springs eternal, my clock springs must be rusty and bent.

On that optimistic note...write a poem about what you didn’t get done this past year. Rather than pushing against that mudslide of regret, use its momentum and put your obsessive analyzing of past mistakes to good use. For inspiration and commiseration, read Richard Hoffman’s “December 31st” personifying his undone to-do items. 

Another possible prompt using Hoffman’s poem: describe the calendar’s artwork or specifically January’s to create an ekphrastic poem (a poem that describes a piece of artwork or a scene). We will dive further into ekphrastic poetry in a later post. For now, you can jump to the Poetry Foundation’s definition of the ekphrastic form and its recommended sample, the famous “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by Keats.

Or if you would like your own 17th century still life with skull, refer to the painting Vanitas Still Life by François van Daellen (c. 1650)

 Click “painting” for a link to its free downloadable image at NGA Images from the National Gallery of Art. Check out other images too.

Breakup Prompt for the Year

Last January, HanaLena Fennel gave this prompt at the Ugly Mug reading: “Break up with last year. You are too good to be treated like this.”

I am unsure about your year, but for me 2016 was a flaming trash heap, and then 2017 waltzed up and said, “hold my beer.” So I am repeating this prompt for 2017. Don’t hold back. Don’t tell 2017 you just want to be friends or that it is really you, not it, that’s the problem. You tell 2017 off for every insult and lie slapped across your face. Get political, get dirty, get revenge. Burn its calendar and erase entire months from your memory. We all deserve better. 

Here is a photo of your ex. Launch a dart or a missile, whichever is more appropriate.

Here are the two poems I wrote to 2016:

2016
bent me over a table.
I was doubly bored.

2016,
you rolling dumpster fire,
burning down career,
government, confidence, skills—
I piss on your calendar.

If you want more prompts from the fanatastic HanaLena Fennel and wish an encouraging online community, subscribe to her Patreon page.

I believe the half scratched off price sticker on the bottom of my coffee mug may explain the universe’s attitude towards me... Don't worry, I will write a poem for it too.

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh—Three Offerings

Recently I posted a prompt of three items that can be used for either poems or short fiction. Let’s update that prompt to fit the holiday: choose three items, but make these items offerings. Like the three kings, you may offer three items of value to God’s first-born son, or something less tangible, perhaps the first deep embrace you received after a year alone, the smell of rain after a long drought, the last goodbye you said to someone you lost.

Or make your offerings to some other power in your life, whether benevolent or malignant. Or make offerings to multiple influences. Regardless of who receives them or what the offerings are, you paid a price to have these or will pay dearly to give them away. For inspiration, read T. S. Eliot’s “The Gift of the Magi.”

‘Tis the Season to Earn that Coal—Sex Prompts

There is time enough to post prompts celebrating the true spirit of Christmas and Hanukkah. Tonight is for all the naughty boys and girls to whom Santa gives coal to keep those furnaces burning hot... If you wish, keep the Christmas theme. Are you Santa’s favorite elf? Write about sitting on his lap. Does Santa carry a candy cane in is pocket, or he is really happy to give you a present? Is there dancing on the North Pole? Santa did name one of his reindeer vixen.  

If the season of giving and receiving does not make you make you think of fishnet stockings, then let’s just get down to business. Write a sex poem. Don’t hold back unless edging is your thing. Remember, really nice boys finish last—after the girl does. 

 For inspiration, read Kim Addonizio’s “What Women Want” and listen to the poet read her work. 

This prompt works for short stories too.  If you need a little help to get started, check out this NSFW random prompt generator. I think I will let you find your own stories...

Christmas

Christmas and Hanukkah are almost here. The presents are wrapped under the tree (nope). Holiday cards have all been sent (oops). The stockings are stuffed (with lint). You may sense a theme.... The Internet is a blessing though and allows slackers like me to borrow ideas from industrious souls. Check out these creative writing prompts for both poetry and fiction at LitBridge. 

Three Lists, Three Elements, Good Things Come in Threes

Yes, I know I promised to provide prompts for short stories too. I admit I am a slacker. I do have a prompt (a borrowed one) that will work for either short stories or for poetry. Behold, the Power of Three: three categories, three elements, three spinning rings of hell, however you wish to think of it. I “borrowed” this idea from two places, Steve Ramirez and the website Creative Writing Now.  

Poetry workshops with Steve Ramirez usually involve two or even three categories of five items: i.e. five mythological beasts, five mundane tasks and five embarrassing secrets. Mix and match until you get friction. Perhaps you decide Medusa likes to sing Disney songs in the shower as she washes her snakes. Which song does she like best? Describe her voice. Do the snakes provide backup?

Now for the short story prompt Three Elements: Choose a set of three elements and write a story that contains all three of them.

1. A stolen ring, fear of spiders, and a sinister stranger. 
2. A campfire, a scream, and a small lie that gets bigger and bigger.
3. A broken wristwatch, peppermints, and a hug that goes too far.

Somehow the “hug that goes too far” draws me in. Check out the full list of three element sets as well as other short story ideas. 

The story “Cat Person” has generated a lot of attention on Twitter. I think Red Vines, movie theater, and bad sex would be its three-element prompt if I were to attempt to reverse engineer the story.