This photo may sum up life as we now know it. Write an ekphrastic poem. Bonus points if you use “razzle dazzle” or “Hello, My Baby” or cartoon dancing frogs.
I can never unsee this.
Yes, the song IS stuck in my head…and now yours.
Labor Day—Cynical Prompts Inspired by Marge Piercy and Gary Snyder
So today is Labor Day, a holiday meant to be celebrated by taking time off, but of course here it is a day in which some employees must work so that others can relax. Telling, that it is also the same day that the unemployment extension ends because nothing says workers are valued quite like forcing them to return to jobs without living wages, sick leave or health insurance in a pandemic.
Work itself becomes our sole value in a society in which purpose and others’ profits are intertwined and even our own identity fades into a job title.
The first prompt is inspired by Marge Piercy’s “The Secretary Chant.” Write a poem in which your body has transformed into your current job, or a former one. Are the lines on your forehead rows in a spreadsheet or rows of corn? Is your mouth a name tag and each hand a styrofoam cup? Try to incorporate onomatopoeia as the poet did.
For the second prompt, write a prose poem about the process of transforming into a cubicle or a screen. Do you resist, or is it a relief to slip into all that beige wall and carpet or an email inbox?
The next prompts are inspired by Gary Snyder’s “Hay for the Horses.”
For the next prompt, use the line “I sure would hate to do this all my life” as a ghostline. Remember to delete the line and credit the poet with your inspiration.
For another prompt, write about a task from your first job and what you do now, either as paid work or the unpaid labor of childcare and housework.
For the last prompt, describe your hands or another part of your body that aches or suffers bruises or cuts after a day at work.
It’s strange how the bones are indistinguishable from the rocks in the picture, but not in person.
Revision Technique—Cutting Up from Kristen Baum DeBeasi
Since I just started a new position at work and am always behind even on a normal day, I am weeks behind here even though a writer I respect wrote up her revision technique and even provided photos. This delay is a whole new level of lazy for me, but you all now get to enjoy learning Kristen’s revision technique without waiting any longer!
***
Revision Technique—Cutting Up
by Kristen Baum DeBeasi
Here’s a technique I used to revise a poem that was mired in too muchness. My first draft lacked focus. Its title was one thing, while its subject was another thing and the idea that emerged was a third, somewhat messy thing. But I wanted this poem to work. I wanted to pay tribute to my high school English teacher, who was the original inspiration for the poem.
So, based on a recent workshop prompt (given by Moon Tide Press’s Eric Morago) I went to work.
My first step was to reformat the poem, setting the document to double space and the letter size to approximately 16 (if you try this, use your discretion). You may like slightly larger or smaller letters depending on line length or other variables). For me, I chose a letter size comparable to the size on my fridge magnet words (which I also use to create poems, but that’s another story) so I could easily read them without needing to be too close.
Next, I printed the entire poem and cut it into words and word-groups. I chose to preserve some phrases while separating others, based on their meaning in the original poem and how much or little I wanted to preserve that idea vs. allow the idea to evolve in my creative play.
Once everything was cut into single words or into word-groups, I set to work arranging and re-arranging, working first in small sections toward the direction I knew I wanted in the poem—Mr. Mortensen. I chose to work on photos from the Upper Peninsula, as that’s where I had attended high school, so the visual inspiration was in the same vicinity as the poem’s meaning and subject.
I kept playing, trying to include phrases then taking them out. Eventually, I arrived at the point where I thought I wanted a couple of words that hadn’t existed in the previous version of the poem, so I wrote them in bright pink and added them to the mix:
There were parts that no longer fit the larger poem and, for fun, I experimented with creating smaller poems of them.
Finally, after photographing the results, I typed the new version of the poem, adding and refining punctuation. Further revision resulted in eliminating the two lines following “And for what, Mort?” as unnecessary.
Here’s the final result of this revision.
Mr. Mortensen
as best he can he works
at the desk, the beaten
visibly slumped rayon trousers
his olive green, graying
socks hitched up
him, imparting
prepositional phrases, predicates
as the dealer of subjects,
his face glucose dimmed,
protracting from his brilliance
and he works to stay in that
one-blinking-light town.
and for what, Mort?
even as I read, eyes open,
my thirst would say, take
what you can and run
that light
—the blinking yellow—
would tell me
take caution
intolerance
finds you,
the outside world
showing itself
The original poem, before this process was:
Blinking Yellow
In my thirst for poetry I read
of subjects, predicates, prepositional phrases.
Even as I grope for their meanings
I remember the long ago classroom—
those melamine desks to fold into,
the asbestos-tiled floors, the beaten
teacher desk Mr. Mortensen sat behind,
his face to the windows, we students an army
of unrule between him and the outside world.
His olive-green rayon trousers hitched up
so his graying socks visibly slumped
more with each class, each mass of unruliness
before him, imparting English to the ones
who wouldn’t ever move and to the few
who weren’t meant to stay in that
one-blinking-light town. Take caution,
that light would say, telling highwaymen
to slow a bit, eyes open for pretty girls walking
in twos or threes during lunch period, or
take what you can—it’s all for sale, as the dealer sign says.
And Mort, at the desk, one massive leg beneath
The middle drawer, the other showing itself
It could still do math—a forty-five degree angle
Protracting from his torso. His brilliance dimmed
by glucose. Intolerance finds you wherever you are.
And he works to prepare each student as best he can
For what lies in store.
Take what you can. And run.
***
To read more of Kristen’s writing and to discover her music, check out her website and her SoundCloud and follow her on Facebook and Twitter at @kbaum12. She is awesome, and I hope you get the opportunity to join her in a workshop as I have gotten to do!
Prompts Inspired by Kwame Opoku-Duku
Today’s prompts are inspired by this powerful poem, “Lord Knows,” by Kwame Opoku-Duku. I am once again grateful for all the poems shared on Twitter.
For the first prompt, use the lines “what we lose / once we believe we are clean” as a ghostline to create a list poem. Be sure to give credit to the poet.
For the next prompt, use the following words from the poem: “skin,” “held,” “believe,” “circling,” “weight,” “ground,” “moment,” “unrelenting,” “infinite,” and “allow.”
The last prompt is another ghostline: “What else now but to speak plainly.” Say what you need to say, what you’ve been hiding behind metaphors or forms or any other subject you could write about instead. Say it now.
Schrödinger's Dishes and other Prompts—More Stealing from Twitter
I must say that Twitter is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to my blog…
For this first prompt, write a poem about a period in your life in which two opposing realities were both true: you both loved and hated your partner and were undecided whether to stay or leave. Put the reader at that moment before you made that decision. Try to end the poem in suspense and don’t give your decision.
For a second prompt, use the line “They are both broken and not broken until you open the door” as a ghostline. Or use the line as your first line and structure the resulting poem as Maggie Smith did in her “Poem Beginning with a Retweet.”
For the third prompt, use the structure suggested by Todd Dillard as the opening line of a poem. Or write an entire book as he recommended.
For the last prompt, take a poem you’ve written and rearrange the line breaks. Perhaps longer and shorter. More white space. Less. Maybe break it into stanzas or couplets or place it into a long column. How does the form modify the atmosphere of the poem? Explore. See what happens.
Bonus prompt: write a poem about either of these photos and credit the poet.
Good luck!
The aggressive hummingbird asshole blocking the feeder this morning.
Retweeting a Poem that Begins with a Retweet—Prompt Inspired by Maggie Smith
I feel as if I have finally succumbed to the meme of the photograph of wearing a t-shirt with a photo of myself wearing a t-shirt with a photo of myself wearing a t-shirt with a photo of myself wearing a t-shirt with a photo….
But I love this poem and the idea behind it. I too must point out every piece or instance of beauty I see as if the lack of acknowledgment will cause that flower or bird or tree or moth to disappear or shift the current timeline so that Finland really isn’t real or fade the part of me that notices such joys.
For your first prompt, use a line from Twitter, Facebook or other social media platform or from a meme as the first line of your poem or as a ghostline that you delete afterwards.
For the second prompt, use the statement “If you smell / smoke and don’t search for fire” or another one from the poem as a ghostline. Remember to delete the line and give credit to the poet.
For the next prompt, create your own series of “if”statements that builds to a breaking point, or create a series of if-then statements that defy current reality.
For the fourth prompt, chose several of these objects and/or creatures to interact with one another, or make one the narrator.
For the final prompt, write a poem using the following words from the poem: “past,” “point,” “shout,” “silence,” “find,” “pool,” “look,” “smoke,” “search,” and “tell” but try to switch the nouns to verbs and vice versa.
Bonus prompt: rewrite a myth into the vernacular and tone of a meme
And I just wanted to share that my plumeria finally bloomed!
It’s just a baby though…
Prompt from Todd Dillard—More Twitter Prompts
So my vacation did not lend itself to poetry…my head was too full of conversation scraps and scenery to settle into a writing space. Perhaps because of my own jumbled chaos, I am particularly attracted to structured prompts at the moment. Here is a prompt that poet Todd Dillard posted and agreed to allow me to share:
I particular like this because this prompt could be the first line that you use to enter a surreal world but that you can then erase it as you would a ghostline if you like.
Bonus prompt: use the photo below as a metaphor for the layers (or teetering piles for me) of people and places within your memory. How does one event stack upon another and collect other memories or distinguish itself from another? What moments do you choose to gather? Which ones cannot you not let go?
And here is the evening sky from my vacation near the Buffalo River in the Ozarks.
Beginnings and Endings—Editing and Writing Prompts Inspired by Ruth Awad
Good editors can show you new directions that you cannot see while in the middle of your poem, but you can use the same strategies for your own editing process. I have been told that some of my poems seem written to get to that last line or image. If you have received the same comment—or if an existing poem simply doesn’t work—take the last line, move it to the beginning, and edit from there.
For the first writing prompt, take either the first line—“And the lie is that I survived because parts of me / didn’t”—or the last line—“None of us got what we deserved”—as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and give credit to the poet.
For the next prompt, make a list of sorrows that you, or others, have carried. Be specific. Are you still carrying them? How did you release them? What now?
For the third writing prompt, write a poem using the following word list: “lie,” “take,” “mirrors,” “look,” “listen,” “light,” “lost,” “worry,” and “remind.” Try to switch the verbs to nouns and vice versa where possible.
For the last editing prompt, take a poem you’re unhappy with and change the verbs to their antonyms. What happens?
Prompts Inspired by Todd Dillard
I love this poem by Todd Dillard and am glad he shared it again today.
For the first prompt, use the line “I never thought there was a gift” as a ghostline. Don’t forget to erase the line and give credit to the poet.
For the second prompt, write of your own experience as a parent or as a child at bedtime. What creatures visited in the night? What did you—or your child—offer them or use to hide from them?
My father grew up in an old farmhouse in which the previous owner had killed himself. He believed that the man had died in his bedroom’s closet. He spent most of his childhood with the covers drawn up over his head even in the humid Midwestern summers without air conditioning.
I miss those years of reading to my daughter, the heaviness of her small body as sleep would finally catch up to her. I would offer much to have that small figure—now grown taller than I am—to once again creep into my room and ask for another story.
Natural Disasters and Other Curses—A Prompt Inspired by My Daughter
So, last month was not productive, and this month…the same. I once again am behind on creating blog posts, editing the manuscript, writing new poems and reading anything other than Twitter. Since my brain is the equivalent of a couch’s cushion crack, I can offer only scattered crumbs and mysterious lumps for prompts.
Write a narrative poem using my daughter’s drawing as inspiration.
For a second poem, create a supernatural reason for a disaster in your life. Create your own superstition. Perhaps you were cursed by an abacus to never understand accounting programs. Or maybe you accidentally stepped on the saint of an ant colony and now will suffer raids of retribution for ever more.
Bonus prompt: write a poem with the title “Lobsters in Rapture.”
Good luck!
Where We Came From—Prompts Inspired by Camille Rankin and Sarah Ghazal Ali
Since I missed posting last week and my most recent post centered on Mother’s Day and mothers, I seem to be repeating myself since this week’s prompts are also about family. I just saw my parents, brother and other family members at my nephew’s wedding. It was so good to be with them especially after the long absence.
People who’d never met me immediately knew I was Richard and Judy’s daughter and Tony’s sister. So much of myself has grown up as the shadow trailing my big brother, as audience to my father’s stories and as confidante to my mother’s worries and hopes. I echo their mannerisms and expressions and slip back into the Southern Illinois twang as soon as the plane lands. I have clay, honeysuckle and hickory bark embedded in my skin. In Mississippi where they live now, the pine trees that replaced the cornfields whisper a greeting.
The first prompt comes from Camille Rankine’s “Genealogy”: make a list of places where you were born again and again. What changes with each rebirth; what remains the same? Where do you go from there? Or as a variation, list the names you have been given. What ones do you answer to? Which ones do you refuse? Which names have you discarded? I am Sis to family, was Sissy only to my Grandpa Raymond, and, awkwardly, Mrs. Hunt to some students. Hunt is the name of my ex-husband, but also of my daughter. It is a name that bumps into doorways. I lost my maiden name long ago but plan to incorporate it as a middle name, as part of my center.
For the second prompt, use the line “How it burned me” as a ghostline. Erase the line after you’ve completed the poem but give credit to the poet.
The next prompt is inspired by Sarah Ghazal Ali’s amazing “Matrilineage [Recovered].” Take your father’s side and your mother’s family trees and create a contrapuntal that interweaves the conversation that created you.
For the next prompt, create a poem using the following word list from “Matrilineage [Recovered]”: “culled,” “resonant,” “kindred,” “field,” “abscission,” “elisions,” “wound,” “plucked,” “recalled,” and “called.”
For the last prompt, use the line “I was culled” as a ghostline, and again erase the line but give credit for the inspiration.
Good luck!
Mother’s Day—Prompts Inspired by
Mother’s Day is a difficult day for many people after losing a parent, the hope of a good relationship with a parent, a child, the possibility of a child, or the judgment for one’s choices. I hope that this day brings you joy or the support you need. If you wish to write, I have prompts inspired by three poets’ poems, each addressing a very different aspect.
The first prompt is inspired by Marie Howe’s “Hurry.” Use the line “Where one day she might stand all grown” as a ghostline and describe the place where you, or another, had to “stand all grown.”
For the second prompt, write a list poem for the errands—the days— you rush through. Where is the end when you can rest?
The next prompt, inspired by Mary Jean Chan’s “Calling Home,” is to write a prose poem that describes how you want to be seen—by your parents, friends, even yourself.
Or describe the versions of yourself that you cropped, donated, or left on the closet floor. Do you still feel some compassion for those smaller selves, frustration at the starched and stiff selves that constricted your lungs, grief for holes and ragged seams?
What shade or time of day is your voice as you spreak through all the walls separating you from those you once knew you and who will never do so again?
The next prompts are inspired by Blas Falconer’s poem “Legacy.” For the first, write a description of the furniture and knickknacks of childhood home that seem to embody your life then. What would their returning to you bring? A wake, a shadow, the chorus of a song?
For the next prompt, answer what a cup or bowl or vase from your mother’s house could hold without ever naming or mentioning that object.
Last Day of 30/30–Final Prompt
Celebrate the last day of the challenge by writing a praise poem to yourself. Whether you wrote 30 poems, 5 poems, one poem or none, acknowledge the good things you do. Take time to give yourself credit for writing and growing. You deserve it!
Best wishes!
Time to flip the page!
The Duplex Poetry Form—Let’s Build a Great Poem
Well, this prompt was supposed to be up days ago. This week has not gone as planned, nor has 30/30 nor the last decade really.
These prompts are all inspired by the amazing poem “Self-Portrait as Etioly” by I. S. Jones and by the creator of the duplex form, Jericho Brown, and his brilliant “Duplex (I Begin With Love).” Click on the links to listen to a recording of the poet reading the poem.
The duplex is a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues. It is 14 lines, arranged in couplets in which the first line of the couplet repeats words and phrases from the previous line. For the last couplet, the last line repeats the very first line. For a better description of the poem’s movement, check out this interview with Jericho Brown.
For the first prompt, try to write your own duplex. And please share. I am in love with the form.
For the next prompt, use the line “Some of us don’t need hell to be good” as ghostline. Or use it as an epigraph and write a list poem on what we do need to be good (whatever that is). Another possible direction is to describe what we need hell to be. And as always, be sure to credit the poet for the inspiration.
For a third prompt, replace the verbs and nouns with their antonyms. What happens? This would be for the purpose of an exercise only as it would be too close to the original.
For a fourth prompt, use the line “‘Home’ means what you love cannot return the same” as a ghostline to erase after you’ve finished but give credit to the poet.
For a fifth prompt, write a poem using the following words found in “Self-Portrait as Etioly”: “spell,” “name,” “mother,” “return,” “open,” “thirst,” “face,” “mouths,” “pull,” and “ends” but try to use the verbs from the poem as nouns and vice versa.
Good luck with 30/30. You are almost there! And regardless of how many poems you did or did not write, The Luminaries and I are proud of you.
Earth Day—Prompts
Today, write a love poem to the planet or to one tiny backyard plot, a sonnet to the sunset or a trickling stream, an ode to a budding plumeria or bright tulips. Be extravagant. No coyness today.
For inspiration, read W. S. Merwin’s “Gift.” Such beautiful lines.
For an additional prompt, use the last line for a ghostline: “come and be given”; remember to erase the line and give credit to the poet.
For a darker and necessary poem, read Jane Hirshfield’s “Global Warming” and click on the title to listen to the poet read it. Notice how much significance—and warning—such a short poem can hold.
As a challenge, write about this subject—or another one of your choice—using a historical reference and without naming it within the poem but using the title as the connector.
Last Week’s Prompts
If you are a week (or more) behind as I am, let’s just go back in the calendar and write a poem for then. Here are the prompts I intended to post:
Go back in time. Write a poem with big words. Make the dictionary proud. Or check out Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day for your prompt. Here are a couple of words that may get you started. Remember, using a word with “z” and “q” gets you the most points!
And for April 15th, write a sonnet to the IRS. Or perhaps history is more to your liking: Abraham Lincoln was shot on the 14th but died the next day. The sinking of the Titanic lasted from April 14-15th.
Don’t forget to write an ode to a librarian or a mushroom.
And, finally, I am sorry to have missed celebrating International Haiku Day. Write a haiku. Below are some famous examples. Check out this site for more.
Good luck with the 30/30 challenge! Looks like I will be writing 5 or more a day near the end of April….
Here is a weird fungus if you need some inspiration for mushroom day.
Food and Words to Live Upon—Prompts Inspired by Jacquelyn Bengfort
As always I am grateful for all the new poems and poets Twitter introduces me to. I too love Jacquelyn Bengfort‘s “Apple Sonnet” with its juxtaposition of sound and imagery, fruit and myth and craft.
For the first prompt, write a food poem that emphasizes its sensory associations as well as the sound of its name in the mouth. Try to include historical or mythical references.
For the second prompt, use the line “And I want to write you a poem like that:” as a ghostline. Remember to delete that line but still give credit to the poet.
For the third prompt, choose a word and compare its sound and meaning in two languages. How does the differing sound alter the feel of the word, its connotations? What remains unchanged?
The last prompt is a Mad Lib exercise and will likely create a poem too similar to the original for publication. Replace every concrete noun with another object, switch the verbs to their antonyms, and change all the similes to metaphors (delete the “like” in the comparisons). What happens?
For the last prompt, write a poem on a completely different topic from the following word list: “little,” “ruin,” “wearing,” “good,” “touch,” “winter,” “stains,” “want,” and “gone.”
Good luck with 30/30!
It is the Day of the Bunny—Prompts
It is the day of spring renewal, eggs full of candy, and headless chocolate bunnies…and the 4th day of 30/30. I am already behind, so let’s all get cracking (sorry!)
For the first prompt, rewrite the children’s rhyme “Little Bunny Foo Foo” as horror. Did Little Bunny Foo Foo keep all those heads he “bopped”? What did the Good Fairy really turn him into? Goon or just goo?
Or write about the basket of candy and chocolate, decorated eggs. My mother is diehard fan of the Easter Bunny, especially hiding baskets and eggs in a woods where they may or may not be found before the ants do. Or write about a particular Easter or another family or religious holiday. Timothy Liu’s “Love Poem” demonstrates that a chocolate bunny can be something other than sweet.
It’s 30/30, Poets! Get Your Write On!
April is the cruelest month—it’s National Poetry Month and the write-30-poems-in-30-days challenge! For every day of this month, write a poem. Be on the look out for great readings, workshops and other events too.
For more prompts and information, check out the NaPoWriMo site. The first prompt is already up!
Join me in writing (I hope) 30 poems this month. I will post extra prompts (not daily though—because I will barely make it through this month), but I provide links to other prompt sources.
Be a poetry-writing fool. Get started!
Emerge, Writer—A Prompt for the Equally Confused
Awards, grants, and publications are offered to emerging writers, but what do writers emerge from? Grammar lessons and emo music? Are writers hatched in MFA programs, transformed into soup before erupting out of cocoon and chrysalis, licked into form as bear cubs were once believed to be? Do writers emerge by writing themselves into the view of editors, judges, and publishers? Is it similar to a debutante’s introduction to society? Is there a secret curtsy?
How did you emerge as a writer? What is your origin story? What genre does it fit? Myth or rom com or horror? If a mystery, who died? Do you have a body and a villain in your creation story?
First of all though, have you emerged? When will you? What or who will tell you that you have? Is there a yardstick involved? Where do you go next?
Write a short story or poem answering any of these questions, or none. Make it up as you go.
