Today’s poem is waiting to be discovered in your junk drawer. I know you have one. Or in the closet you’re afraid to open. Find it in there.
Prompt: Junk Drawer
Author: Editorial Staff
Prompt: One Syllable Words
Write a poem using only one syllable words. When you revise it, you can cheat.
Prompt: Dreams
From an old Poets and Writers: Think about dreams you’ve had in the past that still linger, or search through old writing to dig up images that are repeated. Write a poem that attempt to find meaning or a connection within these visual artifacts. How can you interpret their significance now?
Prompt: Write About Clothing
From Creative Writing by David Starkey: Write about a piece of clothing you own or one owned that was involved in several important events in your life.
Prompt: Family Rituals
From The Writer’s Idea Book by Jack Heffron: Write about a family ritual. How did it start? Why has it continued? Do your family members have nicknames for each other? How did they start? Why do they stick? What do the nicknames suggest about the roles people play in your family?
Prompt: An Object Poem
I did this one yesterday and had a good result. From Western Wind, an Introduction to Poetry by David Mason and John Frederick Nims. Write a descriptive poem (of, say, a dozen lines) about a familiar object or anything of interest to you. Do not use any adjectives until the last line; then try to use, effectively, a series of three. Here’s a famous example from Charles Simic.
Fork – by Charles Simic
This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird’s foot
Worn around the cannibal’s neck.
As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.
Prompt: Reverse a Problem Poem
Every once in a while, this will work. Take a poem that seems lost but has some good lines. Reverse it. That is, take the last line as the first line and rebuild it from the bottom up. Usually last lines are good, so start with that one. If it changes, so be it. I think Sekou Sundiata taught me this.
Prompt: Song or Literary Work
From Western Wind, an Introduction to Poetry edited by David Mason and John Frederick Nims.
Write a poem alluding to a song or literary work that only someone of your generation would know. Can you make your poem comprehensible to readers of other generations?
Prompt: Let’s Cut
Let’s cut. I edited a prose poem from 237 words to 99. It was much better for it. I didn’t think I could do it, but it got easier and easier to lose things that weren’t working. So take a piece of flabby, unsuccessful writing and see what you can lose from it, trim it to see the real beauty under the fleshy flesh.
Prompt: Syllabic Verse
Syllabic verse: count syllables. It can help shape the poem. I had a poem yesterday that was doing nothing, so I thought maybe syllabics would help. I counted the first line: 12 syllables. I counted the second: also twelve. The first four lines were all twelve. This was educational. It’s a better poem now. Like rhyme, syllabics force you to reconsider your word choices. Try it with a floundering poem, not that you have any of those.
Poetry Society of Michigan 