From Writing Poetry by Barbara Drake: Write a poem in terms of the smallest parts of a thing or entity. For example, the eye of a rabbit or lizard, a leaf bud on an apple tree; the battery in your electric watch. (I’m pretty bored by the last one.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Read some Russell Edson pieces. Then write one of your own.
From A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver: Read Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish. Write a poem using lots of specific descriptions: metaphors, similes, and details (which Oliver calls “texture.”)
Poetry Society of Michigan 