Welcome back to blogging here on The Music in It, and sincerest best
wishes to all for a healthy and happy New Year with lots of poetry to bring you joy!
For this first prompt of the New
Year, we’re going to take a quick look back at Merriam Webster’s “Word of the
Year,” for 2015, which, according to Merriam Webster isn’t a word at all but,
rather, a suffix—"ism." According to MW an “ism” is “a belief,
attitude, style, etc., that is referred to by a word that ends in the suffix -ism.”
Merriam-Webster’s choice is based
on growing numbers of people looking up “ism” words on the dictionary’s
website. Some of the most prominent “isms,” according to what the dictionary
company told the Associated Press about its traffic are socialism, fascism,
racism, feminism, communism, capitalism, and terrorism.
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For additional info about Merriam
Webster’s Word of the Year:
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With “isms” in mind, your
challenge for the first prompt of 2016 is to create an “ism” of your own and
then write a poem about it.
Guidelines:
1. The “ism” that you write about
cannot be one that anyone might find in a dictionary. In other words, you have to
make up something that no one has ever heard of before.
2. Think about things that are important
to you (or go in the opposite direction and think about things that are totally
unimportant to you.)
3. Begin by making a list.
4. Choose one item from your list
and make it an “ism.”
5. Them write a poem about your
“ism.”
6. You can be philosophical,
funny, or fantastical. Take any approach that works for you and your “ism.”
7. Ferris Bueller (in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) said, “Ism’s
in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should
believe in himself.” How does your created “ism” speak to who you are?
Tips:
1. Try not to write more than a dozen or fifteen lines. Understand
that overstatement and the obvious are deadly when it comes to writing poetry.
Don’t ramble on, and don’t try to explain everything. Think about this: a poem
with only five great lines should be five lines long.
2. Show, don’t tell. Use imagery
and examples to show.
3. Avoid clichés.
4. Remember what Mark Twain said
about adjectives, “When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean
utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when
close together. They give strength when they are wide apart.” This is especially
true in poetry. So ... as you work on a poem, think about adjectives and avoid
overusing them. Decide which adjectives your poem can live without. (Often the
concept is already in the noun, and you don’t need a lot of adjectives to
convey your meaning.)
5. Bring your poem to closure
with a dazzling dismount. (Be careful not to undercut your poem’s “authority”
by ending with trivia or a “so what” line that doesn’t elicit at least a sharp intake of breath.)
Examples:
Dinerism (for those who love diner food)
Bookism (for those who read a lot of books)
Poetism (for those who read and/or write poetry)
Soccerism (for those who play in or watch a lot of soccer
matches)
Dogism or Catism (for those who love dogs or cats)
Goofyism (for those who like to be silly)
Phoneyism (for those who are phonies)
Chocolateism (for those who love chocolate)
Chocolateism (for those who love chocolate)
