Prompt #240 – What's Your Ism?

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:

http://time.com/4148181/merriam-webster-2015-word-of-the-year-ism/

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/merriam-webster-declares-ism-word-year-2015-35769429

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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)