Prompt #168 – Rantables

Have you ever felt that you needed an outlet to vent, to shout, squawk, yell, or bellow about something that really bothered you? Have you ever displayed your frustration or impatience in a kind of “temper tantrum” with a family member or friend?

While more and more research suggests that “ranting”  isn’t necessarily the best thing for us, research does suggest that venting through writing can be a therapeutic strategy that can help engage the body and mind and allow your emotions to drain a bit, thus not needing to actually yell, stamp your feet, or otherwise physically let the anger out. In a rant poem, we pull ourselves together and write through whatever it is that’s upset us. A rant poem can be “wild” or it can be controlled and sensible—the latter is our writing challenge for this week, a rantable that doesn’t lose its perspective—a “rational” rant.

The idea is to let your feelings out about something or someone and to examine those feelings through your poem. Remember, this isn’t a narrative poem—you’re not telling a story, you’re writing about something that really bothers you. The activity is similar to the invective poem in Prompt #107, but this is not a poem addressed to something or someone; rather, this is a poem about something or someone.

For Starters:

Begin by thinking about or listing things that have really upset you, and then choose one to write about.

Write some details (phrases, thoughts) about this “rantable.”

Select some of the details from the preceding step and write them into complete thoughts. Develop those thoughts into lines that contain similes, metaphors, off rhymes, or other poetic language techniques.

Now go through your sentences and remove the word “I” anywhere that you’ve used it. Replace it appropriately.

Go ahead—rant and rave, but remember to maintain a sense of control. The idea is to get things “off your chest.” 

Topics May Include:

Personal Affronts ( insults, lies, betrayals, bad manners, bullying)

Social Concerns (hunger, inequality, power, greediness, inhumanity to others, animal abuse, injustice)

Pet Peeves (junk mail, improper grammar, texting at the dinner table, impatience, thoughtlessness, arrogance)

Prompt # 167 – Ten-Line Poems

Before beginning this week’s prompt, I’d like to invite you to take a look at the slideshow from this year’s pet blessing. Just scroll a few items down in the right sidebar until you come to “2013 Pet Blessing.” Click on the arrow. Hope you enjoy it!

Now, on with the prompt. This week’s challenge is for you to write a 10-line poem using a prescribed format. For starters, the “rules” are specific, so try to follow them closely for your first draft.

The “Rules”

1. Don’t use any terminal punctuation, but begin each line with a capital letter.

2. Throw out all prose impulses (no narrative poems).

3. Resist all formal tendencies (no metrical patterns or rhyme schemes).

4. Don’t plan any part of your poem—just write from line to line.

5. As you write, see what relationships develop; discover what’s going on in the poem.

6. When you finish, look through the poem for a word or phrase that you can use as a title.

7. Let the poem “sit” for a day or two and then look at it again. That will be the time to make changes, to break the rules, tweak, refine, and “color outside the margins.”

8. Make changes in capitalization and punctuation (add periods, question marks, commas etc).

9. Work on alliteration and other sound qualities in your poem.

10. Decide on line breaks.

Ready?

Line 1: Open the poem with an action.

Line 2: Write a specific image related (even if only superficially) to the last word in line 1.

Line 3: Ask an unconnected question and put it in italics.

Line 4: Write an image related to the question in line 3.

Line 5: Answer the question in line 3 and include a color.

Line 6: Write an image related to the answer in line 5 (direct or suggested).

Line 7: Add a detail in which you modify a noun with an unusual or unlikely adjective.

Line 8: Add an image that echoes or relates to the action in line 1.

Line 9: Free line—add whatever you wish.

Line 10: Close with something seemingly unrelated, strange, or surreal.

Sample Poem

Line 1:  She lifts the potted plant from its place on the windowsill

Line 2:  Dusk slips in through parted curtains

Line 3:  A lingering dream, and what came after

Line 4:  The evening sky deepens into something darker

Line 5:  A shade of blue she’s never seen before

Line 6:  Ghosts in spaces between the stars

Line 7:  The clattering choices were hers to make

Line 8:  Gently, her fingertip traces the edge of a tiny bloom

Line 9:  Choices, yes, and flowers among the regrets

Line 10: She removes the china doll from her dresser drawer

Prompt #166 – Word Chain Poem by Guest Prompter Diane Lockward

This week’s prompt is from guest blogger Diane Lockward. Diane is the author of three poetry books, most recently, Temptation by Water. Her previous books are What Feeds Us, which received the 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize, and Eve's Red Dress. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Against Perfection and Greatest Hits: 1997-2010. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and included in such anthologies as Poetry Daily: 360 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times. She is the recipient of a NJ State Arts Council Poetry Fellowship and has received awards from North American Review, Louisiana Literature, and Journal of NJ Poets. Her newest book, The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, was recently released by Wind Publications. The book includes helpful tips for writing poetry contributed by 56 distinguished poets, along with 27 model poems and prompts with 2 sample poems for each. 

Please note that you can order The Crafty Poet from the right sidebar by scrolling down to the book cover and clicking on it.

Be Sure to Visit Diane’s Website: www.dianelockward.com

and Her Author Page at Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Diane-Lockward/e/B001K7W3U2

Diane:

The following prompt is one of ten bonus prompts in my new book, The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop. While the other prompts in the book are more complex and focused on craft techniques, the bonus prompts are quick and easy. They are also inexhaustible, that is, you can use them over and over again. You should never again find yourself at the desk with nothing to say.

The Word Chain Poem

Choose one word that you like the sound of. Be sure it has at least two syllables. Suggestions: purple, silver, yellow. I like colors because they immediately bring in the visual. But don’t feel limited to colors.

Now put your word on the top line of your paper, all the way to the right.

Jumping off that lead word, quickly brainstorm a list of words with similar sounds. Avoid exact rhymes. One word per line. Each single word should lead to the next. Do not go back to the original word. If you include only words with the same initial sound, this will result in nice alliteration in the poem you write. But this is an option, not a requirement.

Example:

                                                                                              purple

                                                                                              plump

                                                                                              plum

                                                                                              palm

                                                                                              plummet 

                                                                                              pudding

Try to get at least ten words.

Now write a poem consisting of as many lines as you have words. Your first line will end with the first word in your list, the second line will end with the second word, and so on. Using the above example, line 1 will end with purple, line 2 will end with plump, and so on.

You should end up with a first draft that has some promising sounds, not exact rhymes but near rhymes.

Sample Poem:

Note from Diane: The list of words above is the beginning of the list I created for my own poem, "Love Song with Plum." As you read the poem, you'll see that I stuck with all "p" words, but remember that that's an option, not a requirement. Although I did not include my entire list here, from what I did include, you can see that I didn't stick one hundred percent to the original order of the words. During revision I moved some words around. I seem to recall that I also added some words not in the original list. What I'm sure of is that I had a good time writing this poem. I hope you have a good time writing yours.

LOVE SONG WITH PLUM

by Diane Lockward

I take what he offers, a plum,
round and plump,
deeper than amethyst purple.
I lift the fruit from his palm.
Like Little Jack Horner, I want it in a pie,
my thumb stuck in to pluck
out that plum.
I want it baked in a pudding,
served post-prandial,
drenched in something potable,
and set on fire, to sit across from him and say, Pass
the pudding, please.
Spread on our morning toast, dollops of plum preserves,
and when we grow old, a bowl of prunes,
which, after all, are nothing more than withered plums.
But today the air is scented with plumeria,
and at this particular fruit stand, I’m plumb
loco in love with the plumiest
man. Festooned with peacock plumes
and swaddled in the plumage
of my happiness, I want to stand at the perimeter
of this plum-luscious
earth, sink a plumb
line for balance, then plummet
like a bird on fire, placate
all my desires, my implacable
hunger for the ripeness of my sweetheart’s plum.

Thank you, Diane, for sharing with us!

Prompt #165 – The "New" Poetry

I’ve heard it called “Some Kind of Language Poetry,” “Neo-Poetry,” “Out Poetry,” “That Tripe Younger Poets Are Writing,” and (my favorite) “Sudsy Rubbish.” I’ve heard it criticized as “recycled Ashbery,” “self-referential,” “deliberately unclear,” “inward and evasive.” I’m not sure what to call it (or if the poets who write it have given it a name), but it’s definitely putting the screws to the contemporary poetry we’ve come to expect as standard fare.  I admit that, initially, I found it daunting and off-putting; but I’ve come to see it as a style that’s compelling and strangely convincing.

The “new” poetry’s closest association to a particular “school” appears to be to the New York School, which began during the 1960s with poets John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O'Hara. Heavily influenced by surrealism and modernism, New York School poetry is serious but also ironical, and incorporates an urban awareness into the body of work. I also see a closeness to Language Poetry, which is formed on the premise that language dictates meaning and stresses the reader's role in determining what a poem is about. There is, of course, always some margin-blurring, and one school leads into (and borrows from) another. This one, so far at least, eludes definition; hence, my generic term “new.”

The “new” poems are often quite cleverly acrobatic (and I write that as a former gymnast and gymnastics choreographer). Their cartwheels and back-flips are charged with inventive intelligence that can be playfully deliberate and teasingly ambiguous. They suggest a freestyle performance of handsprings and leaps propelled by wordy miscellany and oblique content, all choreographed into line breaks and stanzaic arrangements that are characteristically tight. Clearly, the voice is unique and, whether current and streetwise or deep in antiquity, the “new” poets know how to nail a dismount.

I might accuse the “new” poets of using too many adjectives; but, most of the time, the adjectives, though abundant, are startling, memorable, and used in unique combinations, curious admixtures of words and allusions (and even when they defy conventional understanding, they still sound very cool).

I’m drawn to the “new” poems’ longer lines, occasional absences of terminal punctuation, syntactical negotiations, and disregard for levelheaded “sense.” I’m persuaded by the poems’ tendency toward the romantic and surreal (dreaminess rather than poetic muscularity), a sense of longing (perhaps even neediness), and a sharp edge (honed by linguistic acuity). The poems offer drama, tonal turns, and the dazzle of written language. I see in them, as well, a sense of Hart Crane’s optimism and something of the same social and artistic longing for redemption. There is also a sense of the futility of it all. This “new” poetry is nothing if not powered by passion for words and buttressed by an energy that’s dynamic and fresh. I’m reminded here of a line from Adam Fitzgerald's “The Dialogue” (The Late Parade, W. W. Norton/Liveright, 2013): “It’s extraordinary. It is extraordinary.”

The “new” poets ramp up language’s natural music with alliteration, assonance, consonance, anaphora, and scattered rhymes. Edgy (sometimes intellectual without being academic), the “new” poems are typically lyrical in their movement away from the linear progression of narrative poetry. Reading them is like walking through a city in which all the windows are open, and conversations converge.

There is about this style a sense of entitlement, but that’s not intended as uncomplimentary or pejorative. Every era has its share of entitled poets, that is, poets who break and change the rules and do something important. Remember (among other schools and movements) the Beats (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso), the Surrealists (Breton, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Éluard), and the Imagists (Pound, Williams, HD)? Lately, when I read poems by Adam Fitzgerald and Timothy Donnelly (among others), I can’t help thinking about previous game changers such as Gerard Manley Hopkins, T. S. Eliot, and e. e. cummings.

I don’t always understand the “new” poetry, but I’m intrigued by it and find it substantially more interesting than some of the rambling narratives, dreary lyricals, and technically perfect but ordinary sonnets and villanelles that we often find in journals and online. It would appear that poetry needs, from time to time, a reorientation, a readjustment—the shock of some discovery—and this “school” of poets is providing just that. 

This week, read the example poems very carefully, and then try to write a poem in a similar style.

1. Break a few rules.

2. Write something different, step out of your poetry routine (rut or comfort zone).

3. Play with language, work on lushness and texture in your phrasing.

4. Make some magical music (internal and off rhymes, alliteration, assonance, dissonance, anaphora).

5. Don’t, whatever you do, simply tell a story, but “tell” something.

6. Start with a theme or mood in mind and let that “concept” power the poem.

7. Include startling images and unique combinations of words and phrases.

8. Do something different with punctuation.

8. Make up a word or a quirky expression.

10. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

11. Remember that every poem should make a reader gasp at least once (in appreciative amazement).

12. Surprise yourself.

Three Poems by Adam Fitzgerald

"The Cloud Corporation" by Timothy Donnelly

"The New Intelligence" by Timothy Donnelly

"Last Month" by John Ashbery

"Soonest Mended" by John Ashbery

"A Meadow" by Lucie Brock-Broido

"Almost a Conjuror" by Lucie Brock-Broido

Prompt #164 – Jigsaw Puzzles

Years ago, when I was a teenager living home with my parents, there was always a card table set up in a corner of our sun porch with one jigsaw puzzle or another that we all worked on—sometimes together, sometimes individually. My mom and dad had a great knack for selecting puzzles that were either wonderfully beautiful or, in some way, educational. Remembering those old puzzles led me to wonder how jigsaw puzzle imagery might direct and power a poem.

By way of history, it’s believed that British mapmaker John Spilbury constructed the first jigsaw puzzle around 1760. He took one of his world maps, pasted it to sheet of hardwood, and cut out the countries with a fine-bladed saw to create a visual aid that he used to help children learn world geography.  

Jigsaw puzzles are deceptively simple and straightforward in concept: fit the pieces together to make a whole. Psychological studies, however, have recognized several thought processes required to make the identification process and the process of applying identified shapes to overall patterns. Interestingly, in an interview posted on Poets.org, former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove described her writing process as “similar to assembling a jigsaw puzzle.”
(http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16653)

This week, think about jigsaw puzzles and the imagery and symbolisms they suggest, and then write a poem based on how your life (or some aspect of your life) is like a jigsaw puzzle.

1. Focus on form, content, and trope.

2. Try to work in something different with syntax, some unusual sentence structure that will create an element of surprise, perhaps something that suggests a “jigsaw puzzle."

3. Be sure that your line break “logic” is clear but not intrusive. Enjambments lend themselves well to this subject.

Things To Think About:

1. In what ways is your life, metaphorically, a jigsaw puzzle?

2. What’s the one jigsaw puzzle in your life that you haven’t been able to piece together?

3. What are some of the “interlocking pieces” in your life?

4. Who’s the biggest “puzzler” in your experience? 

5. Imagine that you find an old jigsaw puzzle in a box, but there’s no indication of what the finished image should look like. As you put the puzzle together, what emerges? What’s the subject of the finished puzzle?

6. Write about a life experience (“jigsaw puzzle”) in which you found that there were more pieces than you needed (or could handle).

7. Write a poem about a jigsaw puzzle that was left unfinished.

8. If you can’t quite relate your life or particular experiences to a jigsaw puzzle, try writing a poem about an actual jigsaw puzzle.

Examples:

"The Amen Stone" by Yehuda Amichai  

"Jigsaw Puzzles and You" by Anastasia Clark

"toon time" by Gustav Morin 

(A visual poem in which sixty-three individual fragments of text are cut into the shapes of jigsaw puzzle pieces and are placed together in a rectangular grid.) 

Prompt #163 – Changes

As summer draws to a close and autumn begins, there’s a familiar feeling of seasonal change in the air. That turned my thinking to changes in general and how changes impact our lives. So ... this week, let’s not go with an obvious change-of-season theme; instead, let’s write about changes (other than seasonal) that have occurred in our lives.

The psychology of change is an involved subject but, without getting into the details, change (for most of us) is accompanied by a range of feelings, including relief, hope, fear, disquiet, or expectation. Sometimes we resist change. Along with change may come feelings of impermanence, loss of control, uncertainly, self-doubt, fear of surprises, and concern about the ripple effects of change. Sometimes, though, we welcome change and look forward to happy outcomes.

Things To Think About:

1. Are you usually comfortable or uncomfortable about changes in your life?

2. Frame of mind can impact feelings about change (fearful people fear change, hopeful people look forward to changes for the better). Has your frame of mind been a consideration in how you dealt with a change in your life?

3. Have you ever had a change forced upon you (change of job, position, marital status)?

4. How has a particular change rocked your status quo or shaken you out of your comfort zone?

5. Have you experienced a change that you feared but which brought positive results?

6. How has a change in your life made you stronger?

7. Have you ever had a significant “change of heart” about someone or something?

8. What does the statement “people change, feelings change” mean to you?

9. What's the biggest change in your life?

10. What change do you see in yourself following a specific life experience or series of experiences?

Starters:

1. You might start by making a list of important changes that have occurred in your life and then selecting one to write about. Think about changes you have resisted or welcomed, and why. Think what the outcome of a particular change was.

2. Try to reach the universal through the personal. Think about how readers will “feel” your change incident.

3. Now, for an added challenge: I’d like you to include a change within your poem—that is, a switch from the change you began writing about to something else—a shift in subject, tone, thinking, imagery. Work with making an unexplained connection between the two parts of your poem, and be sure to think about what you want to “say” and what you actually “say.”

Examples:

"Trying to Name What Doesn't Change" by Naomi Shihab Nye

"The Change" by Tony Hoagland

"Change" by Carl Dennis
"The Beautiful Changes" by Richard Wilbur

Prompt #162 – Snapping Out of Your Rut (a.k.a. The Rut Buster) by Guest Prompter Renée Ashley

 

As poets, we’ve all experienced the routines that become ruts in our writing—we become stuck in a bog of repeated subjects, themes, and styles; we write in the same tired voices; and we need the occasional jolt of something new to get us unstuck. (I think that’s true for bloggers too!)

Accordingly, I thought it might be fun for you to work with a prompt by another poet from time to time, so here’s our first guest prompt from my dear friend and distinguished poet Renée Ashley.

Renée lives in northern New Jersey with her husband (Jack) and two dogs (Mona and Steve). She teaches in Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Creative Writing and Literature for Educators programs and is the author of five poetry collections (Salt (Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Univ. of Wisconsin Press), The Various Reasons of Light, The Revisionist’s Dream, Basic Heart  (X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, Texas Review Press), and Because I Am the Shore I Want to Be the Sea (Subito Press Poetry Prize). She is also the author of two chapbooks (The Museum of Lost Wings  and The Verbs of Desiring), as well as a novel (Someplace Like This). A portion of her poem “First Book of the Moon” is etched in marble in Penn Station Terminal in Manhattan, part of a permanent installation by the artist Larry Kirkland. Currently poetry editor for The Literary Review, she has received fellowships in both poetry and prose from New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. Read more at her website: http://reneeashleyatwork.com/.

And now, this week’s prompt from Renée—a great challenge—one that will make you focus and really think about what you’re writing. Have fun with it!

Thanks for sharing with us, Renée!

____________________________________

Renée: 

This is an exercise I use to snap writers out of their ruts. I have my students do it until they make it work. It takes a kind of concentration that subject prompts don't guarantee—a conscious effort to break up the surface of a poem, yet keep it grounded, while putting forth a more ambitious language-body than many writers are given to. It reminds the brain that there are other ways to work than the ones you fall into without resistance, ways to enlarge our possibilities for discovery while we're writing. And when this becomes too easy, there are lots of great grammatical ways to crank up the stakes! It's a sort of eye-opener for many. This is it:

Write a 10-line poem

— that uses NO abstract nouns

— that has at least one concrete noun in each line

— that does not have a narrative (a story line)

— and that has at least 3 sentence fragments

Example:

Here’s an example by Hank Kalet from a workshop with Renée in which she used this prompt. Thanks, Hank, for permission to use your poem. 

Original draft, based on the prompt:

BURNT OFFERING

Flash of yellow and blue

hotter than the July afternoon.

Red Oldsmobile burns,

roadside Belt Parkway,

its flames scrape the sky,

razor-like, pitching smoke

up and across the inlet.

No clouds, just soot.

And the terrible smell

Of burning rubber

Final draft:

BURNT OFFERING

With a flash of yellow and blue,

hotter than July's afternoon,

the red Oldsmobile burns on the roadside.

Its flames scrape the sky; it pitches smoke

up and across the inlet. No clouds, just

soot. And the terrible smell

of burning.

Click here to read more of Hank's poetry.

Note:

An abstract noun refers to states, events, concepts, feelings, qualities, etc., that have no physical existence. Abstract nouns convey things we can’t experience though our senses—we can’t see, hear, touch, smell, or taste them; abstract nouns don’t exist as material objects and refer to intangible things. Examples of abstract nouns include: love, anger, hate, peace, loyalty, pride, courage, honesty, deceit, compassion, bravery, patriotism, friendship, truth, justice, faith, freedom, serenity, and joy.

A concrete noun is noun that refers to a physical object. Time is an abstract noun because it has no physical existence, but watches and clocks are concrete nouns because they exist materially.  Concrete nouns refer to things that we can experience through our five senses—we can see, hear, touch, smell, or taste them. Examples of concrete nouns include: flowers, rain, pizza, fish, perfume, air, thunder, and lightning.

A narrative is a story line; narrative poetry typically tells a story.

A sentence fragment is not a complete sentence, it can’t stand alone in the sense that a sentence can. In poetry, fragments often “behave” like sentences, but they don’t express complete thoughts.

Click This Link to Order Renee's Books from Amazon.com