Prompt #250 –Who?

 

Have you ever wanted to be someone other than who you are? This week, try to write a poem in which you pretend to be someone else. In other words, adopt a persona. Get out of your own head. Re-create yourself as someone you admire or someone you make up. Be anyone but yourself.

Guidelines:

1. Give some thought to people you admire or would like to know. These may be everyday people, family members, friends, famous people, people in the news, media reporters, entertainment industry people, or sports stars.

2. You might begin by making a list of people from whom to choose. You can add brief notes to your list that include personality traits, etc. about the people you've listed.

3. Select one person and jot down some detailed things that help you get inside that person’s head.

4. Begin your first draft and see where your thoughts take you.

5. Stay focused on a particular quality of character, a particular event, or something very specific about the person you’ve chosen. Remember, you’re going to become that person for the space of your poem. You won’t write as yourself but, rather, you’ll write as the person you selected in step 3.

Tips:

1. As always, show, don’t tell.  Whether the person you become is real or imagined, don’t tell abut the person—use examples of behaviors to demonstrate who that person is.

2. Work toward getting rid of pesky relative pronouns (that, which, whom, who). If you find one in your draft, try to rewrite the line without it.

3. Avoid including too many details.

4. Take out adjectives where they aren’t really necessary.

5. Stay away from prepositional phrases and “ing” endings.

6. Include the person's name somewhere in the poem. (A note at the beginning or end would be fine.)

Prompt #249 –Telling the Story

 

We’ve worked with narrative poems in the past (see Prompt #171, November 9, 2013) and, because of the genre’s popularity, we’re revisiting it this week. The challenge will be to write a personal narrative (a personal memory) in a poem and to write it in such a way that you leave out enough details for the reader to “fit” into your poem. In other words, it will be your story, but you'll need to think about why that story will be interesting, and perhaps even compelling, to your readers.

Historically, poetry has its roots in an oral tradition that predates all other forms of modern communication. Before there were printed books, people told stories through narrative poems. Early narrative verse used rhythm, rhyme, repetition, and vivid language—easily remembered and recited and, arguably, the first examples of performance poetry.

Early narratives were ballads, epics, idylls, and lays. Many of these are long, especially examples such as Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey,” and Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.” Narrative poems have also been collected into interrelated groups, as with Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.”

As a “genre,” narrative poetry has retained importance throughout written history. Over the past thirty years, the form has made a comeback against lyric poetry, which dominated the last century. Contemporary narrative poems are dramatic and compelling and deal with personal histories, losses, regrets, and recollections. Today’s narrative poems focus on brief but emotionally intense moments; they are typically powered by imagery and buttressed by nuance in ways that distinguish them from prose memoirs.

Narrative poems initiate contact between poets and readers; they bring people together through mutual experiences—specific details may be different, but they “speak” to the shared situations of both poet and audience. Importantly, they teach us that we’re not alone.

Personal narratives sometimes fail to move beyond the anecdotal and simply recount an experience that the poet has had. A great personal narrative, though, has to be larger and more meaningful than an anecdotal poem. In other words, a great personal narrative can’t rest on its anecdotal laurels and must do more than simply tell a story. It needs to approach the universal through the personal, it needs to mean more than the story it tells, and the old rule “show, don’t tell” definitely applies.

Guidelines:

1. Don’t simply relate your narrative or tell your readers what they should feel. Your job is to show and not to tell.

2. Avoid “emotion words” such as “anger”—bear in mind that when someone is angry he or she is more likely to slam a door than to say, “Hey, I’m angry.” You can show anger or any other emotion without ever using the words. Let actions and sensory images lead your readers to understand the emotions in the poem. As the writer of a personal narrative poem, it’s your job to include revealing details, not to interpret or explain them for your readers. You may want to avoid the passive voice, “to be” verbs, and “ing” endings as these can inhibit the process of showing rather than telling.

3. Decide upon the approach you’d like to take in your personal narrative: chronological, flashback, or reflective. In chronological, you structure your poem around a time-ordered sequence of events; in flashback, you write from a perspective of looking back; and in reflective, you write thoughtfully or “philosophically” about the story you tell.

4. Begin writing in the first person singular, but feel free to change that once you’ve completed a couple of drafts.

5. Be aware that merely telling your story and arranging it in lines and stanzas won’t make it a poem. Think about the qualities of writing that make good poems good and include some of them in this poem.

Tips:

1. Remember that narrative poems often fail because the poets have included too much detail.  Leave out details that might mean something to you but aren’t essential to the narrative you’ve chosen to tell.

2. Watch out for over-use of adjectives.

3. Don’t waste words introducing characters or describing scenes—jump in with both feet.

4. Don’t ramble. Be concise and get to the point. Yes, there should be a point to your narrative—something that’s something bigger than the experience, something with which readers will be able to relate. Along that line, be sure to leave room in your poem for the reader to enter and “belong.”

Example:

Click Title to Read “At the Factory Where My Mother Worked”

By Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Prompt #248 – Aging

 Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind it, it doesn't matter.

                                                                                              —Mark Twain

Like it or not, aging is something we’re all doing—right now—regardless of how old or young we may be. Have you thought about getting older and what that means to you?

Last Thursday night, I read in a series directed by poets Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Laura Boss. My co-reader was a wonderful poet whom you know from previous posts—Joe Weil. We prepared a back-and-forth reading, both of us at the mic at the same time, taking turns reading on predetermined subjects. One of those subjects was aging. The next morning, I happened upon former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s presentation on just that topic, and I began to think about a related prompt.

This week, the challenge is to reflect upon getting older
and to write a poem about it.

Guidelines:

1. Free write for a while, and see what happens.

2. Let your free write sit for an hour or so (or even longer), and then go back to it. Read it carefully and select an important point that you made. (This might be a specific incident or a more general reflection.)

3. Begin a poem based on something in your free write.

Tips:

1. Some subjects you might consider include:

• The Difference Between Getting Older and Getting Old

• Wishing You Were Older When You Were Young 

• Waiting to be Old Enough to Do Something

• Moving Ahead

• The Past

• Self-Knowledge and Getting Older

• The Wisdom of Age

• Aging Parents

• Religion and Aging

• Retirement

• Memory? What memory?

2. Remember, even if you are a younger writer, things are different now than they were five or ten years ago. You might want to consider that in your poem.

3. You may want to write from the perspective of a much younger you or even the you that you will be years from now.

4.  William Butler Yeats looks at aging with regret in his poem “When You Are Old”:

          When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
           And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
           And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
           Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

However, you might take a humorous approach in your poem.

5. Avoid sentimentality!

6. Keep in mind that adjectives are descriptors and, in general, they lack the power of nouns and verbs. Often, adjectives are just spectators at a prizefight, the real power and punch come through nouns and verbs. In fact, adjectives sometimes duplicate the meaning of the nouns they describe and are therefore redundant. Too many adjectives can ruin an otherwise good poem. So, as Mark Twain wrote, “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.”

7. Avoid overuse of conjunctions such as and, remove prepositional phrases wherever you can, and stay away from the passive voice.

Examples (Google titles, all may be found online):

 

“When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats

“Age” by Robert Creeley
“Affirmation” by Donald Hall
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
“Lines on Retirement after Reading Lear” by David Wright

And this prose poem, by way of sharing, from my book A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing At All:

 

You Reach a Certain Age

And sometimes the weight of it gets to you, this language of leaving, of holding on. It’s nothing to do with what gets lifted up—a river holds whatever the sky throws into it, a bird that has no need of earth flies away. You reach a certain age and begin to see how things unwind, the way it all plays out. You learn what’s essential, what’s not, and it hardly matters what the world was like when you first tried to exalt it. There are rooms in your life unaccounted for, but you can live with that. (Remember the room you slept in as a child? In less time than you spent there, the sun turned its curtains into dust.) You push back your chair and get up. Outside, a neighbor’s cat stitches and re-stitches the same torn hem, its yellow eye in line with the moon.

(A Lightness, a Thirst, or Nothing at All, Welcome Rain Publishers, 2015, 

Copyright © by Adele Kenny. All rights reserved.)

Prompt #247 – What If

Last week, Deborah LaVeglia, my friend and fellow poet, posted the Coleridge poem below on her Facebook page, and I was so grateful to her for reintroducing me to a poem I've always found intriguing but haven’t read in years.

What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in you hand
Ah, what then?

 

The whole "condition" of "if" in this poem fascinates me. Some time ago, in prompt #188, we worked with "if" clauses. (Click here for prompt #188.) That prompt, was intended to address the specific ways in which conditional clauses create mood, conditions, limitations, dependencies, and expectations. The Coleridge poem suggests something different, and our goal this week will be far from the same.

Poems like the one above can empower our imaginations (and surprise us) as we briefly leave what we know and move into a place of fabricated experience where we aren’t bound by geography or time.

Accordingly, this week, let’s write “What If” poems. Not “if, then” poems in which an idea put forward is followed by a result. Instead, simply consider a single “what if,” and don’t speculate on what happens because of it. In other words, try to write a poem based on the poem above but make it your own.  This will call for some special thinking and planning.

 Guidelines:

1. Spend time thinking about an occurrence with unexplainable connotations (read the Coleridge poem again).

2. Once you have an idea, begin by free writing for a while.

3. If you have trouble with this one, try working your poem around the pattern of Coleridge’s poem. Set your poem up, initially anyway, to look like Coleridge’s. Here’s rough idea of what I mean:

What if _____________
And what if _____________
In ______________
You ____________
And what if ________________
In your _____________
You _________________
And ___________________
And what if ______________
When ________________
You had ______________

Ah, what then?

(Notice that all lines begin with caps and there's no terminal punctuation until the last line.)

4. Keep in mind that the idea is to pose the question of a “what if” but not to offer any answers, results, or “what happens after.” Leave your readers with an aura of mystery and something to think about!

Tips:

1. Create an impression of the unexplained. Leave your “what if” unanswered—don’t even hint at answers.

2. End with a question.

3. Think in terms of image and sound, pace and nuance.

4. Include details—but not too many, and beware of using too many adjectives. Remember that your goal in this isn’t to create a picture but, rather, to create a sense of mystery and question.

4. After you’ve written a few drafts, let the poem sit for a while (a few days even). When you go back to it, take out anything that isn’t absolutely essential.

If you'd like to read a poem by Deborah LaVeglia, click here.

 

Etiquette for Soliciting Poetry Readings by Guest Blogger Joe Weil

 

This week, I’m happy to introduce (or re-introduce) you to poet Joe Weil.  If you're a long-time blog follower, you may recall Joe's previous blog contributions (click on the titles below to read):

Advent Reflection by Joe Weil

Spiritual Poetry

I’ve known Joe since 1981 and have long admired his amazing poetry, his quick wit, and his uncommon intelligence.

Joe was born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey and has been described by The New York Times as personifying that town: "working-class, irreverent, modest, but open to the world and filled with a wealth of possibilities." After atttending St. Mary of The Assumption grade school and high school, he worked the graveyard shift at various factories for more than 20 years, mainly at National Tool and Manufacturing in Kenilworth, New Jersey. During this time, he became involved in hosting poetry readings in both New Jersey and New York, and founded the literary magazine Black Swan Review. He is currently a lecturer in the creative writing department at Binghamton University. He and his wife, the poet Emily Vogel, have two children—Clare and Gabriel (Gabriel is my godson).

Often, when I conduct workshops, I’m asked how poets go about getting readings. Readings are important to those of us who write. They offer opportunities to share our work "up close and personal" and to connect in real "poetry time" with our audiences. As a reading series director since 1998, I think I've probably "seen it all" when it comes to poets looking for reading venues. There are definitely "dos" and "don'ts."

When I saw that Joe had written something about exactly that, I knew I wanted to share it on this blog. So … here it is, with my thanks to Joe for his permission to post it. 

Enjoy, learn and, hopefully, get some readings going.

 ____________________________________

Etiquette for Soliciting Readings by Joe Weil

1. Before sending a brochure online or hard copy of what you have to offer as a featured reader, it's always good to get an email address and send a query letter to the host asking if he or she or they wouldn't mind getting a brochure or packet via online or hard copy. These are materials. A simple packet may include:

a web site address where they can behold your glory, or, if sans web, a packet of sample poems, brief bio, a nice JPEG, list of previous readings and name of the book you may be trying to sell. You can also include press clippings, an actual video of you reading, anything you think will impress the host. But first inquire. Don't bombard anyone. As a host of readings for over 20 years I hated the hard sell. The poets who were good never pressured me. Remember some series are booked a year in advance (this seems to be the fact of funding and organization), so, if the host does not book you right away, be patient, and, if the reading is near you, why not go and support it? Do the legwork. If there's an open, read a poem in it—one really good one. Half my readings came from initially reading in the opens.

2. Make sure, if you're doing several readings in an area that, you don't book in such a way that you diminish one series for another—in short, try not to read within 20 miles of the same series at least three weeks before the gig. If you're reading in Philly and New York City, or some other place crowded with readings, then that's a different ball game. Show up early. Don’t pull the “show up late and therefore be the headline feature.” I hate when poets show up late for their own gigs. It's all too often a power game. They want to control the event. If you are late, call and let the host know you're lost or brain dead or whatever. Don't just flutter in with your three names and your Ezra Pound cape.

3. If possible stay for the whole event. Be gracious if there's an open, stay and listen. What you receive for your graciousness and presence exceeds any snobbishness or loathing you might experience. I HATE snobs whose elitism exceeds their talent. If you're truly a genius, I might tolerate it. Otherwise, I'll never have you feature for me again because you took off and left the people who came to see you high and dry. If you have to leave early, please be slavishly apologetic about it. I love slavishly apologetic. Even when it’s insincere, I prefer it to "Sorry. Have to go! See you later!"

4. Never, ever, over-read! Under-read by about a minute. If someone gives you an hour, they've made a pact with boring. Can you honestly hold a crowd for an hour without the little coughs and groans mounting? Never, never, say: “Four more poems!” or “Two more poems!” or anything other than "This is my last poem." I hate when I'm sitting there and my attention span is already stretched into transparency and I hear: “four more poems.” NOOOOOO! Don't do that to me (or to any other sentient creature).

5. Practice your readings, get an idea of how much time each of your poems takes, including intro, chit chat, etc. Good chitchat is part of the performance. Bad chitchat (such as a five minute speech before a haiku) is awful. If you're going to riffle through pages looking for a poem (and we all do that sometimes) be coy and flirtatious and as attractive as possible while doing so. Adjust your glasses, take a sip of water. Use that space to center the audience. Don't just fumble.

6. If possible, include one poem by another poet—a favorite, preferably one you know by heart. Dylan Thomas filled half his famous readings with the works of other poets.

7. Keep a log of how your set went. Keep track of how many books you sold. Observe the crowd. Old, young, academic, townspeople?

8. Right now, people underplay reading, but it’s the best way to reward your publisher for putting out a book—get out there and sell it.

________________________________________________________

Joe's books are available via Amazon.com—
no poet's library should be without at least one! 

 Click on the titles to order.

The Great Grandmother Light

Painting the Christmas Trees

The Plumber's Apprentice

West of Home (with Emily Vogel)

Gabriel, Emily, Clare, and Joe

MORNING AT THE ELIZABETH ARCH 

By Joe Weil

The winos rise as beautiful as deer.

Look how they stagger from their sleep
as if the morning were a river
against which they contend.

This is not a sentiment
filled with the disdain
of human pity.
They turn in the mind,
they turn
beyond the human order.

One scratches his head and yawns.
Another rakes a hand
through slick mats of thinning hair.
They blink and the street litter moves
its slow, liturgical way.
A third falls back
bracing himself on an arm.

At river’s edge, the deer stand poised.
One breaks the spell of his reflection with a hoof
and, struggling, begins to cross.

(Reprinted by permission of the author.)

Prompt #246 – At the Touch of Love

 

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

— Plato

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and, although the idea may seem just a bit trite, this is always a good time of year to read and write love poems.

To get inspired, there’s a great site selection of love poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, which you can access by CLICKING HERE.

Of course, the prompt this week is exactly what you might expect: write a love poem.

Guidelines:

1. Think about different kinds of love that you’ve experienced personally (romantic, familial, love of nature or animals, friendship, platonic), and choose one that signifies a powerful emotional experience for you.

2. Start with a freewrite (and remember that freewriting can take place any time during drafting and, editing, and revising).

3. Try several ideas for love poems and keep the ideas that are keepers.

4. Experiment with stanza breaks but not too early in the writing process. Stanzas can help expose weak spots as well as wordiness and unnecessary repetitions.

Tips:

1. Often, love poems get a “bad rap” because some have been written that are overly sentimental, “mushy,” too personal, too confessional, or grossly overwritten. The challenge for you this week is to write a poem that involves love in some form or another and to observe the following:

• Strive for uniqueness (not the typical “How Do I Love Thee?” fare). Find ways to distinguish between the individual and the common.

• Create a sense of revelation without being overtly revealing. Remember the old poetry adage, “show don’t tell.”

• Remember that one of the biggest difficulties in writing love poems isn’t writing about love but, rather, writing about the feelings that underlie the love we feel and our attempts to recreate those feelings in ways that are understandable and believable.

• If you choose to write a romantic love poem, make sure you write between the lines and go beyond the first blush of romance.

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Prompt #245 – Take Five

 

I’ve always felt that reading poetry can go a long way toward generating poetry. We’re often inspired by what we read, we discover new forms and styles, and we find interesting examples of how language can be used in different and engaging ways.

Inspiration comes in many forms. Often, when we read another poet’s poem, we feel inspired, encouraged, and perhaps even compelled to write something of our own. In general, derivative works are frowned upon, but finding bits of stimulation here can be a very good thing. It's how we use what inspires us that makes the difference.

This week, to encourage poetry reading and to explore some ways in which other poets’ words can motivate us, we’re going to begin with poems that other poets have written.

Guidelines:

1. The first thing I’d like you to do is select five short poems from books you have or from the Internet. Try to use poems that are under 40 lines each. The poems may be old favorites or new discoveries—you decide.

2. Read all five poems carefully.

3. Jot down 5 interesting things about each of the poems you selected. 

• Write down one stunning, startling, or otherwise noteworthy image from the poem.

• How does the poet invite you into the poem? Is there a “hook” in the first line?

• How does the last line, the dismount, bring the poem to closure?

• What’s unique about the last line? 

• What has the poet written that resonates for you?

• Make a note of anything else that stands out in the poems you’ve selected.

4. Now, in the spirit of writing a cento, borrow a meaning, metaphor, simile, line, phrase, image, or word from each of the five poems you chose. Altogether, that’s only five things—only one from each of the poems you chose to read.

Note: Cento is the Latin word for patchwork (as in patchwork quilt). In poetry, a cento is made entirely of lines taken from poems by other authors. The rules are simple: no more than one line may be taken from any one poem; any number of quotes is acceptable; and centos may be rhymed or unrhymed. Remember that “borrowing” other poets’ words is typically regarded as an honorific practice when the work is well-done and sources are properly credited. Be sure to provide credits (usually at the end of your poem).

5.  Reflect on your five “borrowed” items. What do they suggest to you? Do they, in any way, lead you to a subject for a poem of your own? Establish the subject for a poem.

6. At this point, begin to write a poem in which you incorporate all five of the “borrowed” items; but, here’s the challenge: unlike writing a cento, you can’t quote anything directly. In other words, the things you chose for the poems you read are purely for inspiration. All the words in your poem must be completely your own.

Tips:

1. Let yourself be inspired gently, take whatever suggestions the poems you read might have to offer, but don’t be locked into anything.

2. Spend a lot of time, playing” with the ideas you gathered from other people’s poems. Where do they lead you? What moments of inspiration do they bring? How can you “piggy back” from these ideas into something spectacular of your own?

3. Be sure to reject anything that doesn’t fit the poem you begin to write.

4. Keep your poem short, don’t ramble.

5. After you’ve written a draft, look for “lifeless” parts of the poem and delete or rework them.

6. In the end, your new poem should bear little or no resemblance to any of the poems you read. 

7. Remember, this isn’t a prompt about “grand theft poetry”—it’s a prompt about how other people’s writing can inspire your own!