An Interview with Charles Simic

Here we are in mid-November, approaching the most festive, celebratory, and busiest time of year. It occurs to me that many of us won’t have time to work with prompts or on our poems, so I thought I’d offer slightly different fare for a while—some poetry-related reading and then a short hiatus in December. For starters, I’d like to share an interview that I did with the great poet Charles Simic. This appeared in issue XXIII of Tiferet (autumn 2013) and is reprinted here with the permission of publisher Donna Baier Stein. There are some great tips for poets from Charles Simic at the end of the interview.

An Interview with Charles Simic

By Adele Kenny

TIFERET: Literature, Art, & The Creative Spirit, Issue XXIII

Copyright © 2013 By Tiferet. All rights reserved.

Reprinted by Permission

Dušan [Charles] Simić was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on May 9, 1938. His memories, as he noted for this interview “… begin with April 6, 1941 when he was three years old, when a German bomb hit the building across the street from his and threw him out of bed at five o’clock in the morning …” During World War II, his father was arrested several times and in 1944 fled from Yugoslavia to Italy, where he was again imprisoned. At the end of the war, he went to Trieste where he lived for five years before making his way to the United States. Simic’s mother attempted to escape postwar Yugoslavia but was imprisoned with Charles and his younger brother by the Communists. Charles, his brother, and his mother ultimately moved to Paris, where they lived for a year before emigrating to the United States in 1954 where they joined Charles’s father after a decade apart.

The family lived in New York for a year before moving to the Chicago suburb of Oak Park where Simic graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. His first poems were published in the Chicago Review in 1959. Working nights at the Chicago Sun Times, he attended the University of Chicago but, in 1961, was drafted into the US Army and served until 1963. In 1964, he married fashion designer Helen Dubin, with whom he has a son and a daughter. He earned a bachelor’s degree from NYU in 1966, and his first poetry collection, What the Grass Says, was published in 1967. He became a US citizen in 1971 and taught at the University of New Hampshire for 34 years. He and his wife live in Strafford, New Hampshire.

Prolific as well as acclaimed, Charles Simic has published over sixty books in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to being a distinguished poet, he is also an eminent translator, essayist, critic, and editor. A 1990 Pulitzer Prize recipient, he was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000. He has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2007–2008 and, among other honors and awards, he has received the PEN Translation Prize, the International Griffin Poetry Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, and the Frost Medal.

Imagistic and terse, Charles Simic’s poetry is characterized by dark imagery and incongruity—a stunning blend of originality and genius that produces a style unmatched in contemporary poetry. A post-modernist and a surrealist, Simic is also a minimalist who trims away everything “extra” to create a streamlined effect intensified by surprising concurrences of language and imagery. His poetry is like waking in a darkened room and unexpectedly recognizing the strangeness in familiar furniture forms.

_______________

Adele Kenny: My mother’s family came from Eastern Europe and suffered greatly during the First World War. (My grandfather spent six and a half years in a Siberian prison camp.) When they came to this country, my grandparents and my uncles (who were children) felt an enormous sense of displacement. Did you feel similarly when you came to this country and, if so, did that make itself felt in your poetry?

Charles Simic: Not in my case. I was sixteen years old when I came in 1954 with my mother and younger brother to join my father, whom we had not seen since 1944, so it was a happy occasion. Plus, everything that I was in love with, American literature, jazz, movies and girls, were waiting for me in New York City. Neither then, nor now, have I had any nostalgia for Europe.

AK: How have the darknesses of your childhood in Belgrade, such experiences as being a drafted into the U.S. army and serving as a military policeman in France and Germany, and Eastern Europe’s past impacted your poetry?

CS: Growing up in wartime, being bombed, seeing atrocities, going hungry and spending a little time in prison shaped my outlook on life. My poems are full of allusions to such experiences, not just mine, but to those of many other human beings in other wars and other times.

AK: How are you “the last Napoleonic soldier?”

     

CS: I and my family belong to the great masses of defeated humanity who fought in every war in history without wanting to and came back home either in a coffin or without an arm or a leg. When I wrote that poem this destiny of ours struck me as very funny.

AK: As a Post-Modernist poet, you successfully avoid the obsessive biographical preoccupation with “I” and “me” that has dominated poetry in recent years. How do nonrepresentational awareness and personal experience co-exist in your poetry?

CS: A poem is a work of art made up of imagination and reality. I’m more interested in writing a good poem then telling the reader about myself. Of course, I use my own experiences, but I also make up things.

AK: It has been remarked that your style is characterized by simplicity and strangeness with an unsettling quality. Dark imagery and irony are seen in many of your poems, along with nods to the surreal and to the farcical. How do you view these elements as characteristic of your work?

CS: This is how I see the world. As someone whose memories begin with April 6, 1941 when he was three years old, when a German bomb hit the building across the street from his and threw him out of bed at five o’clock in the morning, this is an inevitable condition. My parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts were the same way. History has made us into a family of cheerful pessimists.

AK: Your book The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1990), received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. What is it about prose poems that appeals to you?

CS: Because they’re not like any other kind of writing and thus impossible to anticipate how they will turn out. I never sit down to write a “prose poem.” I scribble in my notebooks and some of these scribbles every once in a while strike me as being able to stand alone and are worth keeping. What shall we call them? I asked my editor. Let’s call them prose poems, she said, so that’s what they became.

AK: Is there anything in your poems that has surprised or startled you?

CS: My returning again and again over the years to certain moods and images like Edward Hopper whose paintings share the same limited subject matter and the same atmosphere.

AK: How do you see poetry as a place in which the poet can achieve freedom?

CS: Poetry is freedom. The best poems never imitate, never worry what other people think. That’s why there’s so much poetry in the world. Where else would human beings find a place where they can let their feelings and their imagination run free? That’s what attracted me to poetry when I first started reading it and writing it fifty-five years ago, and it still does today.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind While Sitting Down to Write a Poem

from Charles Simic

1. Don't tell the readers what they already know about life.

2. Don't assume you're the only one in the world who suffers.

3. Some of the greatest poems in the language are sonnets and poems not many lines longer than that, so don't overwrite.

4. The use of images, similes and metaphors make poems concise. Close your eyes, and let your imagination tell you what to do.

5. Say the words you are writing aloud and let your ear decide what word comes next.

6. What you are writing down is a draft that will need additional tinkering, perhaps many months, and even years of tinkering.

7. Remember, a poem is a time machine you are constructing, a vehicle that will allow someone to travel in their own mind, so don't be surprised if it takes a while to get all its engine parts properly working.

Acknowledgment: “A Few Things to Keep in Mind …” is reprinted with the permission of Charles Simic and the Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/poetry/writingpoetry.html.

Poems by Charles Simic:

"I Am the Last"

"Autumn Sky"

"Riddle" (Audio)

"This Morning"

Seven Prose Poems

Tiferet offers five digital issues and one print issue every year.  Each issue is packed with high quality fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews, reviews, and visual art.

Contributors have included Robert Bly, Ray Bradbury, Gerald Stern, Nikki Giovanni, Ilan Stavans, Stephen Dunn, Alicia Ostriker, Robert Pinsky, Ed Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Dorianne Laux, Renée Ashley, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Laura Boss, Robert Carnevale, and Joe Weil (among many, many others).

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Prompt #171 –The Personal Narrative

Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story and is a long-time favorite among poets and readers. When I was in fifth grade, everyone in the class was required to memorize and recite “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” a historical narrative by Longfellow. I can remember memorizing a stanza each week and then, after much practicing with my parents, getting up in front of the class to recite the whole poem. I still remember the first few stanzas! Narrative poems can vary in length from very long to short. Sometimes the stories they tell are quite complex and include the voices of characters and narrators. Narrative poems from the past, for the most part, were written in metered verse and include ballads, idylls, lays, epics

The personal narrative, however, is different and is popular today among many free verse poets. Often misunderstood, 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.

This week let’s try a personal narrative poem, but right from the get go, let’s set a limit of no more than 30 lines. this may help avoid the pitfall of superfluous details.

1. For starters, decide what true story from your life you’d like to tell. Think about why you want to write a poem about this event in your life. Joy down some ideas about the sequence of the story, the people concerned, and the emotions involved.

2. Plan on writing in the first person singular, but know that you’re fee to change that later on.

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

5. Set a tone for your personal narrative. Tone in poetry is an overall feeling that inhabits every corner of your poem. Think about your story and the feeling with which you want your readers to leave the poem.

6. Think about the perspective from which you want to tell your story. Do you want to tell the story as if it were happening in the present (using the present tense)? Do you want to write from a perspective of looking back (past tense)? This is, of course, up to you and you will need to think about how use of the past or of the present tense will impact your poem.

7. Just as a short story includes rising action, a climax, and denouement or resolution, so should a personal narrative poem. Use of stanzas can be helpful in emphasizing the sequence of your poem. Be acutely aware that you’re writing a poem and not prose. Narrative poetry often springs from a prose impulse and becomes mired in prose-like details. Remember that you’re writing a poem and should be focused on imagery, figurative language, and the sound quality (alliteration, assonance, dissonance) of your work. Don’t become so engrossed in the story that you forget about the elements of good poetry!

Example:

Following is the title poem from Catherine Doty’s book, Momentum. Cat was last week's guest prompter.

Read the poem carefully two or three times. What makes this such an effective personal narrative?

What has Cat done in the poem to invite the reader into her experience?

How did you feel when reading the poem? What do you think Cat wanted you to feel?

How does Cat show without telling?

How does this personal narrative that describes a childhood experience take you back to your own childhood? What’s the “universal” message that Cat conveys through her personal experience?

How do the language and imagery enhance meaning?

How does this poem grow so much larger than the simply anecdotal?

Think about how Cat brought the poem to closure. What does Cat's “dismount” do for the poem? What did it do for your understanding of the poem. 

Momentum

By Catherine Doty

Your friends won’t try to talk you out of the barrel,

or your brag to go first, which has nothing to do with bravery.

And you’re so hungry to earn their love you forget

to claim first your, perhaps, last look at this mountain—

crab apples hanging sour in the sun, abandoned Buick,

a favorite place to play, dismantled and weathered

and delicate as a voting booth. Instead you dive straight away

and headfirst into darkness, the steel drum that dusts you,

like a chicken part, with rust. Looking out, there’s nothing

to see of your friends but their calves, which are scabby,

and below them the filthy sneakers, shifting, shifting,

every foot aching to kick you off this cliff.

Their faces, you know, are blank with anticipation,

the look you see when they watch TV eating popcorn.

They’re already talking about you as if you’re gone,

as if you boarded a bus and roared out of earshot,

when one foot flashes forward and launches you.

You know as you feel that first solid slam you are lost.

The barrel changes shape with each crash to earth,

as you will later, assuming and losing lives, but this

is so true now: ankles flayed to the bone, cracked ribs

and crushed mint, the brittle, pissy sumac. Right now

the pin oaks are popping in their sockets, the hillside

wears your shoes, clouds pleat and buck. You know, of course,

that no one’s going second, and friends who tell this story

will use the word idiot, rolling their hands in the air,

but you know you know what your life is for now and rise up,

and just about scalp yourself on that tree limb above you,

another thing you couldn’t possibly know was coming,

another which, like your first breath, was not your idea.

Source: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16899

Prompt #170 – Sonnet Variations by Guest Prompter Cat Doty

 

It’s time again for a guest prompter, and this week my special guest is poet Catherine Doty. The author of Momentum (Cavankerry, 2004, a volume of poetry), and Just Kidding (Avocet Press, 1999, a collection of cartoons that take a humorous look at childhood through the eyes of a poet), Cat received her MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, Good Poems for Hard Times, and many other magazines and anthologies. Her awards include an NEA Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Marjorie J. Wilson Award, and fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has taught for 30 years as a poet-in-the-schools, as well as for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Frost Place, and other writing programs and conferences.

Cat:

The sonnet is a sweet form: always good and engaging company, and as happy to be relieved of all but a few of its skeletal features as to be larded with new and increasingly baroque ones. Count those syllables! Rebut that argument! Include the name of a condiment in every line! Sonnets are not-too-big and not-too-small. Like all forms, the sonnet provides what the poet Marie Ponsot calls “white noise,” that bit of distraction that can leaven the task at hand. They are good for keeping narrative lean, and they make elegant containers for all wonderful manner of weirdness. Some of the various sonnet experiments that follow are borrowed with thanks from Bernadette Meyer and Layne Browne, some are mine. Check a book on poetic forms for the requirements of a traditional sonnet, then see how many you can or wish to retain in following any of the experiments below. For Sonnet Info, Click Here

1. Create a sonnet through the erasure of another text.

2. Write a sonnet by lineating found text or prose or a prose poem.

3. Write a sonnet using a poem in progress of your own that has not yet found its shape.

4. Open a dictionary. Write a poem using only the text on the page in front of you.

5. Write a sonnet inspired by or answering another sonnet.

6. Write a homophonic translation of a sonnet (feel free to experiment with online translation dictionaries).

7. Write in someone else’s voice, in character, or in a professional language. Be someone else for fourteen lines of your life.

8. Write a sonnet while listening to a concert, watching a movie, doing dishes, cooking, or any other activity demanding your attention. Let the outside leak into your work.

9. Write a sonnet composed of a series of guesses to an implied, stated or mysterious question/riddle.

10. Write a sonnet that is also a list poem.

11. Take off your glasses. With any text just out of your visual range so that you cannot quite make out the letters, begin guessing and speaking aloud what you can half-see (it helps to have a scribe write down your words for you). Use this material to enter a sonnet.

12. Write, in sonnet form, what you understand to be the way to write a sonnet.

13. Write a sonnet about an activity you know well, keeping both the rhythm of that familiar activity and the rhyme demands of the form.

14. Write a sonnet in which Shakespeare despairs of the Petrarchan sonnet and recreates the form to fit the poverty of English rhyme (first person optional).

15. Write a narrative sonnet, slaving to make it as near as possible to perfect. Print it out, cut it into fourteen strips, then shuffle them to see what else is going on. At this point, don't feel compelled to keep any imposed form at all.

_____________________________

Examples:

A Great Poem About Writing A Sonnet

Sonnet

By Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,

and after this one just a dozen

to launch a little ship on love’s storm-tossed seas,

then only ten more left like rows of beans.

How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan

and insist the iambic bongos must be played

and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,

one for every station of the cross.

But hang on here wile we make the turn

into the final six where all will be resolved,

where longing and heartache will find an end,

where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,

take off those crazy medieval tights,

blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

(Source: http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/sonnet_billy_co.html)

Three Famous Sonnets

Sonnet 79

by Edmund Spencer

Men call you fair, and you do credit it,

For that yourself you daily such do see:

But the true fair, that is the gentle wit

And virtuous mind, is much more praised of me.

For all the rest, however fair it be,

Shall turn to naught and lose that glorious hue:

But only that is permanent and free

From frail corruption that doth flesh ensue,

That is true beauty; that doth argue you

To be divine and born of heavenly seed;

Derived from that fair spirit, from whom all true

And perfect beauty did at first proceed:

He only fair, and what he fair hath made:

All other fair, like flowers, untimely fade.

Sonnet 43

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sigh

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!- — and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

                       

Sonnet 29

By William Shakespeare

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least.

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

 For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

 That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

________________________________________

Thanks, Cat, for sharing with us!

Click Here To Order Cat's Books

  

Prompt #169 – Gather Ye Ghosties

It’s that time of year again! Halloween! Time for ghosts, goblins, ghouls, a touch of suspense, a bit of mystery, and poems to fit the occasion! Located on the calendar between autumn and winter, harvest and scarcity, Halloween is associated with early festivals and traditions, especially the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced SAH-win). Samhain, the Celtic New Year, was celebrated on November 1st. At Samhain, Celts gathered around bonfires lit to honor the dead, believing that the wall between worlds was at its thinnest and that the ghosts of the dead could re-enter the material world to mingle with the living. At Samhain, the Celts sacrificed animals and wore costumes (most probably animal skins). They also wore masks or colored their faces to confuse faeries, demons, and human spirits that were thought to walk among them. As Christianity began to replace earlier religions, the feast of All Saint’s was moved to November 1st, making the night before All Hallows’ Eve, or Halloween. For An Earlier Post and More Halloween History, Click Here

This year, in observance of Halloween, let’s focus on writing a poem in which we create an aura of suspense and mystery. To help with this, let’s be specific and use ekphrasis to write about the image at the top—the moon in the window—for inspiration. (Remember that ekphrasis is a literary commentary on a visual work of art. That is, a poem or other piece of literature based on a painting, statue, or other visual artwork.  Read More About Ekphrastic Poetry By Clicking Here

For this prompt, take a look at the image at the top and think about how you might “view” the photo in the context of a particular place and time that was (or is) mysterious, suspenseful, or scary. How might you work personal experience (something that really happened to you) into a poem based on this image?  (If this image doesn’t work for you, feel free to choose another that will!)

Things To Think About:

1. What does the image suggest to you?

2. What’s mysterious about the image?

3. How does the image “speak to” autumn, Halloween, harvest season, the moon, or colder weather?

4. For what might the moon in the window be a metaphor?
5. What images does the word apparition call to mind?

The Writing:

1. Begin by free writing for about 10-15 minutes. Reflect on the photo and just write whatever pops into your mind. But … whatever you do, DON’T write a description of the photo.

2. After writing for a while, go back and read what you’ve written. Is there anything there that suggests a topic, theme, narrative, experience?

3. What written images did the photo generate? How might you create a vivid scenic description for this poem? (Not a description of the photo, but something in which to context the photo.)

4. Circle all the words and short phrases that suggest something mysterious to you. Then, choose from the free write one subject or idea that you think you may be able to develop in a poem and begin to work on it.

5. You might write a narrative about what happened before the photo was taken or what will happen next. But remember: a personal narrative has be larger and more meaningful than something merely anecdotal. 

6. You might write about being moonstruck.

7. You might write a poem about a face that appears in your window, or the moon in your window mysteriously turning into a face. 

8. Include some phrasal verbs—for example: dress up, watch out, turn into, scare away, ward off.

9. Work on voice, tone, diction, and sound to enhance the effect of your poem.

10. Come up with a chiller-thriller of a dismount!

Some Ideas:

1. How long had I stared at that window …

2. The window had become a prison …

3. Arms of the plant that bloomed in summer etch the window …

4. A face in the window next to the moon …
5. I knew there was someone, or something, behind me as I looked up at the window ...

Remember that a good poem should make the reader gasp at least once while reading it. You can make that happen through striking imagery, an unexpected twist, a surprise in content, and/or a punchy dismount. So, go for it!

Examples: Click on the Titles to Read the  Poems

Halloween by Robert Burns

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

Haunted Houses by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Bats by Paisley Rekdal

Mr. Macklin's Jack O'Lantern by David McCord

Song for the Deathless Voice by Abram Joseph Ryan

All Souls' Night, 1917 by Hortense King Flexner

Halloween by Arthur Peterson

All Hallows Night by Lizette Woodworth Reese

The Hag by Robert Herrick

The Apparition by John Donne

Shadwell Stair by Wilfred Owen

Hallow-E'en, 1915 by Winifred M. Letts

Incantation by George Parsons Lathrop

Hallowe'en Charm by Arthur Guiterman

The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe

On Halloween by Janet Little

Spirits of the Dead by Edgar Allan Poe

From The Lady of the Manor by George Crabbe Here’s to the witches, Here’s to their cats, Here’s to the poets In Halloween hats; Here’s to the ghosties, In robes of white, Here’s to your poems For Halloween night!

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!