30 Saturday Apr 2016
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april poetry challenge, dream poems, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, writer, Writing, writing prompts
For your 29th prompt, write a poem about dreams. Do you have reoccurring dreams or nightmares? I have dreams in which I can breathe underwater and dreams in which a huge, 80 ft tidal wave plows toward the shore where I am standing on the second story of a glass building. She me your visions. Take the time to detail the images and sensations of them.
28 Thursday Apr 2016
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april poetry challenge, love poems, marvin bell, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, to dorothy, writer, Writing, writing prompts
Yesterday was mine and Rob’s anniversary. In the context of this, for your 27th poem, write a love poem. Here is one by Marvin Bell I have always loved:
To Dorothy
You are not beautiful, exactly. You are beautiful, inexactly. You let a weed grow by the mulberry and a mulberry grow by the house. So close, in the personal quiet of a windy night, it brushes the wall and sweeps away the day till we sleep. A child said it, and it seemed true: “Things that are lost are all equal.” But it isn’t true. If I lost you, the air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow. Someone would pull the weed, my flower. The quiet wouldn’t be yours. If I lost you, I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep.
26 Tuesday Apr 2016
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april poetry challenge, dictionary poems, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, rob carney, writer, Writing, writing prompts
I love using the randomness of a dictionary to help me start writing and exercising my imagination. So today, a couple of options.
Option 1: Close you eyes, turn to a page in the dictionary and point. Write a poem about the origin of that thing. For instance: The Origin of Orion. The Origin of the Onion. The Origin of the Ski. In a way, you are writing the thing’s mythology.
Option 2: Flip through the dictionary twice and use the words to fill in the following title: Explaining ______to a ______. For example, Explaining Orion to an Onion. Explaining an Onion to a Ski. Try to explain the first word in terms of the second. How would a ski related to an onion? …maybe that layer between the first and second layer of an onion’s skin that’s slippery as a winter mountain for starters! Keep going!
Thanks to Rob Carney for the 2nd!
Write on!
25 Monday Apr 2016
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For today’s prompt let’s try a mash-up. You should so far have 24 poems. Using the poems you’ve written this month, write a new poem using a line from each poem. It could be the first line from each, the last, the fifth, or a random one. Line them up and write a poem from there. Perhaps looking back you will notice a theme or reocurring image. Perhaps, integrate the lines that those appear in.
25 Monday Apr 2016
For today’s prompt, write a poem of apology. As in, I am so sorry for not posting a prompt yesterday! The end-of-semester work is piled up, the days are sunny and 71 degrees. And as we’ve covered before, it ain’t called a challenge for nothing ;)
Who in your life do you owe an apology to? Do you owe yourself an apology for something? An apology to your hand for not using an oven mitt? To your grandmother’s now-stained antique table after noy using a coaster? To the child you will never have? Or, does someone owe an apology to you? Write in the persona of someone saying what it is you need to hear that never have.
22 Friday Apr 2016
Tags
april poetry challenge, earth day, nature poems, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, writer, Writing, writing prompts
Happy Earth Day! In honor of the earth, today write a nature poem. Take some time to sit and watch the local birds or wildlife. Remember a time you were in the woods and felt refreshed. Describe your camping tradition, a trying hike.
Yesterday I saw a hawk snatch a robin from my front yard. Two crows flew from the trees like knights to chase the hawk out of their territory. Our grass was left with a scattering of soft, small feathers. The crows and robins must travel together–they do this–different kinds of birds form a flock they travel with, around here from feeder to feeder, like a family to which we all belong.
21 Thursday Apr 2016
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2016 has been a noteable year for celebrity deaths. Today we say goodbye to Prince. In honor of his musical contributions to American culture, write a poem that integrates lyrics from one or more of his songs. Alternatively, steal one his titles and write a poem.
20 Wednesday Apr 2016
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abecedarian, april poetry challenge, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, writer, Writing, writing prompts
It’s 4/20. And if pot was legal nationwide, this prompt would be very different…
Today, write an abecederian poem. It’s when the first letter of each line follows the order of the alphabet. So, the first line starts with A, the second with B, the third with C, etc. In the end you should have a 26-line poem.
Here’s one by Michelle Bonczek Evory (yours truly):
Lake Affected
April 11th and through my Michigan window: no surprise, really:
Blizzard. The small sidewalk trees sag under fluff and sky.
Cindy says she can’t take it, this weather. She misses
Dallas, the blue bells, has had enough of the lake’s snow globe
Extending its stay beyond this season’s home opener, yellow
Flowers and late night light for late nights
Grilling. Her hand opens back toward Texas like a beauty queen’s,
Her eyes bat their long lashes: Take me back old friend, holy hell,
I am sorry. But everyone has different needs
Jig-sawing their bellies. Pieces of life floating down like, well, you
know. Kevin, I’m leaving messages like lightning on your machine.
Lying in bed this morning I couldn’t sleep. Snow
Makes electric champagne of my nerves, pops me open, twists me until sweet
Nostalgia curls me up with a book, squeezes poetry from my skull, seduces me to
Ogle over young faces in old pictures, realphabetize my library, boil
Potatoes until my kitchen windows steam. I burned yesterday’s leftover
Quart of coffee reheating on the stove. But I didn’t care, all
Restless as I was and hungry for everything no longer
Snuggling in my shoes or my bed, which is to say, bodies from the past.
Time, oh time and time again time
Undoes more than the elastic seams on lingerie, but like that—
Very much like that, the things that make us sexy
Wear away. And when it snows like this I want to melt until
X-rays show me one white dot, unique, branching out, stuck,
Yearning for others like me that will have a ball with me making something
Zesty as an orange, ready to be thrown at the world.
18 Monday Apr 2016
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april poetry challenge, dorianne laux, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, shipfitter's wife, work poems, writer, Writing, writing prompts
“Monday, monday,” sang the Mamas and the Papas, “Can’t trust that day.” “Wish it were Sunday, my I-don’t-have-to-run day,” sang the Bangles. And we all know how easy it is to get those Monday blues. Why are we running? Is the answer seriously just that four-letter “w” word, WORK? Jobs and school that demand we be awake against our body’s will? Staring into a blind sun, coffee dribbling down our chins as we sit in traffic? Lists of things we need “to do.”
For today’s prompt, write a work poem. What’s your typical Monday look like at the office? What’s your dream job? Maybe write a list poem about the contents of your briefcase or toolbox. Are you a stay-at-home parent? What’s that look and smell like? Use the senses and specific diction to bring your job and work to life.
One of my fave poems about work? I give you Dorianne Laux’s “The Shipfitter’s Wife”:
The Shipfitter’s Wife
I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I’d go to where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles
and calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I’d open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me — the ship’s
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull’s silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
and the long drive home.
17 Sunday Apr 2016
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Tags
april poetry challenge, epistolary poems, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, writer, Writing, writing prompts
After two days of yard and garden work, I am ready to sit…and write a poem. For today’s poem, we will write an epistolary poem, or a letter poem. An epistolary poem can come in any form and be about any matter. I am pulled to write a letter to a younger version of myself, but perhaps you will be moved to write one to a future version of yourself. What would you say to yor 12-year-old self? Your 21-year-old self? Your 45-year old self? You 101-year-old self? What would the you today, right here &now, say to yourself on the day you graduated from college? Married? Decided not to have children? Anchor the you that you address in an event or an age in general.
Let the writing begin!
the poet's billow 