Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano is to write a poem about how you learned a particular word. The example given in the book is about how one of them (I assume it was Kelli Russell Agodon, but which of them ‘I’ refers to is not clear) learned the word ‘omit’ back in 1970. This made me think of how I learned the word ‘alibi’ from a Partridge Family song in 1971, so that’s what I started writing about. When I finished the poem, however, the two stanzas referring to that specific experience did not fit—so the poem no longer has anything to do with learning words…
Martha Silano
Opposite Day (a poem)
Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano is to write a poem about opposites—specifically, to make two lists of characteristics, with one list being the opposite of the other, then writing a poem in two voices, going back and forth between the lists. I took a different approach to the theme…
A brief rumination on the meaning of a flag (a poem)
Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano is to write a poem for Flag Day. Although the prompt suggests writing specifically about the American flag—and I did keep that in mind—I concerned myself more with the meaning of flags in general, because the meaning of a flag can shift for any number of reasons…
6-Inch Alien (a poem)
Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano involves using a tabloid headline for inspiration. I found one, 6-INCH ALIEN, on the Weekly World News web site…
80–90–92 (a poem)
Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano is to write a poem about a decade.
These things are mine (a poem)
Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano is to write a poem that describes and/or defines who you are. I was a little hesitant, as that feels like the only thing I normally write about, but I gave it a shot anyway…
Cortege (a poem)
Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano is to write in a different way than usual, whether that be in a different form or style, using different imagery or words, etc. The poem I wrote just before this one probably achieves that goal more successfully—but I like this one better. It was inspired by a couple of Jon Hassell pieces (Last Night the Moon Came and Amsterdam Blue (Cortege)) I was listening to on Pandora…
The Daily Poet (a poem)
A poem about a book.
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The truth of the matter (a poem)
This is my second time using the Langston’s Titles prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano. The prompt presents the titles of a number of poems by Langston Hughes; the challenge is to use eight or more of them in a poem. The poem is to be about ‘something beautiful or something you wish would happen’, but I wanted to avoid using any of the same titles I used in last year’s poem, so it ended up being something different…
An episode from the summer of ’87 (a poem)
Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano is one of the more interesting ones in the book. At first, it bugged me, but now I see it as having its own peculiar beauty. To mark the anniversary of the death of Gilda Radner, the idea is to think about her Emily Litella character, and write a poem that includes words or phrases that you have misheard. Unfortunately, they got their Gilda characters mixed up, and referenced Roseanne Roseannadanna (as Rosanna Rosanna Danna) instead. All very meta, as the kids might say.
Anyway, I chose instead to revisit an episode that began with me misunderstanding a conversation that took place in the next room…
Ordinary Average Thoughts 