My Seventh poem for National Poetry Writing Month uses the prompt from Napowrimo.net—which involves making four short lists, then connecting items from the first two using information from the last two. The list items I chose were the smooth, black stone (touchstone) a friend of mine gave me, under the coffee table (where I sometimes find my remote after misplacing it), the remote control I misplace at least twice a day, and not remembering something about an item I have been given (a business card, in the example on my actual list). Continue reading
prompts
National Poetry Writing Month 2017, Day 6
My sixth poem for National Poetry Writing Month uses the prompt from Napowrimo.net—‘write a poem that looks at the same thing from different points of view.’ Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month 2017, Day 5
My fifth poem for National Poetry Writing Month uses the prompt from Napowrimo.net—who were seriously testing me with their prompt to ‘write a poem that is based in the natural world.’ When it comes to poetry, few things are duller to me than…a nature poem. Read Beowulf to me in the original Middle English. Make me listen to a poem that is so long it takes 43-and-a-half minutes to read if you’re rushing through it. Assemble our current president-inator’s tweets to date into an incoherent mess of writing that could be called a poem only in the loosest sense possible. But nature poems? Thank you, no. Fortunately, I was able to give myself enough leeway to have fun with it—and without any references whatsoever to fecundity… Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month 2017, Day 4
My fourth poem for National Poetry Writing Month combines the prompt from Napowrimo.net, which is to write a poem ‘with a word or idea or line it isn’t expressing directly’, with the prompt from the NaPoWriMo Facebook page, which is to ‘make use of Color [sic] as your theme.’ [Update: I moved the I have no need… stanza because it was bugging me. I will keep it where I moved it for now—but I suspect further revision will be necessary later on.] Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month 2017, Day 3
My third poem for National Poetry Writing Month uses the prompt from Napowrimo.net, which is to write an elegy, with a focus on something unusual about the person or thing being mourned. My poem is addressed to a friend of mine who died about two-and-a-half years ago, and a weekend spent with her and a group of her friends during my first summer vacation (August 1988) after moving to Tokyo. Technically, I wrote this poem on Day 2, but the Day 3 prompt went up at midnight Eastern Time, so I am counting this as my official Day 3 poem… Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month 2017, Day 2
My second poem for National Poetry Writing Month combines the prompts from Napowrimo.net (write a poem inspired by, or in the form of, a recipe) and the Napowrimo Facebook page (write a poem inspired by your favorite piece of art)… Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month 2017, Day 1
It’s National Poetry Writing Month again; this year is my fifth time participating. My first entry combines the prompts from Napowrimo.net (write a Kay Ryan-esque poem) and the Napowrimo Facebook page (write about a ‘big first’)… Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #27 (April 27, 2014)
Today’s entry was a tricky one. I had all sorts of trouble coming up with something I even halfway liked.
In the end, I went with the original prompt from NaPoWriMo.net:
…a poem written from a photograph.
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #26 (April 26, 2014)
Today’s entry inadvertently combines prompts from PoeWar:
Write a poem about a natural event.
[W]rite a water poem.
and NaPoWriMo.net:
…give the curtal sonnet a whirl.
Earlier, the prompt explains:
…the curtal sonnet is shorter than the normal, fourteen-line sonnet. Instead, it has a first stanza of six lines, followed by a second stanza of four, and then closes with a half-line.
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #24 (April 24, 2014)
Today’s entry combines prompts from Kelli Russell Agodon‘s list:
Write a poem that has the word ‘love’ in it somewhere. You cannot use the word ‘love’ by itself; it must be hidden (such as in the word ‘glove’, or in two words, like ‘halo venom’.
Write a poem that begins with the word ‘I‘. [Never a problem for me, it seems]
and NaPoWriMo.net:
[W]rite a poem that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like.
Ordinary Average Thoughts 