To close out the month, I offer two options:

• Write another ekphrastic poem.
• Create a poem made up of lines from your other poems. Like a cento, but drawing from your own writing this month. You can use first lines or last lines or your favorite lines throughout the month, or whatever line in a poem fits. Play with the order. Enjoy.

I hope you’ve had a fun poetry month. And many thanks to Mary, who has hung in here with me and shared such wonderful lines.

Favorite line

My favorite line from yesterday’s poem:

that tug toward your past and the weight of other

What was your favorite line from the poem you wrote yesterday?

Today’s poem is the last poem in this series. Tomorrow, you’ll have your choice of two stand-alone prompts.

For today, write a prediction. Write it in the future tense (writing in the future tense always lends a kind of seer tone to the voice, a prognostication).

Favorite line

My favorite line from yesterday’s poem:

nine hundred kinds of sadness and no hope.

(Clearly I need a prediction–something positive!)

What was your favorite line from yesterday’s poem?

Which myth or myths could represent your event or events? Where do the characters, decisions, and actions intersect or collide?

Write a poem that weaves the myth into the reported and explore the connections.

Favorite line

My favorite line from yesterday’s poem? I’m going to cheat and give you two:

wind laves another world. Cleanliness
next to emptiness, that hollow waits for a god.

What was your favorite line from the poem you wrote yesterday. Share it in the comments.

What are things you do every day? What would people do every day during the time of your event (or events)? Try narrowing it down to one thing. Imagine their experience–how does it impact yours, how does it change it?

This prompt was adapted from The Poet’s Companion.

Favorite line

I realized when I was writing yesterday’s poem that I wasn’t necessarily responding to the lines of the starter poem I’d chosen–but that having those lines there provided this scaffolding that allowed me to write more easily. The structure of the existing lines felt liberating.

It might be a bit too much, but here’s my favorite line:

the cherry trees like rows of rose constellations

What was yours?

Choose a poem from the poet you were working with yesterday–the more unknown the poem, the better.

Print it out triple spaced. Between each line, fill in your own line. Can you start with the last line from yesterday’s poem? What parts of your event fit in?

Next, take out the other poem’s lines, then write a second section that’s all yours.

Then go ahead and play with it (try mixing it up, interleaving the two sections).

This prompt comes from “Writing Between the Lines” in The Practice of Poetry.

Favorite line

Here’s my favorite line from yesterday’s poem:

a bell faraway, a taste of metal

What was your favorite line from what you wrote yesterday?