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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.
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.
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.
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?
Today, look at poems from the poet whose voice you’ve been absorbing–or a poem by someone else about your event, or take one of your own poems from the month.
Choose one line and imagine it’s the epigraph for the poem you’re writing today. (Or use it as the epigraph!)
I’m finding it hard to write the poems that address real people or speak from their point of view. I want to write like Lynda Hull, with empathy and without judgment. But my favorite line from yesterday’s poem:
history’s cradle fault-rocked
What was your favorite line from the poem you wrote yesterday?
Think about a perpetrator in your event. Or think about a victim. This could be the you from day 2, the something from day 3, the black sheep, someone else entirely, or a group of people.
Write down three questions you’d want to ask them. Write a letter poem using the three questions. “Dear” isn’t required. Can you start with the last line from yesterday’s poem?
Favorite line from yesterday? I can’t decide between
as an oyster woos its trouble into a pearl
and
its secrets spilled in the sink
What was your favorite line from yesterday?
