There’s a room in my house I like to call “my room,” a la Virginia Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own.” In truth the space also serves as a storage room for family art projects, files, junk mail waiting for the shredder, winter clothes and books that keep trickling into our house, as well as a guest bedroom for Grandma.

Today, thinking about writing prompts, I looked at the shelves where an odd array of novels and volumes of history lean haphazardly. My eyes trained on The Grapes of Wrath, a story that had me in tears when I first read it years ago. It’s a novel my son read last summer and one that’s also close to my husband’s heart. It’s part of my life’s mythology.

Here’s the prompt I came up with:

  • Choose a book that calls to you.
  • Go to the end of several chapters, and find the final noun or verb.
  • Make a list of 10 or so words, and then write a 10- to 20-line poem using those words.
  • Maybe the feeling or tone of your poem will come from your emotional connection to the book you choose. Maybe not.

And, if you’d like to collaborate on this prompt:

  • Find your book and look for five words.
  • Ask a friend to look through the same book and find five more words.
  • Each of you writes five or so lines.
  • Now combine the lines, alternating between yours and your friend’s lines.

For my poem, I worked solo. I found 11 nouns, and I ended up writing a free verse poem about laborers living in Mexico. The theme of my poem is the misery of poverty and the callousness of the ruling class, a definite connection to Steinbeck.

Here are Steinbeck’s words incorporated into my poem: men, truck, dust, buildings, hunters, head, jail, cars, west, windows.

Happy word hunting!
~Christine.


11 Responses to “read write prompt #5: a novel prompt”

  1. 1 susan

    Ah, very interested in this exercise. I recently reread The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danicat. If you haven’t read it, do. It is beautifully written. It’s the story of slaughtered Haitian cane workers in the Dominican Republic. I’m going to revisit it for inspiration for this prompt.

  2. 2 Christine

    Great, Susan. I haven’t read it, so I’ll put it on my list. I’m going to look through another book, one of my faves, The Windup Bird Chronicles. I’ll post my words here. If anyone wants to collaborate, just send me an email, or leave a comment on my blog.

  3. 3 Derek

    Again, going against the flow. Here is my work based on last week’s prompt. I’ll try to get the new one up soon.

    http://eatsbugs.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/numbers-121307/

  4. 4 Derek

    And we’ll go ahead and post that poem now…
    Prompted from The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

    http://eatsbugs.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/regina-121307/

  5. 5 susan

    Hi Derek,

    The link isn’t working. The Handmaid’s Tale should be required reading. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

  6. 6 slynne

    You should also read Atwood’s Penelopiad

  7. 7 Christine

    I also loved the Handmaid’s Tale. That would be a great book for gleaning words.

  8. 8 gautami

    I am in the midst of reading Atwood’s The Blind Assassin! Another one I recommend after The Handmaid’s Tale.

  9. 9 Derek

    I picked Blind Assassin one off the shelf for my mother, who is a die-hard romance reader. I’m trying to break her out. I don’t even know if she read that one.

    And try the link again. I edited the time stamp on it so it would show up the next day, so it might have been broken for a while.

  10. 10 Read Write Poem

    Comments for this post are now closed.

  1. 1 Watermark

WEEKLY READ WRITE PROMPT

July 2, 2008 — The current Get Your Poem On post is here. This is where you leave us a link to your blog, this week in response to Dana ShuffleWords idea, or any other kind of word play. (Or see if RWP-Twitter is for you!)

Next week's prompt will light you up. Thanks, Jill!



WEEKLY READ WRITE ARTICLES

June 26, 2008 — This month Jessica tells us which poets she first picked out to read, all on her own, because she wanted to. Who did you pick out?

Tom's Informal Talk About Forms has got more rhythm.

Christine's latest installment of Get The Lead Out discusses epigraphs. It's an inspired article.

We've been wanting more read here at Read Write Poem and Juliet brings it with her review of Spoken Word Revolution Redux.

January gives us a primer on revision.



POLL DANCE

July 5, 2008 — This time Carolee talks about how we talk about poetry we may not understand straight away in her "poll dance".

There's a new poll up. Yeah, a day early.



RANDOM PROMPTS

A different word or phrase will appear here each time you visit the site or refresh the page. Your current prompt is — oxidize



RANDOM WRITING TIP

Write a narrative poem or an epic poem about an event in history that moves you. Do you feel drawn to a certain time period from the past? What about the music? It might be big band music, sixties folk rock, Duke Ellington jazz, Renaissance madrigals, Gregorian chants, sitar music, etc. Think of the food, the clothing, the setting and create a mood that’s evocative of the time period you’ve chosen.



RANDOM READING TIP

Even though free verse is the dominant style now, formal poetry was popular for hundreds of years. Alternate some of the modern or classical masters of formal verse with modern writers of free verse. Don’t know where to start? Try Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marilyn Hacker, Agha Shahid Ali, Maxine Kumin and many others.



RANDOM COLLABORATING TIP

Cut one of your poems up into words and phrases, place everything in a paper bag, and give the poem puzzle to a collaborator to piece together in a new way. (This can also be done through e-mail if you are collaborating with someone in a different area.)


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