by Carolee Sherwood
Not like that. Shame on you!
Consider three pieces of your life: three towns, three people, three favorite traditions, three rooms, three body parts, three hobbies, three hats. You could even go crazy and mix it all up, picking one piece from different “categories.” Write a single poem about all three. Try to work from concrete pieces — things that can be touched, seen, smelled, heard or tasted. The connections between them may be abstract (or not) but start with three actual “things.”
It would be great if you picked these pieces randomly. Allow serendipity to have its way with you and your poem! You could brainstorm a list of pieces, close your eyes and point to three or write each piece on its own slip of paper and pull three out of a bowl. (If you want, there’s no reason you can’t do more than three, but do at least three.) If it works for you, free write about the first piece until something links it with the second and then to the third (trusting free association) and eventually pull a poem out of the free write.
If you want to collaborate, you can e-mail another poet and choose parallel pieces (both of you write about an eighth grade dance or your first apartments). Then each of you can write a stanza about your own piece and then work together in some way to create a third stanza.
You can offer up your pieces to other poets, and you can throw caution to the wind and write about somebody else’s pieces. If you’d like to collaborate in this way, leave your list of three pieces in the comments section of this post (lists only, please; no commentary so that we don’t unduly influence the free association of others).
No matter how you play around with this prompt, I believe its strength comes from the juxtaposition of three “as-random-as-possible” parts of your life. Remember, it is necessary to fall to pieces!
A plea: Jill and Dana have really cool sign-offs when they post prompts. (Jill concludes her posts with “Keep on poem-ing,” and Dana ends with “Poem on!”) I am the Katie Couric of Read Write Poem. I have no sign-off, and I’m asking the public for its help. I’m looking for something that plays on words about writing or poetry and brings in my Polka-Dot Witch identity.
I am not opposed to something tacky or cliche. Feel free to post your ideas in the comments section here. Sadly, there is no prize for the winner. I’ll credit the sign-off author initially, but please give me only the ideas you’re willing to allow me to use liberally without attribution if the sign-off sticks. Thank you!
by Jill Crammond Wickham
Here we are with the second “Get Your Poem On” post. From now until midnight one week from today, comments on this post will be open, so you can leave a permalink to your blog post for this week’s contribution.
We hope you took the time to write something based on the “eat, drink, write a poem” prompt, but we won’t start any food fights if you decided to go in another, foodless, direction.
Please, link back here in your posts, either with a hyperlink to Read Write Poem or by using the badge in your post. Sidebar links are great but it helps our “internet health” when you link in every post you contribute to the project. And please add “Read Write Poem” in your tags, if you don’t mind.
For the new folks: Please take a few moments to read the About pages, including our Copyrights page. If you have any questions about the project after reading through those pages, email us at info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
by Jill Crammond Wickham
When I was teaching an elementary poetry class a few years ago, the topic was food. I brought in all kinds of food for the kids to try and write about. We wrote poems about fruit, mostly, because I knew it was something they would like. Lovely, inspired poems about oranges, bananas, apples, strawberries were writ by all. But the poem that has stayed with me all these years is “Coconut,” which began: “It slides down my throat like spiders … ”
What food do you love? What food do you hate? Have you ever tried ugly fruit? Mango? How do you eat your mango? Walk the aisles of your local grocery store. Ignore the stares of the curious and whip out your notebook. Write down the names of foods that interest you. Line your pockets with the mini-recipes they sometimes provide. Right now, in my purse, are recipes on tiny little cards for:
- mango tango salsa
- kumquat salad
- simple sugar snaps
- Brussels sprouts skillet
- pomegranate shrimp
Food tastes can run to the eclectic. Remember the book How to Eat Fried Worms? How about writing your own “How to … ” poem? How to eat, how to cook, how to grow [fill in the blank]. Use your senses. You don’t just have to taste something. Feel it. Smell it. Look at it. Listen to it.
Maybe you have a food memory. Favorite holiday feast? Elementary school breakfast? First date meal?
Your food memories, your senses, your love of words, even your local market can provide you with the ingredients. All you need to do is cook up a poem!
Keep on poem-ing!
by Dana Guthrie Martin
Welcome to the first Read Write Poem “Get Your Poem On” post. From now until midnight U.S. Pacific Standard Time one week from today, comments on this post will be open, so you can leave a permalink to your blog post for this week’s contribution.
We hope many of you took the time to write some American Sentences you want to share today. (And if not that’s cool, too.) We also hope you enjoyed the collaborative exercise we did on the comments section of Wednesday’s post. We’ve posted the resulting poem at the end of this post.
Please take a few moments to read the the about page, the recently updated code of conduct and our copyrights page. If you have any questions about the project after reading through these pages, please e-mail us at info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
Oh, just one more thing: Comments might get stuck in our spam or moderation filters, especially since the project is so new. It takes the filter some time to determine which comments are legitimate and which ones are not.
If you don’t see your comment appear, be patient. We will be checking the filters throughout the week and will fish out anything that’s not spam. If you continue to send comments after the first one does not appear, you will make it harder for the spam filter to recognize that your comment is valid because we will have to keep deleting the extra comments you’ve left, which will in turn make the spam filter think you are sending us junk mail.
Our American Sentence
Oh me first, let me see, that’s eight, but that might be more than one sentence.
The American Sentence has seventeen syllables—period.
She once told me GIRTH was an acronym for God It’s Really Thick Hon!
my lawn’s frosty fingers plead with morning rays: “sun, take away our fears.”
Your intoxicating spice lingered in my bed three days and three nights.
Deb hangs her head, greasy hair hanging. No homework again. Now, no home.
You can sit on your porch here and watch your dog run away for three days.
Ghosts try to weave into reality zigzagging through mini blinds.
Fall leaves please, I concentrate and squint, hoping for snowfall and reindeer.
Wicked thoughts between Chardonnay and pizza blond delivers wife waits.
In the street- you drop my hand when a man walks by: I want to reach out.
At the doctor’s, confounded by forms: not single, not married.
Ghosts, fall leaves and your hands all remind me of sweat: I can’t forgive that.
I was only three cocktails or a stay away from execution.
May I now present a man, a wife, two children, a stock Christmas card.
My hair, unwoven, remembers how it feels to be held in a braid.
Police helicopter hovers overhead while I sit drinking my wine.
This is very intriguing, like a haiku without the end breaks.
As I write the cat stares at my efforts – clearly he is unimpressed.
All public transport grinds to a halt to call Sarkozy’s bluff – who blinks?
Twin-sentence problems can be fixed with the magic of semicolons.
Last year’s gloves hide camouflaged under lint piles of a hundred worries.
In separate compartments, still, we all travel along the same tracks.
Tempted to attempt my very first American sentence, curiosity conquers fear of mess-up.
More shit from my pencil; how come I can’t write like Allen Ginsberg?
Jets blast, geese cronk, wind rushes scarlet leaves: sound layers above my head.
Staring in her blue eyes, he says: You will always just be my lover.
It rains in the desert while I’m on the beach; the beach, of course, is dry.
I pulled shut the door as soon as I realized where my keys remained.
congealed oats- stuck to the walls of glass- reminder of my gelled life?
Spilled mocha on my blue winter coat. Rain washed it clean – but not me.
Life is transitory; let your joy and your melancholy take turns.
Everything should be as easy to erase as cheap pink nail polish.
She took nothing but crumbs, the dregs, left-overs, and tears: then she complained.
Memo to Ginsberg:
writing haiku in three lines
IS American.
sit…stay…down…over…good girl…daddy loves when you are obedient!
a cup of tea this chilly fall night, I simply sip the cold away.
by Dana Guthrie Martin
Welcome to the first-ever Read Write Prompt. This week, we’ll focus on American Sentences. Some people don’t like the name, but please don’t be put off by it. It’s simply the name Allen Ginsberg chose for this poetry form, which is a single sentence of 17 syllables. You can read more about American Sentences at www.americansentences.com, where Paul Nelson talks about them in detail.
So this week, let’s focus on writing some American Sentences. You can write just one, or a whole list of them. You might try writing one every day of the week.
You can also pair up with another participant to write some of these collaboratively. If you want to work with another participant, just check out their blog on the participant page and shoot them an e-mail to see if they are interested in working with you.
If you go the collaborative route, try taking turns, with each of you writing one word at a time. Or you could try e-mailing an American Sentence to another participant and then having the recipient write a response American Sentence and sending it back to you — and so on and so on, until the two of you have a whole conversation going in American Sentences.
For this post, I thought we could try something fun and a little risky. I’m very interested in seeing how American Sentences might be combined to form a single poem, with different people each contributing a sentence to the overall poem. If you would like, leave one American Sentence in the comments section of this post. When we post the Get Your Poem On post, we’ll include our group poem at the bottom of that post.
Here’s how we’re going to do it:
- Contribute one and only one line to the group American Sentence by leaving a comment in this post that is an American Sentence.
- Please read through Paul’s site so you know what an American Sentence is before leaving one. Remember, one sentence, 17 syllables, direct observation.
- Do not leave any comment on your sentence or any comment that is not an American Sentence. If you have any questions, please use e-mail: info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org. We want to restrict comments on this post to the sentences so nothing else gets in their way.
- Don’t feel you have to leave a sentence that relates to the one above it. You can, but it’s not required. The sentences might be really interesting if they aren’t related but end up being read as a whole in the resulting poem.
- Be aware this might not work. Everything we do here in terms of collaborating is an experiment, and it’s OK if it doesn’t work out. These are just poems after all, and if we write one together that’s a dud, that’s totally cool. We’ll always have more group poems in the future.
OK, that about sums it up. Don’t forget to check out the Get Your Poem On post, which is where you can leave your permalink(s) to your contribution(s) this week. That post will go up Monday, Nov. 19 at midnight EST and will remain open for one week.
This is probably obvious, but please reserve permalinks until that time, but have fun leaving your American Sentence for the group poem on this post. Remember that you can post individually and collaboratively written American Sentences on the Get Your Poem On post. We won’t limit you to one contribution for the week.
That about does it. Now let’s all roll up our sleeves and start writing.
Poem On!
P.S. Remember that in the comments section here, type an American Sentence for the group poem. Then, in the comments section of the Nov. 19 “Get Your Poem On” post, leave a permalink to your own American Sentences contribution (the one on your own blog or on your blogs, if you worked on a contribution collaboratively).
P.P.S. Also, go take the Read Write Poll while you’re here. It’s at the top of the right sidebar.
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read write poem news- read write poem napowrimo anthology
June 20, 2010 | 1:36 pmThe Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology is still in production. Selection, placement, layout and copyediting are taking longer than anticipated. Thank you for your patience. I hope to have the piece completed in July. For those who have emailed asking if they can be included, the May 7 deadline for submission of work stands. Those who met that deadline will be included. Please check the post on this site listing who I received submissions from by that date. If you submitted your work by the May 7 deadline in accordance with our guidelines and your name is not listed, send an email to info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
- read write poem napowrimo anthology
May 5, 2010 | 3:09 pmRemember that Friday* is the deadline for submitting work to the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology. Check out the guidelines for submission in the main column (to the left). On May 8, we’ll post a news item listing everyone we’ve received work from. If you submitted work and your name is not on that list, please let us know. Thanks!
*I initially said “tomorrow,” but I meant to say “Friday.”
- napowrimo congratulations, and a reminder
April 24, 2010 | 12:05 pmIt’s the final week of the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge! Just 7 days left. With that, a reminder that Read Write Poem will culminate with the anthology featuring work from those who complete the challenge. A post with details for submitting to the anthology will be published May 1. Be sure you remove any information from the site that you want preserved — such as group content and personal messages. Those elements of the site will be removed May 1 as well. The main site will remain up as an archive.
- ‘underlife’ tour at january gill o’neil’s blog
April 20, 2010 | 8:11 pmJanuary Gill O’Neil’s virtual book tour has moved to her site and is underway now. Check out the lineup at Poet Mom.
 Archive for read write poem news »
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thank you and farewell As of May 1, 2010, Read Write Poem is no longer active.
In late May, an anthology featuring work from those who completed the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge will be published here and on issuu.com.
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