Regardless of the weather or place in the world, by the end of a long winter or start of [...]]]> by Dave Jarecki

Growing up in Pennsylvania, I remember mid-March as being a battle between cabin and spring fevers. Some years, the season’s last blizzard was coming; others, kids gathered at outdoor basketball hoops for two-on-two, double-elimination tournaments.

Regardless of the weather or place in the world, by the end of a long winter or start of a sudden spring, the sexually restless among us are done being cooped up. In many cases, two or more will go off to conjugate. A percentage of such excursions predictably leads to the creation of children. This explains why so many of my friends — not to mention their own kids — were born in December.

This act of pairing up, bedding down and making a third human is as bizarre and chance-driven as anything else that happens during our lives. Still, not too many people sit around and ponder the haphazard nature of getting it on.

Consider the fact that, before people can meet people, other people need to meet people just to create the people who will one day meet, fall down and sometimes make other people who will one day meet people. Follow the trail into the future and the line never ends. Head in reverse, you eventually arrive at the first meeting of seed and soil.

Who or what but a poet can sit around and give thought to this topic, let alone write about it?

And with that, my lovers and friends, I beseech you. Go forth with this notion. Or go back. Multiply with your words.

Dave Jarecki writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction from his home in Portland, Ore. Read and listen to his work, as well as the work of guest writers, at DaveJarecki.com.

Does the progression of time seem frozen, or does it march on? What is the significance of the prone figure in the foreground? Is he/she merely resting as they journey forward, or is their journey over? Is the person [...]]]> by Read Write Poem

What do you see in this week’s Read Write (Image) Prompt?

Does the progression of time seem frozen, or does it march on? What is the significance of the prone figure in the foreground? Is he/she merely resting as they journey forward, or is their journey over? Is the person in the distance approaching, walking or running away, or observing the scene from afar?

When you look at the image, what does it spark in your mind about the passage of time? What does it mean to you emotionally? Experientially? Physically?

Leave any initial thoughts that you might have about this prompt in the comments section of this post, then leave links to your work next Thursday in the comments section of the Get Your Poem On post.

Charon by H.Koppdelaney

(Note: If you include this photo in your post along with your poem, make sure you credit the artist.)

The lists: What do you believe (or not believe)? You are going to make four lists (or fewer if you believe in doing your own thing):

#1. Make a [...]]]> by Carolee Sherwood

This Read Write Prompt is brought to you in two easy steps: (1) make lists and (2) turn one or more of those lists into a poem.

The lists: What do you believe (or not believe)?
You are going to make four lists (or fewer if you believe in doing your own thing):

#1. Make a list of 10 things you believe or believe in.

#2. Pick one thing on that list and identify 10 concrete examples. Be creative with this part of the list-making. If you choose to elaborate on a belief about something intangible (love, God, magic, etc.), connect everyday occurrences to your belief: a silver bucket that overflows with rain water, strangers sitting side-by-side on a bench, what a tree does when it emerges from winter.

#3. Make a list of 10 things you don’t believe or believe in.

#4. Pick one thing from this list to describe with 10 concrete examples (the reasons why you don’t believe, the evidence against something).

The poem
You’re done jumping through hoops. This part is all you! Use your lists to inspire a poem. It can be a list-poem if you’re not tired of hearing the word list (list, list, list, list!), but it doesn’t have to be. Your lists (lists, lists, lists, lists!) may have inspired a tangent. If so, feel free to follow it. You may comprise your poem from bits of all four lists or you may hone in on one list or one list item.

You may even abandon the theme — What do you believe? — when you write your poem. The goal of starting with this theme is that you’ll strike upon something at your core, something fundamental to who you are in the world. Once you’ve found it, or a piece of it, run with it! Run, poets! Run!

Enjoy this week’s prompt, and come back next Thursday where you can leave a link or a poem in the comments to our Get Your Poem On post.

Carolee Sherwood is a poet and artist who lives in Upstate New York. She is co-editor of Ouroboros Review, mother of three boys and a veteran Read Write Poem columnist. You can find her rambling about the creative life at Carolee Sherwood and drafting poems at I Am Maureen.

To write to this prompt, pick as many (or few) of these words as you want and [...]]]> by Deb Scott

This week’s words came from a bunch of folks who have not yet been featured word-givers: Pauline, Pamela, Natalya, Melanie B, Mark, Marian V, Marian M, Jessica, J Clark, Elizabeth and Alan all donated to the cause!

To write to this prompt, pick as many (or few) of these words as you want and write a poem using them. (Yes, you may change tense! And if these words don’t suit you, pick your own. Just write a poem.) If you want to share some of your favorite words for an upcoming Read Write (Word) Prompt, head on over to the Wordle Word Bank, in the member site and contribute in our “General Words” forum or leave them on the group wire. (Whatever is easier for you.)

Hope this week’s prompt gets you going. Come back next Thursday where you can leave a link or a poem in the comments to our Get Your Poem On post.

Deb Scott is a community director for Read Write Poem and co-manages the Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour. She has to admit that making Wordle prompts is nearly as much fun as writing to them. Deb blogs at Stoney Moss.

Mary Biddinger heads to the spa

Routine can be a good thing, in many situations. However, writers often get the sense that they are drafting the same poem over and over again, in different variations, and have [...]]]> by Mary Biddinger

Mary Biddinger heads to the spa

Most importantly, have fun with your poem, and try to surprise yourself with the decisions you make.

Routine can be a good thing, in many situations. However, writers often get the sense that they are drafting the same poem over and over again, in different variations, and have no way to break out of the pattern. If you think you may be one of these poets, indulge in the spa experience below. These procedures are bound to help free your writing circuits of excess, thereby allowing room for new invention.

Part I: The dietary analysis
Print off one copy of each of your newest poems. Make it a significant chunk of no fewer than eight, but perhaps no more than 20 poems. Locate a clear, somewhat clean floor that contains no pets or pedestrians. Spread the poems out in front of you, and try your best to read them simultaneously. With colored pens or highlighters, underline repeated words or stylistic/craft elements that appear in numerous poems. If you are feeling particularly ambitious, try to categorize poems in stacks based on shared tendencies (i.e., a stack of bird poems, a pile of poems in couplets, a handful of poems that use questions).

Part II: The mud bath
Please follow the following steps in order to fully benefit from the therapeutic properties of this exercise:

1. Identify five words that you use often in your writing, based on the research undertaken in the dietary analysis.
2. List the settings found in your poems, if place is an element of your work.
3. Note the point of view used most frequently in your writing.
4. Create a list of stylistic decisions — both good and questionable — that you make in many of your poems. (Use of the same stanza length or form, writing an unnecessary, throat-clearing first stanza, having a random, disconnected title, ending a poem too soon, and so on.)
5. Discern whether your poems have a primarily lyric sensibility, or a narrative approach, or a combination of both (and if so, measure the proportions).

Part III: The whirlpool
Cleanse yourself of all the remnants of the mud bath, but hang on to your notes.

Write a poem that uses:

• None of the five words that most frequently appear in your work.
• A setting that you have never used before, or that you haven’t used lately.
• A point of view that departs from your usual tendencies.
• None, or very few, of your usual stylistic decisions. If you usually have a brief title, try a long one.
• If you always write in one long stanza, try dividing the poem into smaller groupings.
• If you often write lyric poems, try a stronger narrative, and vice versa.

Bonus
Do something in the poem that “puts you outside your comfort zone.” Interpret that however you would like.

If you do not have the time or inclination to indulge in the complete spa package, consider a jump into the whirlpool minus the preliminary stages, using your intuition in place of the research. Most importantly, have fun with your poem, and try to surprise yourself with the decisions you make. Best wishes for a happy, healthy new year of poetry.

Mary Biddinger is the author of Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007) and the chapbook Saint Monica (forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, The Collagist, Copper Nickel, Diode, Gulf Coast, Passages North and many other journals. She is the editor of the Akron Series in Poetry, co-editor-in-chief of Barn Owl Review and director of the NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She teaches at The University of Akron and blogs at Wordcage.

spraying the colors of a streetfighter’s face onto the narrative wallpaper of a boy’s bedroom

The fragment comes from the poem “The Homeowner’s Prayer,” in David Berman’s collection, Actual Air (Open City Books, 1999). I’ve been addicted to this book since 2001, gave my copy [...]]]> by Dave Jarecki

Another Pennsylvania sunset
backed down the local mountain

spraying the colors of a streetfighter’s face
onto the narrative wallpaper of a boy’s bedroom

The fragment comes from the poem “The Homeowner’s Prayer,” in David Berman’s collection, Actual Air (Open City Books, 1999). I’ve been addicted to this book since 2001, gave my copy away to a friend, tried living without it for a short time, then had to go get a new copy.

Reading “The Homeowner’s Prayer” recently, I found myself being pulled into the scene of the boy in the bedroom. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in Pennsylvania and can remember the way the sunset would inject light into my western-facing windows.

This week, I encourage you to find the “narrative wallpaper” that resides in your home, apartment, memory, etc. Maybe you’re the child in the bedroom watching stories burn in the sun. Perhaps you can wander into a remembered or even fictional place and let the poem jump off from there. Or maybe you’ll take this fragment of Berman’s poem and run with it.

Whatever you do, have fun stripping and repapering the walls.

Dave Jarecki writes poetry, prose and strategic communications from his home office in Portland, Ore. Read and listen to his work, as well as the work of guest writers, at DaveJarecki.com.

This image appeals to me because of its enigmatic nature. In terms of writing, you might want to stay with the questions [...]]]> by Nathan Moore

What is going on in this photo? Why is the figure staring at a three-legged chair? Why is the figure wearing a hood? What is keeping the chair from falling down?

This image appeals to me because of its enigmatic nature. In terms of writing, you might want to stay with the questions the scene elicits, linger over them, hesitate before rushing to an answer.

Or, as is often the case when faced with an enigma, you might start to symbolize. Is this is picture about facing a problem, contemplating mystery, the incomplete and frail work of human labor in the face of nature’s grandeur?

Offer ideas about what you see here in the comments section of this post. Next Thursday, leave a link to what you wrote in the comments section of the Get Your Poem On post.

December 21, 2007 #25, by Sepulture {Mood Disorder}

(Note: If you include this photo in your post along with your poem, make sure you credit the artist.)

Nathan Moore is community director and columnist for Read Write Poem. In his spare time, he plays with his children and with fire. Never at the same time. He blogs at Exhaust Fumes and French Fries.

What the heck is that, you ask? Transliteration is the process of selecting a text in a [...]]]> by Dana Guthrie Martin

I am going to let you in on a little secret about my own writing process this week: The prompt I am about to share is one of my favorite ways to write. It’s called transliteration.

What the heck is that, you ask? Transliteration is the process of selecting a text in a language you don’t know and then doing a faux translation of the work based on what you think the words mean. The key is not knowing the language you are translating from so that your faux translation won’t be sullied by knowing what the words actually mean.

Some people get very scientific with their transliterations, looking at letter groupings and repeated words, and trying to make sure the words they are creating from the original language match up with those groups and repetitions. For example, a word like the Old English “wrecen” would be translated as the same word wherever it appears in the text being transliterated.

That’s a great approach, and I applaud anyone who attempts such a degree of accuracy. I am, however, far less scientific with my approach. What I tend to do is read a word or a group of words and think about the effect they have on me. What do those letter combinations feel like in my mouth? If I were coming up with words in English based on the way those strange words feel when I say them, what would those words be?

Another way I transliterate is to make the foreign words into a similar-looking or similar-sounding English counterpart. I know that’s a bit of a stretch in terms of transliterating, but it can yield interesting results. For example, one of my poems, “Old Ladies,” opens with the following line:

We hate the gardenias        in the garden.

That line is a transliteration of the following Beowulf line:

Hwæt we Gar-Dena        in gear-dagum.

You can see the connection between the two.

If you feel transliterating an entire poem is too daunting, no worries! Simply transliterate a few phrases and see how you might work them into your poem. “Old Ladies” works in that manner. I think that, in the end, about half the poem was based on transliteration, and the other half was what I needed to write to create the connections and context I felt the poem needed.

Stumped about where to find poems in a language you don’t know? I’ve already revealed one source — texts written in Old English. Why not try your hand at transliterating sections of Beowulf? It’s worked well for me as a source text. You could also transliterate Latin or Greek poetry if you don’t know those languages, or from any contemporary language you don’t know. Why not look at collections in bilingual editions of poetry you own or that are available at your local bookstore or library?

Another great way to create source texts is to take a poem — yours or someone else’s — and drop it into an online translator. The translator will churn out a terrible translation of the poem in whatever language you select. Since this is an exercise in transliteration, not translation, it doesn’t matter if your source material is translated well. You just need something in a foreign language to get you started.

That about covers it. I can answer any questions in the comments section of the post, and feel free to share ideas for source material and additional takes on ways to transliterate. I can’t wait to hear what you all come up with.

Dana Guthrie Martin is the founder of Read Write Poem. She resolves to focus on process and craft in 2010, both in terms of poetry and classical music. She also resolves to join a flute choir and to dream only in music and verse.

To write to this prompt, pick as many (or [...]]]> by Deb Scott

This week’s words were offered up by community members Joanne Johns and Neil Reid. In addition to some of the words they left in our Wordle Word Bank, I purloined an extra word from each of their blogs, grabbing just one from their last post.

To write to this prompt, pick as many (or few) of these words as you want and write a poem using them. (And if these words don’t suit you, pick your own. Just write a poem.) If you want to share some of your favorite words for an upcoming Read Write (Word) Prompt, head on over to the Wordle Word Bank, in the member site and contribute in our “General Words” forum. (Do it!)

Enjoy this week’s words, no matter whose you chose.

Deb Scott is a community director for Read Write Poem. She also co-manages the Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour. In past lives she used to borrow her friends clothes all the time. She doesn’t do that anymore, but she does steal her husband’s dessert on occasion. Deb blogs at Stoney Moss.

Matthew Zapruder's 'Mechanical' Prompt

The Elegant Trogon is a type of bird. I wrote this poem as I often do, using a process: That is, I begin with a task that [...]]]> by Matthew Zapruder

Directors’ Note: This week’s Read Write Prompt is based on Matthew Zapruder’s poem, “The Elegant Trogon.”

Matthew Zapruder's 'Mechanical' Prompt

I have certain nearly religious beliefs about language.

The Elegant Trogon is a type of bird. I wrote this poem as I often do, using a process: That is, I begin with a task that is purely mechanical, designed to produce words or phrases that must be used in the poem. After I do the process and generate the “raw material,” I come up with a subject or situation along which I can string those words in a way that feels natural and authentic.

I really like the simultaneous centripetal and centrifugal feelings of these words that want to go in different directions, but also somehow always seem to in the end belong together. I have certain nearly religious beliefs about language: that it expresses the collective historical intelligence of human beings, that it is the accumulated wisdom of all language users. Therefore I also have a great faith that my little humanity, plus the great wisdom of language, in the right combination and with the right degree of humility and attention on my part, will result in poems.

In “The Elegant Trogon,” I began in a certain place in the dictionary, and chose words moving backwards through the book until I reached another specified point (this process is taken directly from the one Matthea Harvey invented to create the stunning series “Terror of the Future” and “The Future of Terror” in her most recent book, Modern Life). I required myself to use the words in the order I found them. To be honest, I can’t remember what the exact original starting and ending words were, but along the way I came across the words trogon, tooth, supinate, spectacles, special effects, spadefoot, rictus, quantum, oral cavity, object lessons, moral law, loggerheads, lodestone, locked.

I had no idea what I was going to write the poem “about.” I just tried to pick words that seemed interesting and had a lot of different possibility but also specificity. Once I looked up the first word, “trogon,” and saw that there was a type called Elegant, I began to build something, and to both use and be moved around by the subsequent words I had chosen.

This is a not uncommon way for me to write poems, but it’s not the only way I write them. Usually I just sit down in the morning — either at a desk if I’m not traveling, or at a café, hopefully in a sunny spot where there is some but not too much conversation and music, and see what starts to happen.

This week, try writing a poem using the mechanical process outlined above and see where it takes you.

Matthew Zapruder is the author of two collections of poetry: American Linden and The Pajamaist, as well as co-translator from Romanian, along with historian Radu Ioanid, of Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems of Eugen Jebeleanu. His poems, essays and translations have appeared in many publications, including The Boston Review, Fence, Alaska Quarterly Review, Open City, Bomb, Harvard Review, Paris Review, The New Yorker and The New Republic. His third book of poems, Come On All You Ghosts, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2010. He lives in San Francisco, works as an editor for Wave Books, and teaches in the low residency MFA program at UC Riverside-Palm Desert. More information is available at matthewzapruder.wordpress.com.

Is your eye drawn to the details of the physical space? Does graffiti anger or inspire you? Are you curious about the dilapidated state of the building? What happened? What takes [...]]]> by Andre Tan

What does the brilliant burst of light in this week’s Read Write (Image) Prompt evoke in you? Hope? Joy? A fear of aliens?

Is your eye drawn to the details of the physical space? Does graffiti anger or inspire you? Are you curious about the dilapidated state of the building? What happened? What takes place in the room now or in the future? Who is or has been there?

Perhaps the photo sparks something less literal in your mind.

As writers and artists, many of us wonder what kind of positive effect our work can make on the world. At the height of this holiday season, we’d like to offer an easy way for the Read Write Poem community to make a modest difference, through poetry, in the lives of those in need.

For every poem written in response to this prompt, the Read Write Poem directors will donate one food item (or its cash equivalent, up to a total of $150) to Hopelink, an organization that supports the homeless, low-income families, the elderly and people with disabilities in the Seattle area.

Leave any initial thoughts that you might have about this prompt in the comments section of this post, then leave links to your work next Thursday in the comments section of the Get Your Poem On post.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Shotgun Blast by Shane Gorski

(Note: If you include this photo in your post along with your poem, make sure you credit the artist.)

Andre Tan is Read Write Poem’s technology director. Whenever the right side of his brain subdues the left side with an oversized ACME mallet, he can be found creatively frolicking with a motley assortment of poets, filmmakers, actors and other artists.

Some poets use this technique more than others, and a [...]]]> by community member Rethabile Masilo

Repetition is a useful tool. Perhaps one of the finest. Anyone who wishes to make a memorable point uses repetition, be they poet, scholar or person on the street. As poets, we repeat everything and anything: sounds, words, sentences, rhythms and/or ideas.

Some poets use this technique more than others, and a poem I read recently reminded me just how good it can all get. That poem was Albert Goldbarth’s “Marble-Sized Song,” in which he repeats an idea. The overall effect is pleasantly disturbing, like a rubber hammer thumping the same thumb over and over. The effect penetrates, the message reaches in.

Does she love you? She says yes, but really
how do you know unless you undress that easy assertion

It is that very undressing that never leaves. In every possible way, the reader is reminded to take off covers, to get at some underlying truth, something sorely needed and therefore peeled, denuded, uncovered.

A single word, like a lilting rhyme, does the trick as well, as evidenced in Rustum Kozain’s “Kingdom of Rain.” Kozain is one of my favorite poets, and I suggest you read his work at Poetry International and listen to him read it at the same time. He says in the second verse:

At the highest point of the pass
we stop to eat, and he, my father,
this strict and angry, fearsome father,
my father whom I love and his dark face,
he pries open a universe that strangely
he makes ours, that is no longer mine:
a wily old grey baboon, well-hid
against salt-and-pepper rock, eyeing us;
some impossibly magnificent bird of prey
rarely seen, racing to its nest as the weather turns.
And we are up there close I think
to my father’s God, the wind howling
and cloud rushing over us, awed
and small in that big car swaying in the gale.

Dorianne Laux also uses repetition with great expertise, as in “Dog Moon,” a poem in which she describes the moon’s appearance in many different ways. Laux repeatedly depicts the object. Each picture is as forceful as the next, each true about the object under her microscope: It’s “as big as a kitchen clock,” a “manhole cover sunk in the boulevard of night,” a “monocle on a chain,” a “frozen pond lifted and thrown like a discus onto the sky,” etc.

To the prompt for this week: Look through your archive and pick up a poem that doesn’t seem to work. You might have to look over a few. Settle on one that allows you to either do an action repeatedly in different words (as Goldbarth does, going in), or elevate a character or object by repeating the same word(s) (as Kozain does about his father), or discuss something by means of as many appropriate figures of speech as allowable (as Laux and her moon).

If you feel gutsy, go ahead and write a new poem. If you feel gutsier, write three poems, each based on one of the techniques above.

Rethabile Masilo is the father of two. He enjoys writing, reading, playing soccer and cooking. His poems have previously appeared in Orbis, Kintespace, Canopic Jar, Poetry Friends and Ascent Aspirations and are forthcoming in The Mom Egg. His website is Poéfrika.

Nick Carbó on 'The Sex Poem'

The topic for this week’s Read Write Prompt is: the sex poem.

The example directly below is rather mundane in its artistry and can be compared to what is being shown on the internet everyday. Yes, there is nudity, there is love, and [...]]]> by Nick Carbó

Nick Carbó on 'The Sex Poem'

No cars and sex, overdone!

The topic for this week’s Read Write Prompt is: the sex poem.

The example directly below is rather mundane in its artistry and can be compared to what is being shown on the internet everyday. Yes, there is nudity, there is love, and there is some touching. But the words do not transcend the act(s) and the reader is left with a handful of crushed petals.

Beautiful Flower

Your petals open like a flower
and I think of you by the hour.
How I long to pull back each bare petal
to reach the pollen inside.
Let me graze against your silk,
breathe your sweetness in like air,
for oxygen is not enough
once one inhales the scent of love.

How does one make an intimate, powerful act/event into a poem that can give the reader the “big O,” or any “O?”

One solution would be to use more metaphors. Simple simile is fine as long as you don’t bring it down to the level of like and ass. But what if you can make that ass tremble like an old steam paddle boat on the Mississippi on a half moon night? More interesting. That ass is not just an ass anymore; it is infused with Southern charm, the sound of water whirling, a steam boat whistle, and the hot air making beads of sweat on your back.

Another tactic would be to use the language or specific terminology of an activity completely unrelated to sex, and apply those words to the act itself. The permutations of this clash of different worlds creates a tension that can be erotic, comic or just plain absurd. No cars and sex, overdone! How about your mortgage application? Instructions on how to use your iPhone? Lots of unique finger movements right there.

In the following poem, I use the language of a grammar text to substitute parts of the body. They may be boring structures of a sentence but you clearly recognize the parts of the body.

Grammarotics
by Nick Carbó

The angle of delight is best
achieved while rubbing

the pluperfect button
in tiny syllabic circles

while the glottal stop needs
firm accentual strokes

for copulative conjunction
to occur. The placement

of the preterite tense
at the entrance

of a lubricated sentence
assures the inevitable

apostophe. However,
if the apostrophe occurs

prematurely the result
is then a dangling

modifier, also
commonly known as

a pathetic fallacy.

Now why don’t you give the sex poem a try? Make it good. Leave our mouths gaping in a giant O.

Nick Carbó is the author of four books of poetry, the latest just published this year: Chinese, Japanese, What are These? (Pecan Grove Press). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Asian American Literary Review and many others.

The first poem shared in this piece was written by Read Write Poem staff to illustrate how not to write a sex poem. The second poem is shared with permission from the author. Contact Nick Carbó before using or reproducing the piece.

Directors’ Note: What we perhaps love most about this post is the fact that Carbó’s photo came in with the image title “nick carbó beef.”

When I think of the pomegranate, I imagine the myth of Persephone and her mistake of eating its seeds while she was in [...]]]> by Dana Guthrie Martin

We talked about food in last week’s prompt, but we’re not done with food yet. This week’s Read Write (Image) Prompt is all about one food in particular: the pomegranate.

When I think of the pomegranate, I imagine the myth of Persephone and her mistake of eating its seeds while she was in the underworld with Hades. This mistake — if you can call it that, since she was bound to give over to the temptation of eating such an alluring fruit — is what led her to spend every winter thereafter with Hades in the underworld, returning to the world each spring.

Looking at the photo below, you can see why Persephone was tempted. What does the pomegranate make you think of? Imagine cutting into one, its more than 600 seeds clinging to its interior. Imagine coaxing them out with your fingers or the tip of your knife.

Or just stare at this image and let it take you wherever it takes you. The pomegranate will lead you somewhere. You won’t be able to resist its pull.

Tell us your ideas about how to respond to the photo in the comments section of this post.

And next Thursday in the comments section of the Get Your Poem On post, leave links to what you’ve written.

Pomegranate, by Nasos3

(Note: If you include this photo in your post along with your poem, make sure you credit the artist.)

Dana Guthrie Martin is the founder of Read Write Poem. She writes things and stuff. Most of the time, her things and stuff happen to be poetry, or at least they call themselves poetry. She has a robot named Feldman. He’s writing a book of poems.

This week, let’s not just explore the taste and texture of food, but the associations we have about a particular [...]]]> by Deb Scott

I was discussing food associations with a writer not long ago, about how she will always pair a certain food tasted for the very first time (she was very young) with her father’s funeral.

This week, let’s not just explore the taste and texture of food, but the associations we have about a particular food or dish. Any family gathering is ripe with opportunity: funerals, birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries. Any meeting where people you intimately know are munching, nibbling or feasting will do. Perhaps it’s the yearly occasion with a prescribed menu, and the sour-cream Jello mold, frightening in its vivid greenness that a grandmother insists you love. Perhaps it’s the first time you went to a ball game or the circus and tasted cotton candy, along with an odd smell (identified much later in life as alcohol) on your uncle’s breath.

Jot down five or six old or childhood memories, ones where you might have been confused or awed by the people or the circumstances. Recover or rediscover what was served as refreshment, nourishment. Let the people, place and food stuffs speak. Give voice to those particulars and let them take the point of view of the poem.

Still stuck? You might try a list poem or write a recipe and include the physical surroundings and any people required to support the scene, but make food the focus. Let it paint or point to the discoveries you made as you explored.

If you would like to take a different approach, one not so keenly tied to the experience of food but to food as an object in and of itself, check out the prompt Jill wrote in March about food.

Last but not least, here are a few poems for your reading pleasure:

• “Food” by Brenda Hillman
• “Everything Good between Men and Women” by C. D. Wright
• “Eating Together” by Kim Addonizio

Come back next week and share your experiences with this week’s poetry prompt in Thursday’s Get Your Poem On post, whether they involve food or not.

Deb Scott is community and news director for Read Write Poem. She is also co-managing the Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour. In her other life she loves to cook and eat, and nibbles words to the bone. She blogs at Stoney Moss.

Did the people have a violent argument? Did someone simply drop a glass accidentally and leave to get a broom? What was said?

We’re all well trained by movies, [...]]]> by Andre Tan

Two people sit at a table. They have a discussion. One person walks out of the room. Shards of a broken glass lie on the floor.

Did the people have a violent argument? Did someone simply drop a glass accidentally and leave to get a broom? What was said?

We’re all well trained by movies, television, literature and arguably our own perceptions of daily life to fill in the missing information and create a linear sequence of events in our minds that tells a story. But what if we force ourselves to ask a different set of questions that focuses less on the action and more on the setting and circumstances?

Who are the people and what do they feel about one another? Are they lovers? Mother and child? Was the glass a gift from a beloved relative who passed away earlier that month? That day? Was it broken before they entered the room?

The answers don’t provide us with a play-by-play recounting of what happened, but they do imbue the scene with emotion, weight and tension.

This week, write a poem that tells a narrowly focused story — a “scene” — without telling the story. Instead, convey the essence of the scene through your description of the world in which it takes place and the “characters” (who don’t have to be human or even “alive”) that inhabit it. (One clarification – The scenario above is only meant to be an example. Your scene can be about anything.)

Some elements (borrowed from the acting realm) to consider, but not necessarily to directly incorporate into your piece, are:

• Environment – Where is the scene taking place? What is the location like physically? Is there any history (emotional or otherwise) associated with the setting?
• Relationships – What is the background and history of your “characters”? If there is more than one, who or what are they to one another? What prior events have they experienced individually or together?
• Given Circumstances – What just happened? What events lead up to this moment? Did something important happen to one or more of the characters or between them? Did someone just learn something?
• Essential Conflict – What is the central conflict at the heart of the scene? What is the struggle? This “conflict” doesn’t have to be literal or overt. It’s simply what you identify as the overarching tension of the piece (e.g., “He loves her, but she hates him” or even the perennial question, “coffee or tea?”).

Feel free to share how you might approach this challenge in the comments and leave links to your work in next week’s Get Your Poem On post.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Andre Tan is Read Write Poem’s technology director. Whenever the right side of his brain subdues the left side with an oversized ACME mallet, he can be found creatively frolicking with a motley assortment of poets, filmmakers, actors and other artists.

Do you have memories of being at a crowded fair when you were a child (or even as an adult)? Why not write about what this image conjures? Are you afraid of heights or of moving too fast? (I personally am [...]]]> by Dana Guthrie Martin

Whee! Whee! This week’s Read Write (Image) Prompt is full of movement.

Do you have memories of being at a crowded fair when you were a child (or even as an adult)? Why not write about what this image conjures? Are you afraid of heights or of moving too fast? (I personally am afraid of both.) You could enter into the image by thinking about heights or velocity. Do the movements of these objects remind you of anything else — giant wheels, UFOs, a mushroom cloud? The possibilities, as always, are limitless.

We just want you to write, so write, already!

Leave your ideas about how to respond to the photo in the comments section of this post, then leave links to your work next Thursday in the comments section of the Get Your Poem On post.

Fair Fireworks, by auburnnewyork

(Note: If you include this photo in your post along with your poem, make sure you credit the artist.)

Dana Guthrie Martin is the founder of Read Write Poem. She writes things and stuff. Most of the time, her things and stuff happen to be poetry, or at least they call themselves poetry. She has a robot named Feldman. He’s writing a book of poems.

The idea is to choose some text [...]]]> by Nathan Moore

This week we’ll have some chance encounters or, more accurately, encounters with chance by using the cut-up technique. First created by Tristan Tzara in the 1920s and used later by William S. Burroughs, the cut-up lets us open our work to randomness and chance in interesting ways.

The idea is to choose some text — a poem, a newspaper article, a memo from your supervisor — cut out each word, drop the words into a container, shake the container vigorously, then write down each word as you draw it from the container.

You can then decide if what you have is a finished poem or a rough draft. You might clean it up a little, arrange line breaks, cut some words or add transitions. You might decide that what you have is just right.

Sometimes we need to relax the reins a little, let language speak through us. The idea is that when we give up control and let chance take over we open up possibility, we create situations in which language can surprise us.

Get your scissors and have some fun! Questions or remarks? use the comments section of this post. Leave a link to what you come up with next Thursday on the Get Your Poem On post.

Nathan Moore is community director and a columnist for Read Write Poem. In his spare time, he plays with his children and with fire. Never at the same time. He blogs at Exhaust Fumes and French Fries.

Matthew Hittinger Gives Us the Mash-Up

If you listen to dance music you know all about the mash-up: two or more songs thrown together by a DJ, sometimes taking the vocal track of one song and throwing [...]]]> by Matthew Hittinger

Matthew Hittinger Gives Us the Mash-Up

“My favorite result is the tension of having two voices speaking back and forth to each other.”

If you listen to dance music you know all about the mash-up: two or more songs thrown together by a DJ, sometimes taking the vocal track of one song and throwing it over the rhythm of another. In the cleverest of mash-ups, a DJ will take songs that somehow relate to each other lyrically and blend them together, sometimes in amusing ways, sometimes in fierce ways, sometimes in poignant ways (see DJ Earworm’s work, or on Madonna’s recent tour how she mashed her hit “Rain” with the Eurythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again”).

I’ve found in my own work, when I have two or three poem drafts that seem to be speaking to each other but none of which seem to be able to stand on their own as a fully formed poem yet, that “mashing them up” often creates surprising results. My favorite result is the tension of having two voices speaking back and forth to each other, which I sometimes indicate through italics or by giving the “mashed-in” poem its own spatial logic on the page.

So here’s an exercise for you: Take two poems that you’re not totally satisfied with and try mashing them together. That might mean alternating lines from one with the other, italicizing the one and having it break in throughout the course of the other so that it appears as if two voices are speaking, or simply taking your favorite lines from each and recombining them in ways that might startle you into an altogether new poem.

I have included a couple of examples of my own poems that use this technique. The first is a mashed-up poem titled “Skin Game,” and the second is one titled “The Alchemists Dissolve and Coagulate.”

The first example is a true mash-up, in which I took two poems and put them together to create the resulting, third piece (examples linked as PDFs). The two poems I mashed were “Skin Game” and “Skin Shift.” The final product can be seen here.

The second example, “The Alchemists Dissolve and Coagulate,” is not so much a mash-up of two poems but a mash-up of two different types of language: the poem’s story on one side and this juxtaposed list of a different kind of language that gives some sonic and semantic texture. The poem on the left-hand side came first and it always seemed to be asking for more. So I did some research and found these words really beautiful and wanted to somehow weave them in.

“Skin Game” and “The Alchemists Dissolve and Coagulate” are two distinct approaches to the prompt — the first mashing two drafts together and the second mashing a draft with found language. There are many other ways to approach this prompt as well.

Good luck with your pieces, and mash away!

Matthew Hittinger is the author of the chapbooks Pear Slip, winner of the 2006 Spire Press Chapbook Award, Narcissus Resists (GOSS183/MiPOesias, 2009) and Platos de Sal (Seven Kitchens Press, 2009). Shortlisted for the National Poetry Series, the New Issues Poetry Prize, the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize, and twice for the Walt Whitman Award, Hittinger’s honors include a Hopwood Award and The Helen S. and John Wagner Prize from the University of Michigan, the Kay Deeter Award from the journal Fine Madness, and three Pushcart nominations. His work has appeared in many journals, on Verse Daily and in the anthology Best New Poets 2005. Matthew lives and works in New York City.

All poems included in this post are unpublished and shared with permission from the author. Contact Matthew Hittinger before using or reproducing the poems shared in this post.