Fun poetry prompts

View from Highway One, Big Sur, California

Getting back to my poetry workshop in Big Sur a couple to weeks ago, I’ll give you some fun prompts where we were asked to write poems using a list of prescribed words. We also discussed:

• Controlling image poem – where an image, such as a tree or a broom, is something for the readers to hang onto while the poem takes us for a ride.
• Long armed poem – scoops in a lot of information, goes on and on, and is tied together in the end – somehow.
• Leap poem – where the poet leaps into seemingly unrelated material and then ties it all together by asking a question or making a statement over and over. It’s also possible to write a leap poem by telling a story and then leaping into metaphor.
• Lyric poem – it has a song-like element that uses repetition of words and sounds, also asks a question or makes a statement over and over. Rhyme could definitely work here as well.
• Persona poem – a monologue in the voice of the character the poem is about. 

Here’s three lists of words:

1. feet, room, someone, stormy, vague, silence, nerves, glass, name of a plant, name of month, the phrase: “I have met them” or “speaking of.”
2. bond, racket, heaven, iron, refrain, forgive, briefcase, gallop, engine, proper, name of person or place, the phrase: “I don’t know” or “I know.” Also include a spell or incantation.
3. dowry, office, packet, sand, mourn, break, thrush, ritual, galaxy, barge, the phrase: “I was not a stranger.”

And my very rough draft of a long armed poem using the words in list 1, highlighted in yellow.

Stop and Go

On the drive up the coast

I pass through Vista del Mar

with the  Pacific Ocean

on my left.

This morning it looks like silver glass.

I get on the 405 chugging along

through the construction at Sunset

the Getty, Skirball, and the depths of

the San Fernando Valley.

It is alternating stop and go

with bursts of 80 mile an hour straight-aways.

My mind wanders, not paying enough

attention to my audio book,

Mary Coin, about that

iconic Okie lady photographed

by my favorite Dorothea Lange.

But this is fiction.

No one knows the real Mary

or even if her name was Mary.

And then when I need a breather

I can’t find a parking place

at my regular rest stop.

So I keep going

moving my feet about the floor

one pushing down on the pedal

the other pumping in and out

trying to soothe the vague pain

in my left calf.

I press my hands on the ceiling

one after the other

but my car has no room

for a full stretch.

Once I pass Santa Barbara

the hills are vast with mustard,

the sky stormy,

gray like those lingering at home

for the last few months.

I turn off the radio

and relish the silence

of driving alone and thinking

about getting to my healing place.

It will calm my nerves

after last week.

I had a blood clot ruled out.

That was lucky. If it was positive

I wouldn’t be here writing this.

The same day my husband had

carpel tunnel surgery,

the next, a seven-foot hole

that looked like a grave

dug in my garden.

And I served dinner Saturday night

for ten good friends.

We ate sushi, Tzatziki, chicken, swordfish

and my mother’s Peach Ping dessert

made from this season’s sweetest bounty.

We talked about six degrees of separation,

who do you know,

and what a small world this is

while we tried desperately

not to think of Margaret’s

recurring cancer,

her sad, scared eyes,

her thin body looking thinner yet

in all black

as we hope someone

somewhere will find

a miracle cure for her.

Yes, this is August.

I’m driving up to Big Sur

like I do every year.

It’s my time

to write some poems.

Speaking of,

this is one of them.

How about giving it a try yourself?