April is National Poetry Month Prompts

Writing Prompts by Kelli Russell Agodon – www.agodon.com
30 Writing Prompts for National Poetry Month
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1. Grab the closest book. Go to page 29. Write down 10 words that catch your eye. Use 7 of words
in a poem. For extra credit, have 4 of them appear at the end of a line.
2. Write about a poem about a superhero coming to your house and confronting you about
something. Somewhere in the poem, you have to state what your superpower is.
3. Write a poem that is really a love letter to an old flame. To make sure it’s doesn’t slip into sappy,
make sure one or more of these words are in the poem: dung beetle, politician, nuclear, exoskeleton,
oceanography, pompadour, toilet.
4. Make a list of seven words that have the same vowel sounds (like bee, treat, pepperoni, eagle) and use
them in a repetitive way throughout a poem.
5. Write a poem about a weird fact or several odd facts that you know.
6. Write a poem in two sections about two completely different things. Have the title link both items
today in a surprising way.
7. Find a favorite recipe. Now write a poem inspired or in the style of that recipe about a family
secret—yours or someone else’s.
8. Turn your paper so that it’s in the landscape position. Write a poem about God or the universe or
the horizon of the ocean with longer lines and see what happens.
9. Write a poem to your favorite letter of the alphabet.
10. Write a seven-line poem about one of the 7 Sins that only contains seven words in each of the lines.
11. Write a poem that begins with the last thing you can remember someone saying to you today or
yesterday. See if you can use that line two or three times.
12. Turn on the radio to any channel. Write a poem inspired by the first thing you hear (lyrics to a
song, a commercial, etc.)
13. Run around your house and grab 5 items that all begin with the same letter. Write a poem as an
ode to one of these items or that includes these items.
14. Think of the nicest thing someone ever said to you. Write a poem about a rainy day and something
flooding. End the poem with the good thing someone said.
15. Write a poem that describes the wallpaper on your computer or the image on the last postcard you
received.
Writing Prompts by Kelli Russell Agodon – www.agodon.com
16. Make a list of ten images of things you have seen in the last 24 hours. Use all of them in a poem.
17. Write a poem that includes these words: bamboozled, bloodlust, bibliography. Have the title include one
of these words: contradiction, constellation, cranberry.
18. Write a poem about something small that is only 5 lines long.
19. Close your eyes and listen to the sounds around you. If the sounds are peaceful, write a poem with
a violent word as the title. If the sounds are loud, write a poem with a kind word as the title.
20. Remove your shoes. Write a poem that celebrates your feet.
21. Write a poem with the opposite hand that you write with or if you type your poems on the
computer, use only one hand to type.
22. Write a poem that only had five syllables in each line. Give the poem a long title.
23. Write a poem where the last word of the first line begins with the first letter of your name, and the
last word of the second line begins with the second letter of your name until you have spelled out
your first and/or your last name.
24. Write a poem that has the word “love” hidden in it somewhere. You cannot use the word “love” by
itself, it must be hidden (such as in the word “glove” or in two words like “halo venom”).
25. Write a poem where a literary figure shows up and tells you something and/or gives you
something.
26. Write a poem to your future self, but do not say it is to your future self, address the poem to a
president or rockstar.
27. Write a poem made of ten metaphors.
28. Make a list of your favorite words today. Write a poem that uses 90% of the words you wrote
down.
29. Write a poem about a skyscraper. Now, rewrite the poem with the last line being your first.
30. Write a poem giving thanks to a poet or to writing a poem a day. Use a line from one of the poems
you wrote this month to either begin or end it.

Shoveling Snow with Buddha/The Hand

AGENDA:

View "The Hand"

The Hand

Mary Ruefle, 1952

The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom 
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that 
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie 
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question. 
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.

ACTIVITY:

 Shoveling Snow with Buddha
Write a poem about performing an activity (any activity) with a famous person fictional or real.

Shoveling Snow With Buddha - Poem by Billy Collins

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow. 

Billy Collins

Technical Terms Poem/Ekphrastic poem

AGENDA::

Complete technical term poem.

Workshop in small groups.

READ: 101  Selected poems

Ekphrastic poetry/Picture Postcards

Ekphrastic poetry

Ekphrasis: writing that comments upon another art form, for instance a poem about a photograph or a novel about a film.  Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a prime example of this type of writing, since the entire poem concerns the appearance and meaning of an ancient piece of pottery.

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape
    Of deities or mortals, or of both,
        In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
    What men or gods are these?  What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit?  What struggle to escape?
        What pipes and timbrels?  What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
    Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
    Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
    Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
        Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;
        She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
    For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
    Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
    For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
    For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
        For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
    That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
        A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
    To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
    And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
    Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
        Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
    Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
        Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape!  Fair attitude! with brede
    Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
    When old age shall this generation waste,
        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
    Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.





The Poet Speaks of Art

Introductory Remarks by Harry Rusche on Poets and Paintings

Ever since the Roman poet Horace set down in his Ars Poetica (c. 13 BC) the dictum "ut pictura poesis"--"as is painting, so is poetry"--the two arts have been wedded in the critical mind. Poets and painters sometimes turn to one another for inspiration, and the dialogue has been mutually beneficial. Painters and illustrators have often been inspired by literature, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The critic Richard Altick says, for example, that between 1760 and 1900 there existed around 2,300 paintings based on Shakespeare's plays alone. These Shakespeare paintings are only one-fifth of the 11,500 paintings on subjects and scenes from literature--and we are talking only about paintings done in England during those years! Sheer numbers indicate the influence of authors on artists. Listed in the section on additional readings are several books that discuss the relationships between art and literature.
The road runs both ways, of course, and writers turn as well to paintings for their inspiration. In the small anthology of poems and paintings exhibited here, some interesting questions arise as we contemplate the relationship between the poem and the picture. Is the poem simply an objective verbal description of the work of art, or does the poet make conclusions about what the painting means? Could you reconstruct the painting from the poem without actually seeing it? Why does the poet dwell on some features of the the painting and ignore other aspects of the picture? Do you agree with the meaning the poet "reads" in the painting, or do you think the writer misreads it or warps the scene depicted to personal ends?

Thirteen Ways/101 Poems

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird/Poem in Parts

AGENDA:

Go over Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

http://iws.punahou.edu/user/bschauble/ct/13ways.htm

http://fictionwritersreview.com/shoptalk/get-writing-thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird/

101 Selected Poems/ American Poets/TPCASTT

AGENDA:
QUIZ ON BEAN TREES

Go down to the library and get 100 Selected American Poets

Begin reading selections in class.

Work on TPCASTT strategy for poetry analysis.

Turn in work on missing assignments for marking period and update your portfolio.