Listing

If you feel silenced by the COVID shutdown, consider taking a cue from poet Ada Limon.  In her recent poem “The End of Poetry” (New Yorker, April 27. 2020), she lists all the subjects she can no longer freely access as a poet these days.  Try making a list of the ways social distancing has changed your interactions at home, at work, or in public; then select one or two of the points on your list and expand on that.  The result may not be a poem, but it could get you writing again.

Settling in with Haiku

Haiku have a way of occurring out of the blue, but you may want to try a “haiku walk” in your neighborhood or in a local park to refresh your senses and mind to what’s going on around you — to nature “as it is,” minus the usual preoccupations.  In Japan, these walks are known as ginkoo (goo – singing, praising, poem-making; koo – walking).   You may want to take a notebook and pen along so that you can jot down a few key words about your experiences.  These may serve the basis of one or more haiku later.  If that’s not possible, list some of the memorable places you’ve visited.  What was the outstanding thing, event, or experience about your visit to each of them?  Compose a haiku about one or more of these places, incorporating a seasonal image, or possibly a reference to your feelings or state of mind at the time.

Expressing Another Person’s Struggle

“Write a poem about someone you know in a way that helps you to become more keenly aware of their struggle or difficulty.  Find sounds, rhythms, details and images to describe what this person is going through.  What does this person’s experience tell you about yourself?”  (from Poetic Medicine, The Healing Art of Poem Making, by John Fox, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam)

Haibun Writing Prompt

Select a haiku from one of the many anthologies, collections, or journals that are available, or one you’ve written yourself.  Jot down some observations about your choice, line by line.  These can be in the form of sentences or simply word associations at this point.  You should have at least one sentence or three or four word associations for each line.  Now, which of these responses to the haiku suggest further development?  Which of them is “magnetized,” in other words, which of them calls to you?  Select the first sentence or word that comes to mind and write about that, exploring both the said and the unsaid elements of your chosen haiku.  Repeat this process for each line.  Consider writing your work in longhand, in a dedicated journal, with haiku on one side and haibun on the opposite side.

Observing the Natural World

This prompt comes from Poetic Medicine, The Healing Art of Poem-Making, by John Fox (Tarcher/Putnam Books):  “Choose one aspect of the natural world which you feel has something to teach you.  It could be an animal, plant or mineral. What specific quality does it express that speaks to you about your own life?  Free write your impressions. Shape your favorites into a poem.”

Revision

Select an original poem that you’ve more or less forgotten about.  It should be one that you were never quite satisfied with but weren’t sure exactly why.  (Keep a copy of your original version for reference.)  Begin by rearranging the lines.  If your poem is in a fixed pattern such as quatrains, experiment by varying the pattern, possibly in couplets or free verse.  Play around with the line breaks, too, trying out new possibilities.  When you think you might have something, read it aloud to yourself.  Look for new openings to develop a thought, replace a word or image.  Change anything that doesn’t work until it does.  Now compare it to your original version.  Is the poem improved?  Why?  Why not?

On the subject of revision, it’s good to keep in mind Mary Oliver’s comment about “how many sweet and fine poems there are in the world — I mean, it is a help to remember that out of writing, and the rewriting, beauty is born…”  A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry, by Mary Oliver (A Harvest Original, Harcourt, Inc., 1994).

Don’t be too quick to toss out a revision that falls short.  You might want to come back to it another time.

Elegy

“Elegy helps us to examine our lives and make sense of loss…”  “Later, they remind us of where we were and how far we’ve come,” writes Robert McDowell in Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions (Free Press, 2008).  McDowell offers the following prompt for collective writing; it might work best in a small, established group where people know each other well:

“Work with any number of friends to write an elegy about the environment, which concerns all of us…”  “Alternate on composition of lines.  Mentor one another as you strive to create a memorable poem.”

Using Photos as Inspiration 

Using a photo from a newspaper or magazine, a family album, or a photo you took yourself, freewrite about the image and what it elicits for you.  You may want to set a time limit such as five or ten minutes.  When you’ve finished, select the most surprising observation or emotion that you discovered in this exercise and write a poem that addresses that.

Haiku Writing Prompt

Find a comfortable and safe place in nature to relax for ten minutes or more. Begin by jotting down a list of any sounds you may hear, whether natural or mechanical. Select one and then add to this an appropriate kigo or seasonal word that connotes the time of year. (Some examples of words for summer that appear in kigo dictionaries are dandelion, sunflower, lightning, summer dew, ice water, firefly, and so on.) Practice shaping the words you selected into phrases that form a viable haiku, whether in a 5-7-5 syllable format or something close to that. Limit the number of syllables to 17, more or less. Then go back and look at your lines again, making any changes or additions that clarify or add depth.

Writing Prompt: Gratitude

For this prompt, make a list of ten things you’re grateful for. They might be ordinary items around you — just-picked tomatoes, a set of salt and pepper shakers, or a glass of water, for instance, or they might be something more personal such as a family member, pet, or a prized possession. After completing your list, select the most promising subject and write continuously about that for at least five minutes, or more. When you’ve run out of steam, take a look at what you’ve come up with. Is there a poem there, or more than one poem? After fine-tuning your work, let it sit for several days. Then go back and have a second look. If it’s redundant, remove the deadwood. If it feels incomplete, you may want to weave in some additional details, or consider posing a question and answering it.