The Poetry Marathon

The half way point or finish line is here, depending on the length of your marathon. So congratulations half marathoners, you are almost there!

This prompt is to write about a world with alternative rules. To help inspire this prompt I have included one of my favorite poems by Jeffery McDaniels “The Quiet World”.

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

—The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel

Half Marathoners are entering the end stretch and Marathoners are approaching the half way point. Hopefully everyone is doing well and writing a lot of poems.

The prompt for hour eleven is to write a poem about someone, but to break the poem up into ten short numbered parts. Not all the parts have to be explicitly about the person, some can describe there dress and behavior, others can make more obscure references to their style of speech. The details are entirely up to you.

Write a poem focused on location. Instead of just focusing on describing that location (be it a house, a car, a lake, a mountain), try and frame it in terms of a story or an idea.

This hour your challenge is to write a poem about coffee . Although there is one tiny catch. You can never use the words coffee, beans, black, milky, cafe, or caffeine in this poem. You must convey the idea of coffee, of drinking it, without ever mentioning these words.

Obviously, this is a little tricky. If you want to write a first draft containing these words, go right ahead. But then you must edit them out.

The challenge of this prompt is to convey something without stating it. It is also fun to challenge one’s mind to use new and different language to describe something you encounter everyday, even if you don’t drink it yourself.

For this prompt, re-imagine a fairy tale or a myth. Take the general plot of one well known story and change one key component. It could be the gender of the characters, the ending, or just one of the important details contained within the story.

Title a poem as you would start a letter with Dear “insert name here”, then go on to write a poem to the person whose name you used. That person could be real or fully imagined. The contents of the poem could contain truth or fiction, but you must keep in mind the duel nature of this poem, it is a letter as well as a poem.

Use the following image to inspire your next poem.

Death is the theme of many poems and the preoccupation of many poets. Still after all this time poets are churning out new and intriguing approaches to death in poetry.

The goal of this prompt is to write a poem about death. The death you write about could be imagined, personified, personal, true, or false. The details of this prompt are entirely up to you.

Pick 5 of these 8 words and use them in your next poem.

Piano

Ferns

Lantern

Beech

Boots

Laughter

Jars

Clear

Read the following excerpt from Caryolyn Forche’s poem Elegy (from the book angel of History) and when that excerpt ends write your own poem from that  point.

Start by writing what you imagine the next line to be and go from there. When you finish the poem, remove the excerpt of Elegy or move it off to the side and put it in quotes, with her name and the name of the poem.

This is the excerpt:

The page opens to snow on a field: boot holed month, black hour/ the bottle in your coat half vodka half winter light./ To what and to whom does one say yes?