The Poetry Marathon

For hour nineteen write a sonnet.

Caesar Crossing the Rubicon by Wilhelm Trubner, is one of my favorite paintings. Unlike most paintings of titled Caesar Crossing the Rubicon does not feature an army led by Caesar, instead it is a painting of a dog eying food on a table. I have posted it below.

Your prompt is to write a poem with a stereotypical title for a poem or painting, but the poem itself does not comply with the expectations raised by the title.

For your seventeenth prompt I want you to write a poem about solitude. It could be a poem about solitude under normal circumstances or it could be a poem about extreme solitude, for example being a hermit, or the last person on a life boat.

Architecture figures into a lot of poets work. Stephen Dunn and a number of poets work comes to mind. For this prompt I want you to write a poem about a specific building. It can be in purely visual terms or it can use metaphorical language, or it can be part of a larger narrative.

Below I included two photos of the Brain for inspiration.The Brain is a studio in Seattle, Wa.

Write a lyrical poem that rhymes – it must not contain any narrative.

Write a poem from the third person perspective about something that happened to you personally.

Write a poem with no visual imagery in it whatsoever. Instead rely on your other 4 senses to pull the poem along.

Congratulations Half Marathoners you have completed your task!

12 poems in 12 hours is no easy feat.

If for some reason you feel the urge to continue on, you can join the full marathoners for the next 12 hours. If not, relax and reward yourself for all that hard work

If you completed the half marathon please send us an email (at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com) with your name, email address, and mailing address (for us to mail the certificate of completion to). There is no rush.

In the next week or so we will be in contact with you about the forthcoming anthology chapbooks. Only poets who completed the half and full marathons will be eligible for inclusion in the chapbook. All poets who are in the chapbook will get a complimentary copy shipped to them.

Thank you for writing so many poems in such a short time frame. We look forward to reading them once we recover.

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.