Poetry Exercise # 8

Ingredients:

1. One regret

2. A natural disaster

3. One perfect thing.


The first line of your poem is going to be #2. Next, imagine/write as if #1 had never happened.
Let the poem unfold during the regret's undoing. This is a literary moonwalk, my friend. What difference would it have made, had it never been made? Who would be born or not born? Who would you have loved or hated instead? Which house would have burned down, which house would have stayed built or not built? Which house would have the most or least ghosts? Do you understand I don't mean a literal house? What perfect thing would have lost its perfection if there was nothing to regret?

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(This exercise was inspired by Bob Hicok's poem "American History.")

Imagery Exercise (my one of many)

The following exercise is about seven years old. I developed it while teaching poetry at Bellevue Hospital’s on-site high school. I’ve since given this exercise
to slam team members and/or grown-ups and every time, unlike my students, these folks get hung up on part two of this exercise. They just can’t hang. Too many doors inside them closed. But let's give it a whirl:


IMAGERY EXERCISE:

Create three columns on a piece of paper (or Excel spreadsheet, ha!)

In Column One, write down twenty-five inanimate objects (or “objects that cannot just get up and walk away.”)

Column Two: write down the first animal that comes to mind when you think of the object in Column One. (Consider shape, movement, sound. A bullet is about the size of a cockroach, or it moves swift, like a shark or digs through skin, like a mosquito.)

Column Three: sounds or actions that animal makes.

Once you’ve completed all three rows, omit Column Two, and use Column Three to help give your objects character.

Create a line or poem that includes your combos.

For example:

wine glass / monkey / screech, hang, swing, play
eye / snail / crawl, slime, munch, lug

can become:

The woman gripped
her screeching wine glass
as her husband’s eyes
crawled across
the cleavage in the room.

Poetry Exercise #6 *

1. Three things that frighten you

2. Three specific people or places you will never return to

3. A mythological event

4. Three comforts

- - - - - -


Find one of the above in a place it does not belong. Write a "Found" poem. Not, like, a found poem, but more like an ad. Did you attempt to lure it home? Feed it? Kill it? Ask it out on a date? Drive it to a clinic? Then incorporate the other things from your list. Have fun. Be freaky. Verb the nouns (my favorite thing!) Don't make me come over there and axe murderer staggering towards you in the dark hallway you!

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(This exercise was inspired by Craigslist)

* tomorrow I will post my imagery exercise since some of you have asked about it (it had been posted somewhere else once, and then it ran away.)

Poetry Exercise #5

Ingredients:


1. A beautiful thing that is not yours

2. The last straw


Part One: Write a poem where you end up with something(#1) that is not yours. Make sure you did not properly earn it.

Part Two: Write about the last straw. When you knew it was over, when you knew you had to just walk off the job, when you finally had to sell it, when you had to close its wide open eyes with your own hand, when you put down that dumb book and refused to read any more chapters, when you realized it wasn't alive anymore but you were still feeding it lettuce, when you hugged him and it felt as if all the butterflies had been pinned to the bottom of your stomach, when the heel broke off so you threw the good one away too, when her hair turned brittle and not worth brushing, when she limped into the corner and refused to eat, when you thought twice about replacing the final bulb.

Number the poem. Or don't. Whatever. Don't follow rules if you expect to write anything worthwhile. The cliff will always be there. It's up to you when to jump.


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(This exercise was inspired by Miranda July's short story, "The Shared Patio.")

Poetry Exercise #4

Ingredients:

1. Something that could be used (but is not meant for) digging.

2. A person you had almost completely forgotten about, until now.

3. A routine chore.

4. The person, place or thing nobody warned you about.


While digging/scraping/carving/mining/piercing/slitting(#1), whatever, find the forgotten person(#2)inside. Discover how all that he/she does is the one chore(#3) all day long. And beautifully. Why?

Discover the one thing they could have warned you about(#4), had you remembered them. Don't fiddle too much with details, instead, write how you live your life differently, now that you remember this person. Now that you know they knew what you didn't know, until now. Oh, and make sure you only find them once. Also, make sure you continue to try to find them again, but never do. Really, these prompts are just that - prompts. Small literary or non-literary nudges to get you to write. You might not follow all of the directions in this, and that's okay. I write the poems for these as I go, and I rarely follow my own directions. How can I expect YOU to do so? I ain't your mother. But be sure to follow this one thing: write all of this in the third-person.


- - -

(My Poem is in Progress)


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(This poetry exercise was inspired by Stephen Dobyns' poem "To Pull Into Oneself As Into A Locked Room" from Velocities: New & Selected Poems, one of my very most favoritest books of poetry EVER.)