Writing Exercise #22

Ingredients:

1. Three truths you learned by the time you were ten-years old.

2. Three beliefs you still have, despite the truth.

3. Three things that feel like heaven.

4. Three things that feel like hell.

5. Three pieces of nature that are massive.


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I'm gonna call this your time machine poem. Because here's what is gonna happen: you are you, now. Only, you get to go back to your kindergarten class with that amazing brain and heart of yours, full of what you know, as your five-year old self. Tell them everything, Billy. Each line should sound like a recess bell. You can break it down by using numbers. Or each line can be to a specific student (make up names, I only remember Scott Schulton from my kindergarten class. Oh, and Salma Gonzalez, who was a first grader. She yanked my braids every day while we waited in line for the bus. Salma Gonzalez, you're a no-good ass-for-brains. And skanky.) Tell the truth about your teacher (even if you're making it up.) Tell the truth about the quietest kid in class. Tell the truth about bullies and first loves and sticky hand holding and panty showing. Tell them everything. Pull from your list accordingly. But make sure you tell three of your classmates that they are what you wrote down for #5. Tell them how big they really are. How strong. How powerful. How everlasting. They need to hear it. I promise.

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This exercise was inspired by the amazing Samantha Thornhill's poem, "Lice."

Writing Exercise # 11

Write a bio in verse for someone. You don't have to know them personally. Include:

1. An act lifted from a fairy tale, myth, or bible/fable

2. Something you only assume of the person (but state it as fact)

3. What a part of their body is made of (preferably not humanly possible)


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The cradle fell and out he spilled.
He was the fourth of five sons.
His mouth was a gun tornado.
His first kiss was a lonesome man.
He went to school in a small town where a bottle of gin was elected mayor.
The love of his life had twelve toes and sang like an arsonist.
He married her and had two brilliant mistakes.
He worked in a high heel factory until his hair turned white.
He died in the arms of an unsent love letter.

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(This exercise was inspired by Gerald Stern's "Pennsylvania Bio," from Last Blue)

Poetry Exercise # 9

Twice within the last seven days, a little exercise I give myself has come up, so I'm taking it as an invisible nudge from the universe. Speaking of "invisible," we're going to write a poem off of what I call a "ghost line." A ghost line is an inspiring line or image that becomes the unseen first line of a poem. It's how I come up with a lot of my exercises. I see a striking group of words or an arresting image and design an exercise based off that.

You know how you underline a favorite line in a book? That's what I do, only I take it a step further and build an entire story or poem off that.

Today's ghost line is from Anne Sexton's "Menstruation at Forty." It is:

Love, that red disease

Now remember, this is the invisible "first line" of your poem. Do NOT include it in your poem (unless you give credit to the original author.) YOU come up with the rest. So the second line is actually your first VISIBLE line. Fun, right? Also, the poem doesn't have to have anything to do with the ghost line, but the point of the ghost line is to inspire.


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- untitled -

It coughed its final cough
as its head settled
into the pillow,
blistered arms
at its side,
the last breath,
a shattered hymn.

The women gathered
in the corner,
men stood in their suits,
blue and unmoving.
The fever snapped
at the frightened villagers,
lunged for
the other children
hiding behind the white lace
curtains, ineffectual skirts.

By sundown,
the room nearly empty--
a row of candles, unspent,
the boy's small shadow
of sweat:
a wet ghost
in the bassinett.

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.)

Poetry Exercise #2

Okay, to build this poem, first you need the following ingredients:

1. a physical feature or talent (either one can be made up)

2. an ability, spectacular or boring, it's up to you

3. an object used for presentation (i.e. a platter, a cake stand, a velvet box, a pedestal...)

4. an obsolete or close-to-obsolete profession (i.e. blacksmith, milk maid, rider for the pony express)


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Write a poem about the physical feature/talent (#1) and make sure it is more marvel than brag, as if the thing is not truly part of you. As if it is a nuisance. What hardships do you endure for carrying this thing? What easy chore is made hard because of it? What can it do that no one else's can (#2)? Decide who passed it down to you. What was the profession of the person you inherited it from (#4)? How was it presented (#3)? What amazing thing might you become, because of this?


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And here is my, er, stab at it:

You might think I have remarkable boobs. You might even call them tremendous when you speak of them with your coworkers, reminisce on how smooth & radiant they are. How they complete small tasks for you with hi-gloss enthusiasm. Changing the light bulbs. Stretching across the room to hand you the clicker. When I awaken from my naps, sprawled on the couch, drooling & bra-less, I often dread discovering what my unsupervised boobs have been up to. It is quite a chore picking up after them. A hair dryer in the fireplace. Stevie’s gasping goldfish flopping around the foyer. I inherited these boobs from my great-great-great-grandmother, Betty the Shoemaker. It is said these boobs were won in a card game by her father. He kept them snug in an apple crate and only brought them out on special occasions. Sometimes I daydream of being a flat-chested maiden, running through a field of tomatoes and daffodils. When I was a young girl, I never imagined I would one day possess such wild, incorrigible boobs. I am frightened to have children because of them. I suspect my left boob, especially, might be capable of murder.


(This exercise inspired by "Confession Poem" by Louis Jenkins)

Poetry Exercise #1

Write down three things that are physically impossible. Now set that list aside and write a fake diary entry about the most boring, most ordinary day.

I'll go first:

I woke up. The sun was out. I went downstairs. I made some oatmeal. I ate the oatmeal. The mailman came. I checked the mail. Bills. A birthday card for my neighbor. I watched some television. I pet my dog. I had a sandwich for lunch. I had another sandwich for dinner. I went to bed.

Now, get that list. Choose one of the impossible things. Rewrite the journal entry as a person who (fortunately or unfortunately) has the impossible power/ability you chose.


Diary Entry of a Fire Breather

I woke up. The sun was out. My pillow in flames,
the toilet water boiling. Burnt oatmeal again.
The mailman came. I scorched the bills.
I singed the birthday card for my neighbor.
I watched Mary Tyler Moore melt. I pet my dog to ashes.
I had a sandwich for lunch. Fried peanut butter and jelly.
Dinner was the same. Fried.
I went to bed. I dreamt of water.


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(This exercised inspired by Louis Jenkins' poem, "Walking Through a Wall")