NaPoWriMo Day 23: Today, I challenge you to write a sonnet. Traditionally, sonnets are 14-line poems, with ten syllables per line, written in iambs (i.e., with a meter in which an unstressed syllable is followed by one stressed syllable, and so on). There are several traditional rhyme schemes, including the Petrarchan, Spenserian, and Shakespearean sonnets. But … Continue reading Mr. Bubble Frets Not Who He Touches
NaPoWriMo
Rooted
NaPoWriMo Day 22: Today’s prompt comes to us from Gloria Gonsalves, who also suggested our prompt for Day Seven. Today, Gloria challenges us all to write a poem in honor of Earth Day. This could be about your own backyard, a national park, or anything from a maple tree to a humpback whale. Happy writing! Opening … Continue reading Rooted
The Sky is Not Falling, I Simply Failed Physics
NaPoWriMo Day 21: Just as Rosa Jamila’s poems often sound like they come out of a myth or fairy tale (and not always one with a happy ending), today I challenge you to write a poem in the voice of minor character from a fairy tale or myth. Instead of writing from the point of … Continue reading The Sky is Not Falling, I Simply Failed Physics
The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports
NaPoWriMo Day 20: Today’s prompt comes to us fromVince Gotera, who suggests a prompt very much in keeping with our poet in translation, a “kenning” poem. Kennings were riddle-like metaphors used in the Norse sagas. Basically, they are ways of calling something not by its actual name, but by a sort of clever, off-kilter description … Continue reading The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports
How to (almost) Kiss
NaPoWriMo Day 19: Many years ago, “didactic” poetry was very common – in other words, poetry that explicitly sought to instruct the reader in some kind of skill or knowledge, whether moral, philosophical, or practical. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write the latter kind of “how to” poem – a didactic poem that … Continue reading How to (almost) Kiss
The Sound of Home
NaPoWriMo Day 18: Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates “the sound of home.” Think back to your childhood, and the figures of speech and particular ways of talking that the people around you used, and which you may not hear anymore. My grandfather and mother, in particular, used several … Continue reading The Sound of Home
Authorized Version of the Day
NaPoWriMo Day 17: Today, I challenge you to find, either on your shelves or online, a specialized dictionary. This could be, for example, a dictionary of nautical terms, or woodworking terms, or geology terms. Anything, really, so long as it’s not a standard dictionary! Now write a poem that incorporates at least ten words from … Continue reading Authorized Version of the Day
Unseasonably Hot
NaPoWriMo Day 16: Today, I challenge you to fill out, in no more than five minutes, the following “Almanac Questionnaire,” which solicits concrete details about a specific place (real or imagined). Then write a poem incorporating or based on one or more of your answers. Happy writing! A powerful storm produced piles of agates, three … Continue reading Unseasonably Hot
Click Clique
NaPoWriMo Day 15: Because today marks the halfway point in our 30-day sprint, today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates the idea of doubles. You could incorporate doubling into the form, for example, by writing a poem in couplets. Or you could make doubles the theme of the poem, by … Continue reading Click Clique
An effort to make sense out of the essentially senseless
NaPoWriMo Day 14: Today’s prompt comes to us from TJ Kearney, who invites us to try a seven-line poem called a san san, which means “three three” in Chinese (It’s also a term of art in the game Go). The san san has some things in common with the tritina, including repetition and rhyme. In particular, the san san repeats, three … Continue reading An effort to make sense out of the essentially senseless
Just L Poetry 