Big Window

Open 47: Let Light Be Bright

Get inspired by the Light Poems of Jackson Mac Low. Write a poem about LIGHT.

See the photograph of The Postman (below) for visual inspiration.

Open 46: Erasure

Erasure, another kind of writing exercise, begins with an existing text. As the name implies, you  create a first draft by eliminating most of the original text, creating (one hopes) a brand new one. These are great when you're very stuck. Which I am often enough!  I did several of these during NaPoWriMo this April.

I usually start with a long poem, and removed probably 7/8 of the original words and add my own, liberally. If you're feeling truly geeky, you can even use the cut up machine. It's not an instrument of torture but rather a William Burroughs inspired gadget that eliminates words from a text randomly.

If you're not sure where to begin, here's a text that you can experiment.  It's a poem by John Ashbery. If you try this prompt, feel free to leave a link to your poem in the comments.

YOUR NAME HERE

But how can I be in this bar and also be a recluse?
The colony of ants was marching toward me, stretching
far into the distance, where they were as small as ants.
Their leader held up a twig as big as a poplar.
It was obviously supposed to be for me.
But he couldn’t say it, with a poplar in his mandibles.
Well, let’s all forget that scene and turn to one in Paris.
Ants were walking down the Champs-Elysees
in the snow, in twos and threes, conversing,
revealing a sociability one never supposed them as having.
The larger ones have almost reached the allegorical statues
of French cities on the Place de la Concorde.
“You see, I told you he was going to bolt.
Now he just sits in his attic
ordering copious plates from a nearby restaurant
as though God had meant him to be quiet…”
“You look like a portrait of Mme. de Stael by Overbeck,
that is to say a little serious and washed out.
Remember you can come to me any time
with what is bothering you, just don’t ask for money.
Day and night my home, my hearth are open to you,
you great big adorable one, you.”

The bar was unexpectedly comfortable.
I thought about staying. There was an alarm clock on it.
Patrons were invited to guess the time (the clock was always wrong).
More cheerful citizenry crowded in, singing the Marseillaise,
congratulating each other for the wrong reasons, like the color
of their socks, and taking swigs from a communal jug.
“I just love it when he gets this way,
which happens in the middle of August, when summer is on its way
out, and autumn is still just a glint in its eye,
a chronicle of hoar-frost foretold.”
“Yes and he was going to buy all the candy bars in the machine
but something happened, the walls caved in (who knew
the river had risen rapidly) and one by one people were swept away
calling endearing things to each other, using pet names.
“Achilles, meet Angus.” Then it all happened so quickly I
guess I never knew where we were going, where the pavement
was taking us. Or the sidewalk, which the English call pavement,
which is what sidewalks are made of, or so it seems.

Things got real quiet in the oubliette.
I was still reading Jean-Christophe. I’ll never finish the darn thing.
Now is the time for you to go out into the light
and congratulate whoever is left in our city. People who survived
the eclipse. But I was totally taken with you, always have been.
Light a candle in my wreath, I’ll be yours forever and will kiss you.

by John Ashbery

ReVerbing Read Write Poem

I almost always like the word collage writing exercises from Read Write Poem, but this one seems especially fine. And fun. If you want to give it a try, just follow the steps provided here. Happy Writing!

Open 45: Negative Capability

This poetry prompt is based on "Today I Didn't," a poem by Terry Ehret from her book Lost Body.  As you can quickly see, it's a structure in which you describe what-is by describing what-isn't. This example by a boy in juvenile detention is about a dozen years old, but I still remember the powerful voice.

Today I Didn’t

Today I didn’t wake up when I felt it was a good

time.  Today I didn’t wake up in my comfortable

bed.  Today I didn’t eat what I wanted to eat.  I

didn’t go to McDonald’s and order a large orange

juice and two hash browns.  Today I didn’t smoke a

satisfying Marlboro Light.  I didn’t go to Stop-N-Go

and beg the clerk to sell me a pack of cigarettes. 

Today I didn’t watch TV.  I didn’t watch X-Files

or The Simpsons.  Today I didn’t wear a nice shirt.  I

didn’t wear my favorite Gap or Polo shirt.  Today I

didn’t relax on my hammock and swing back and

forth while getting dizzy.  I didn’t listen to the radio

and find the similarity between the song and

experiences in my life.  Today I didn’t drive to the

mall.  I didn’t pick up my friends.  I didn’t even

hang out with my friends.

Today I didn’t curse out the staff.  I didn’t bother to

get upset over their demands.  I didn’t get upset

over their comments.  Today I didn’t go to Special

Class because I didn’t do any of the above, which

would cause me to go.  I didn’t sit in an isolated

room for thirteen hours.  I didn’t feel as if I were

about to die of boredom.  I didn’t throw a chair or

table due to receiving a black mark.  I didn’t get

slammed against the walls, on the floor, not even

against tables, or in better terms, get restrained.  I

didn’t get handcuffed to the door of the Special

Class.  I didn’t get hog-tied and thrown into Time

Out.  I didn’t cry out of my fury.  I didn’t cause any

problems that would have caused me to spend my

46th day in the Special Room.  Today I didn’t have a

bad day.

By James

If you try this exercise, feel free to share your link with the rest of us.

Open 45: Write your own Fortune

Using Frank O'hara's poem as a model, write a poem made up of pseudo fortunes from fortune cookies. Have fun with name-dropping and quirkier-than-thou details.

Open 44: Oulipo a la Eunoia

Christian Bok, in his book of poetry, Eunoia, dedicates a section of his long poem to each vowel. In each segment, Bok uses only that vowel, as in the example below. For today's writing exercise, write a poem in which you use only one vowel.

Jumpstart your Writing with Read Write Poem

Open 42: Chance

Do you ever revise a poem dozens of times but it never really improves? I find old poems in folders sometimes for which a remix is the only possible salvation.  Perhaps you'd consider using an online application and invite the forces of chance to enter the process. The example above is a remixed version of "Mottled Tuesday" by John Ashbery. It's made with an online ap called Wordle © 2008 Jonathan Feinberg.

Open 41: The Pits

This writing exercise is #43 from Charles Bernstein's Experiments.  It's one of my favorites.

"Pits": Write the worst possible poem you can imagine.

Open 40: Twitter Poetry

You don't have to understand twitter to do this writing exercise. I'm simply using the "rules" of twitter to provide some formal constraint. 

1) This poem will be construct from prose stanzas (verse paragraphs?) of no more than 140 characters.

2) Each stanza should answer the question (re that particular speaker) "What are you doing?"

3) Like a drama or screenplay, each stanza will have the speaker identified first. For example:

dooce: A friend and I just agreed: absolutely no good can come from your mother seeing your boyfriend naked.

fraying: The woman with the "my friend is a slut" t-shirt was walking alone.

caterina: Watching Hungarian Idol

geofhuth: phlox & flax

yobird: are you ready to yobird?

I think you could actually do a collaborative poem on twitter by using "favorites" function to create a group. Let me know how this works out.

Open 39: Darkness Visible

This writing exercise requires a little bit more preparation than most of the ones I post on Big Window.  You will need a large piece of butcher paper or poster board, a pen or pencil, and a dark place where you can write without interruption. Give yourself 20 minutes in darkness and write through your thoughts. Let us know how it goes.

Open 38: Blur

Try this while riding on a train, subway, bus, or car. At a high speed, the familiar suddenly becomes the unfamiliar. Try writing while riding. Capture the blur.

Warning: it is illegal to try this writing exercise while driving in the state of California.

Blackouts Can Be Fun

Austin-based cartoonist Austin Kleon has a lot of ideas about newspaper blackout poems on his blog.  He's even gotten a book deal from Harper Collins. Get your Sharpies ready.

Open 37: Following Charley Harper

Let these images by Charley Harper lead you into a new poem.

Amy King Live

For anyone (either desperately or blithely) seeking writing exercises, check out this ever-expanding collection of great ideas on Amy King's blog a.k.a. ALIAS.

Open 36

Here's a writing prompt for today.  Imagine that this photo depicts an unusual door.  Describe this portal, your journey through it, and whatever it is that you discover on the other side. Prose or poetry, the choice is yours.

12 Links to Writing Prompts on the Web

Here's a list of links to writing exercises from all around the web:

• My own! Check out the Open Series here on Big Window.
• Kelli Russell Agodon provides 30 writing prompts for National Poetry Month at her blog, the Book of Kells.
• Lists of great writing experiments by Bernadette Mayer and Charles Bernstein.
• At the Poefusion blog, Michelle Johnson dishes out several new prompts a week. 
• So does Easy Street, Two for Tuesdays, and Writer's Island.
• Totally Optionally Prompts and
• Read Write Poem form communities of writers who share work on a regular basis.
  
• You can generate a new writing prompt with the Language as a Virus site.
• The Poetry Resource Page provides a long list of ideas.
• Feel free to add your favorites in the comment field below.

Open 35: Abstract Map (or Let's Get Lost)

Write a directive.  It can be poetry or prose. Credit for this exercise goes to my friend Mary Adams.  The model is "After Apple Picking" by Robert Frost.  It should be written as a set of impossible instructions.  Use the second person: "You will see angry bees swarming a phone booth."  If you give this one a try, feel free to post a link to it in the comment section. Happy Trails! 

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.        

Robert Frost

{photo by Leenda K via flickr}

Open 34: Just Ask

 

Here's a writing prompt you might want to try.  The idea comes from Pablo Neruda's famous Book of Questions.  Write a poem that is entirely made of questions.

(this photo "star, not star."  was originally uploaded to flickr by wacky doodler)

Open 33: Quijote

(Quijote, originally uploaded by JuliusTheCat onto flickr)

Your next poem is inside this photo.  I promise you--it is right here!  All  you have to do is be its scribe.

Open 32: Writing Like a Kerouac

Here's a new writing exercise.  Let me know how it works for you.  Feel free to post your results in the comment section below.

Here's a passage by Jack Kerouac about how to get your writing mojo on.  I'm lifting it from the Language is a Virus website.  Let it be your guide as you write using the photograph posted below as your springboard.

List of Essentials


• Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
• Submissive to everything, open, listening
• Try never get drunk outside yr own house
• Be in love with yr life
• Something that you feel will find its own form
• Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
• Blow as deep as you want to blow
• Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind
• The unspeakable visions of the individual
• No time for poetry but exactly what is
• Visionary tics shivering in the chest
• In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
• Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
• Like Proust be an old teahead of time
• Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
• The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
• Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
• Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
• Accept loss forever
• Believe in the holy contour of life
• Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
• Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
• Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
• No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
• Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
• Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
• In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
• Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
• You're a Genius all the time
• Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
  
  As ever,
  Jack

Jack Kerouac "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, copyright © 1958, 1977, 1983. Grey Fox Press.

Photograph by Richard Misrach.

To see more writing projects posted on Big Window, click here.

Eat my Shorts

Remember Bart Simpson's famous words from the 90s?  Of course you do.  Here's an irreverent exercise for poet bloggers.  Check out the surrealist machine called The Eater of Meaning.   Type in the URL of your blog and start the engine.  The results are a cut-up version of your blog.  For example, the heading of my Ashbery story below turned into:  I Wandering my Housewife Daydreams.  Add your favorite distorted headline as a comment.  Or write a new poem using that phrase as the title or first line.

Open 31

This writing prompt begins with a photograph.  You can use the one by Travis Ruse that I have posted below, or find one on your own and print a copy.  Draw a  4x4 grid onto the photo.  A ruler is not necessary!  You will end up with 16 boxes.  Write a 16 line poem, using each square as the leaping point for each line. 

Altering Alters All

Dan has posted some great new work on his Altered Books blog.

Open 30: The Furniture Poem

One of my colleagues from the WomPo list serve asked whether we could think of any poems about furniture. At first I found the concept ridiculous.  Then I remembered having written a poem called "Easy Chair."  And then I remembered another one I wrote called "Scat Sofa."  I felt very silly then.

If you'd like a writing exercise for today, write some lines about a piece of furniture. Post it as a comment if you'd like. 

Fun with Spam

The clock is ticking on this one.  Make a poem out of spam and enter it today.  Here's the scoop on the Spam Poetry Game, Round 2.  It's an email from Cecil Touchon.

Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 20:42:42 -0500

From: Cecil Touchon <touchon at SPRYNET dot COM>

Subject: THE SPAM POETRY GAME

The following are the instructions for Round Two (Round One happened on 5/21/2005.)

You can see the results from round one here.

Below are some random words found in some recent spam trash.

Did raise, sure surface. Again, widely, I pass. Plant complete
      letter hundred fast high. Dog interest car letter. Ground,
      write, life hat, lay. North paint thought map. Among end night
      evening then much complete. Game, age grow a. Other row burn
      hand art and eye. Little field own for get use, mile. Left need
      by bat region. Ready either energy earth. I, men captain must,
      will me burn. Had, see, seem, was head sit.

Please take this material and do with it what you will to create a poem. If you add words put them in brackets. If you remove  anything put it as a remainder after the poem. Here are the rules. Time limit 48 hours from this email.

send your poem to info at ontologicalmuseum  dot org 

NaPoWriMo 2007

Every poet knows that April is the cruelest month and that fact alone makes it the perfect time for National Poetry Writing Month or NaPoWriMo 2007.  This year there's even a logo for it.

All that is required of you, dear poet, is one poem a day.  Are you in?

Open 29

Write a poem that is a close-up.  Now go closer.  Closer.  There.
Photo by Gary Shrimpling, from his photoblog Mystery Me

Open 28: Start Your Day

Your next mission, if you choose to accept it....

Write a poem using the name of a breakfast cereal as the title. Yeah, you know!  Special K, Cap'n Crunch, All-Bran, and so on.

Sampling

See this and other pages of Altered Books here.