Poetry Samples:

• Kay Ryan: Thin
• Kay Ryan: Salvage
• James Laughlin: My Ambition
• Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Twelve Twelve Twelve
• Aimee Nezhukumatahil: Dear Amy
• Robert Frost: The Wood Pile
• Derek Walcott: The Bounty

Poetry prompts:

1. Write a list of words associated with a type of music and weave these words into your poem. To challenge yourself: choose a second genre or type of music that you don't always listen to and try again.
2. Using the poem "Blue" by Reginald Shepherd, write a poem in which you assign colors to different ideas or emotions. Try choosing only 1 emotion or idea per stanza.
3. Create a list of ten emotions and 10 unrelated metaphors, then use something on your list of metaphors to describe one of the emotions in a vivid, imagistic way.
4. Work with a partner. One person make a list of concrete nouns on sticky-notes. The other partner should write a list of present-tense verbs on another piece of paper. Collect the papers and randomly select a verb from the verb pile and a concrete noun from the noun pile. Combine and create a poem.
5. Create an unlikely speaker. Make this speaker mad or angry and write what they might say to the person/object/or event that is causing frustration. Then make this speaker happy or sad or worried or anxious or etc. (pick any emotion). Write a second poem from the same speaker's POV, but change the tone.
6. Go back through your poetry that you have written and add more images or imagery.
7. As 6, but add titles.
8. As 6, but change tense to present.
9. As 6, but write the poem from a different perspective or POV.
10. As 6, but cut the poem to no more than 10 words, keeping the essential conflict, meaning, and intention of the poem.

Lab: Write.

HOMEWORK: None.