Texty Ladies » Poetry Play Thursday

Poetry Play Thursday

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:45:45 +0000

Welcome to Poetry Play Thursday!

Today’s poetry prompt is a photo. I hope it will inspire you to write. If it does, I hope you’ll share you poem, or a link to it, here in our comments. We’d love to read what you’ve written! Have fun!

Train Tracks by Peter Griffin

Poetry Play Thursday – 11/12/09

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:58:17 +0000

Imitation: Does it kill originality?

Some people believe that trying to imitate a favorite poet’s work will stifle originality in your own work. I believe this can certainly happen, but can it also do just the opposite by helping us discover what we truly enjoy about reading and writing poetry Could those discoveries then help us hone in on what and how we should be writing?

Try this:

Read a poem or two by one of your favorite poets.
How did the poem(s) make you feel?
Write down what you really enjoy about those poems: sound, imagery, length, language choice…
Write down why you liked what you chose in Step 3.
Write a poem using the same techniques you enjoyed about your favorite poet’s poem.
Can you spot the similarities and differences between your poem and the poem that inspired it?

Here are a few much loved poems to help inspire you:

HALCYON DAYS

Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honored middle age, nor vic-
tories of politics or war.
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions
calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the even-
ing sky,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the spirit and
frame like freshier, balmier air;
As the days take on a mellower light, and the
apple at last hangs really finished and in-
dolent ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of
all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

- Walt Whitman

THE PLAID DRESS

Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?—
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done
Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare;

All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean
Bright hair,
Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,
But it is there.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I hope you’ll give this a try and share your results here in our Comments or leave us a link to where you’ve posted your poem. I’d love to read what you’ve written!

Today’s prompt was inspired by Sage Cohen and her book Writing The Life Poetic.

Seems like forever…

Pamela Sweet — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:26:48 +0000

Hello, all! It seems like forever since I last posted. I was on hiatus while recovering from an illness but am feeling better and look forward to hanging out with you all again!

I’ll bring you a new prompt next week for Poetry Play Thursday so I hope you’ll stop back and participate. I love reading your poems and discovering how the prompt inspired you!

Some of you may know that I’m addicted to changing the theme of my personal blog every month or so (sometimes more often than that!) and you’ll be happy to know that I’ve finally found one with enough options to keep me happy for some time to come! For those of you who use WordPress, I’m using the free Suffusion template downloadable right from your Dashboard. It’s awesome! I’m in the process of updating my blog now and hope to complete it soon!

That’s it for now. I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

~ Pamela

Poetry Play Thursday

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:32:15 +0000

Welcome to Poetry Play Thursday!

Do you enjoy haiku and other short forms of poetry the way I do? Does your heart beat a little faster when thinking about editing a poem down, cutting here and chopping there until every single word is absolutely essential? Like me, do you sometimes believe that bright, shiny, and tiny poem could benefit from a complimentary photo or drawing? If so, the haiga might be for you.

Here’s an excellent definition of haiga written by Ray Rasmussen:

Haiga: A Definition

Traditional Japanese haiga involved brush art work coupled with a haiku poem done in brush calligraphy. Like the haiku poem, the focus of haiga is in simplicity of expression.

Digital art-haiku is one form of modern haiga. Other forms include photo-haiku [haiku attached to a photographic image] and all modern forms of art coupled with haiku. Of course, traditional haiga is still practiced.

Just as the haiku form often contains a juxtaposition between two of its lines and a third line, so does or can modern haiga contain a juxtaposition between the haiku itself and the digital art work.In short, the art work does not necessarily directly represent the images presented in the haiku.

If you would like to see examples of other forms of modern and traditional haiga, simply search the internet with the following key terms: haiga, japanese, haiku.

~ Ray Rasmussen

Today’s poetry prompt is to create a haiga using any topic you’d like. (I’m feeling a bit ambitious for us but let’s give this a try, shall we?) My hope is that you will post your haiga here in our comments, including the picture portion of the haiga so we can appreciate it in full. HTML or XHTML codes will work for adding the picture. If you need help getting code for your picture, let me know. If you have a blog and would prefer to post your haiga there, please leave us a link so we can admire your work.

Here are a few examples of haiga:

by Michael Rehling

by Naia

Have fun!

Poetry Play Thursday

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:00:31 +0000

Welcome to Poetry Play Thursday!

My recent free time has been all about reading for book challenges, so I threw a few book titles together and created another Wordle for today’s poetry prompt. Let’s see what you can create from one or more (or all) of these words:

Just click on the box for a better view.

Please share your poems with us here in our comments or leave us a link to where you’ve posted them. Have fun!

Poetry Play Thursday

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:00:38 +0000

Welcome to Poetry Play Thursday!

In this day of lightning speed technology, we zip emails off here and there, transmitting our thoughts and feelings to any number of people all in a matter of minutes, even seconds. The messages we receive from friends, by email or voicemail, tend to be short blurbs saying they’ll catch up with us later that night for happy hour or golf on Saturday.

We no longer write letters to each other unless one of our children is away at camp or we drop a postcard in the mail to say, “Wish you were here!” I miss the day of the honest to goodness handwritten letter; the kind of letter that was thoughtfully composed and sent with intention. Do you remember the thrill of receiving one of those letters and how you couldn’t wait to open it but you’d wait until you were in just the right spot and all alone so you could savor every word, taking the time to read and re-read it?

Why not write a letter right now? Write it to your mother, a good friend, or the company that sold you defective sneakers. Why not write a letter to yourself? It can be written in traditional letter form or as prose or a poem.

While you’re at it, why not share it with us so we can experience the thrill, too! If you do, just leave it, or a link to it, in our comments, and we’ll be sure to savor every word!

Poetry Play Thursday – 9/3/09

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:13:03 +0000

Welcome to Poetry Play Thursday!

Let’s go back to a more structured prompt today and write an Octopoem. An octopoem describes someone or something in eight lines using this formula:

Line 1: A color

Line 2: A season

Line 3: A place

Line 4: A type of weather

Line 5: A type of clothing

Line 6: A piece of furniture

Line 7: A TV show

Line 8: A type of food.

Here’s an example I found at ETTC (Education Technology Training Center):

Wild gray outdoor cat
Hungry for summer treats
Draped and lazy across my front stoop
When steamy July thunderstorms rumble through
She pants and huddles inside her war torn fur coat
Feline survivor
Thriving at the neighborhood buffet

What will your Octopoem be about? Why not write two? Or three? Please share them with us, or a link to them, in our comments. I look forward to reading them all! Have fun!

Poetry Play Thursday

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:19:57 +0000

Happy Thursday everyone! Today’s visual prompt is simple. All you need do is write a poem using this photo as inspiration:

by Josee Holland Eclipse

I do hope the photo inspires you to write a poem in any form and share it, or a link to it, with us in our comments! Have a beautiful day!

P.S. If you post this photo along with your poem on your blog, please remember to credit Josee Holland Eclipse. Thank you.

Poetry Play Thursday

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:14:43 +0000

I’ve recently noticed a common thread in the blog circles I run with: people, especially women, are eager to fulfill their destiny. Many of us hold a job that we’ve enjoyed over the years but it doesn’t satiate the desire and longing for something more that’s been bubbling up to the surface. “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my life,” we ask. “What about my dreams of becoming a writer, learning to fly, joining the circus?” We are no longer content to do what we must; we long to do what we love. We ask ourselves if we’re capable of fulfilling our dreams.

What would need to change in your life for you to realize those dreams and quench those desires? What if you could shake things up and change your world, all of our worlds, to ready it for something really big? What would you do if YOU were in charge?

Today’s prompt is to write a poem with the title:

If I Were In Charge of the World.

Judith Viorst shares what she’d do in the following poem:

If I Were In Charge of the World

If I were in charge of the world

I’d cancel oatmeal,

Monday mornings,

Allergy shots, and also Sara Steinberg.

If I were in charge of the world

There’d be brighter nights lights,

Healthier hamsters, and

Basketball baskets forty eight inches lower.

If I were in charge of the world

You wouldn’t have lonely.

You wouldn’t have clean.

You wouldn’t have bedtimes.

Or “Don’t punch your sister.”

You wouldn’t even have sisters.

If I were in charge of the world

A chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts would be a vegetable

All 007 movies would be G,

And a person who sometimes forgot to brush,

And sometimes forgot to flush,

Would still be allowed to be

In charge of the world.

by Judith Viorst

Go ahead, let yourself go with this one! I do hope you’ll share what you’ve written, or a link to it, in our comments to this post. I’m off to write mine… Have fun!

Poetry Play Thursday

Pamela Sweet — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:45:20 +0000

Welcome to Poetry Play Thursday!

It’s time to get back to some poetry fun! Today’s prompt harkens back to an earlier PPT about found poetry. Your mission is to pull your material from one of the many social networking sites available to us: Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, Plurk, Ning, Jaiku, SocialGo, you name it. Find a note, tweet or post that intrigues you, play with the words and create a poem!

I used some of Warren Ellis’ tweets for the following examples:

Feral interns abandoned
fashioning a spear from
roaming WB producers

(Original: Abandoned to feral roaming producers on the WB lot. Am fashioning a spear from the bones of interns.)

A fine aphrodisiac
Twitter is f!@#ing the world
Of complete stupidity

(Original: Twitter is a fine guide to those parts of the world where complete fucking stupidity is clearly a searing local aphrodisiac.)

Forest pubes
Do not concern yourself
For I am the Wise Man

(Original: I am The Wise Man Of The Forest. Do not concern yourself with my lack of clothes. Or the Things nesting in my pubes. For I am Wise.)

If you don’t know who Warren Ellis is, what are you waiting for? Go, check him out!

I hope you’ll share what you’ve written, or a link to it, here in our comments. Good luck and have fun!

~ Pamela