PAD Day 26: Poetry Advice from a Platypus

Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "persona" poem.

NPWM: Write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance, and assonance.

PSH: Write a parody to Bukowski's poem "So You Want to Be a Writer.”  (Jackie Chou)

I combined all three prompts today, more or less. Bukowski's poem contains some good, frank advice as well as some dubious advice, in my opinion. My takeoff was more inspired by Bukowski than a parody of his poem.  It's more of a parody of public service announcements and of poets who overuse alliteration. Regarding the second prompt, I did focus more on alliteration than on consonance and assonance, although there are probably (albeit serendipitously) examples of assonance and consonance too.

Be Great, Don’t Alliterate!
 
It’s a persistent problem among poets –
a plethora of surplus consonants littering our landscape.
Particularly perplexing is a preponderance of P’s.
 
In some municipalities it’s illegal to alliterate.
You can be fined up to four-hundred fifty-five dollars
 and forced to collect consonants from culverts, creeks and crevices
with a pointy trash-picker pole. Imagine you in an orange jumpsuit,
sullenly sweeping the shoulder of the roadside.
 
So please, next time you compose a poem,
don’t dump alphabetic detritrus in the dirt.
Take it from me, Penny the Picker-Upper Platypus—
Be Great, Don’t Alliterate!
 
(This public service message sponsored by
the Council for Controlling Consonants
and the Anti-Assonance Association)

 

And here is an AI-generated cartoon of Penny. I think she looks more like a duck than a platypus, and I'm not sure what she's holding in her left hand:

 

PAD Day 25: Death and the Playlist

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "homonym" poem (one that uses homographs or homophones).

NPWM: Write a poem based on questions in the "Proust Questionnaire," a list of personal and self-revealing questions that were apparently used as a parlor game or icebreaker in Victorian times. (Maureen lists 35 possible questions to work with; I won't list them all here.)

PSH: "One of my favorite prompts is the "Playlist Poem." Take one of your favorite sources for music playlists - Spotify, Sirius XM, broadcast radio station, your CD player or iPod (remember them?), etc. Now shuffle or randomize the playlist and take the titles of the next five songs on the list. Write a poem on any subject that incorporates those titles into the text of the poem." (Bruce Niedt)

Yup, that's my prompt that Rick Lupert used for today. I think it was my son who originally suggested this prompt years ago, and I've used it several times since. (One of the poems resulting from the prompt was actually published.) When I first did it, I was still using my iPod, which has been retired now for years, but I still have my Apple Music library, so I used that for old-time's sake. One of the titles that came up made me think a lot about death and the afterlife, so I thought, why not use some of the "Proust questions" on Maureen's list that Death might ask you when he's come to take you away? As far as homonyms go, I might have to work them into another poem.

Exit Interview

 
When Death came to the door, I expected
a skeletal specter in a long hooded black robe
with a scythe. Instead, there was a handsome
white-haired man in a gray suit.
 
Hello again, he said.
“Hello again?”
Yes. I’ve been around three times,
but each time you cheated me.
The last time was your heart attack.
You didn’t notice me disguised as a doctor.
 
He had questions for me, an exit interview:
What is your greatest regret?
“That I didn’t take better care of myself.
My pictures in a mirror got more haggard
and frail every year.”
 
What is your greatest fear?
“That there is no afterlife.
That I will be like the ghosts in the wind,
groaning through the tree branches
with no destination.”
 
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing,
what would it be?
“A dog, maybe. Dogs generally have a pretty good life.
A golden retriever would be nice.”
 
How would you like to die?
“Do I really have a choice?
Certainly no violence, not even drowning
in a river. In bed, I think, in my sleep.”
 
I believe we’re ready now.
“I always pictured you with a scythe.”
He reached behind his back.
Here it is.

 

All five questions that Death asked were in the Proust Queationnaire list that Maureen compiled. The song titles I used were:
Hello Again - Amos Lee
Pictures in a Mirror - Incredible String Band
Ghosts in the Wind - Richard Thompson
River - Aimee Mann (cover of the Joni Mitchell song)
Here It Is - Over the Rhine

I got pretty lucky with this list. One-word titles are usually not a problem, nor are more generic ones like “Hello Again” or “Here It Is.” The other two were more challenging, but the more unusual titles can push your poem into surprising or unexpected directions.

And here's a silly little limerick for the first prompt. Including the title, it contains five sets (twelve words in all) of homophones:

A Scene to Be Seen
 
Posh ladies and gents do adore
their beach spa, a golf course and more.
When it’s tea time at four,
And it’s tee time for “Fore!”
then they’re there at their shore club for sure.

 

PAD Day 23 Retro Bonus: More Heart

 Here's one I was working on yesterday and finished today, in repsonse to Write Better Poetry's "Heart" prompts. Yesterday I wrote and posted "Heart of the Museum," so today's poem is titled:

Museum of the Heart
 
Here is where it was made of gold,
And here, it was made of stone,
Here is where it was melted,
And here, lonely and alone.
 
Here is where it was lifted up,
And here is where it sank.
Here is where it was bleeding;
Here’s its bottom from which to thank.
 
Here, it was in the right place,
Here, it was struck with fear,
Here is where it would race,
And here it was held dear.
 
Here is where it was hardened,
Here is where it was stout,
Here is where it was followed,
And here it was poured out.
 
Here is where it was broken,
Here is where it was faint,
Here is where it was woken,
And here it was that of a saint.
 
Here its cockles were warmed,
Here it was worn on a sleeve,
Here it was crossed and hoped to die,
And in here it wished to believe.
 
Here is where it skipped a beat,
Here it was taken aback,
Here it was heavy, here it was light,
And here’s where it had the attack.
 

PAD Day 24: What Could Have Been

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "maximum" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. "

PSH: "Write about options of any kind. To choose one leaves others behind. Personalize an option left behind and write from its perspective. The option might be relieved, excited it wasn’t chosen, or feel rejected." (Kathleen Hunkele Schardin)

So here is mine, using all three prompts. I picked my beginning line more or less at random: I have the Copper Canyon anthology A House Called Tomorrow, which is an excellent fifty-year retrospective of poets they have published. I  haven't got that far into it, but I skipped to the more recent poems in the back, found a poet whom I have read and like, and picked a line I liked from her poem without reading the whole poem first. I also decided to use her line as an epigram rather than a first line. As far as the "maximum" prompt goes, I just kind of worked the word into the poem rather than making it a major focus of the theme.

A Note from the Ph.D. You Never Got
 
[I]t’s a miracle to have a life. Any life at all.
                                                                —Ellen Bass, Indigo
 
Just wanted you to know I am alive and well,
mounted on the wall of a Rutgers professor
who heads the Psychology Department,
is widely published, and just went Emeritus.
 
I know sometimes you have regrets,
having dropped out after a year of grad school,
but it looks like you have done okay—
your writing, your government service,
a happy marriage, kids and grandkids.
 
Getting me would have taken maximum effort,
but maybe not for maximum return.
You should also know that if you went
down that path, you would have had
an affair in your 40s with a pretty young student
that would have ended your marriage, two sons
who never speak to you, and an accident
on Boylston Street in Boston that would have
left you walking with a cane.
 
And don’t think the Rutgers prof has no regrets—
but I’m not at liberty to discuss them.
 
So you don’t have me on your wall. Big deal.
Instead, there are pictures of your family
and your wife of fifty years.
 

PAD Day 23 Bonus: A Big Heart

 Here is my response to Write Better Poetry's prompt to write a poem with the title "Heart of the _______":

Heart of the Museum 

I remember being awestruck at eight,
walking through the Giant Heart,
100 times normal size, as if I were
a blood cell, passing through its chambers,
up, around, through and down,
to a natural bass, the original beat,
a deep thump of contracting muscles.
A marvelous construction of paper mâché,
chicken wire and wood, it’s now solid fiberglass,
and a fixture at the Franklin Institute
here in Philly for over 70 years,
literally a rite of passage for any schoolkid,
and countless adults too.
Millions of visitors have pumped through it,
and will continue to do so,
then circulate through the other exhibits,
and out the doors and into
the bloodstream of the world.

If you are a fan of the comedy series Abbott Elementary, set in a elementary school in Philadelphia, you may remember that in their Season 2 finale they took a school field trip to the Franklin Institute. The episode was shot on location (the first time they actually did that in the series), and you can see several areas and exhibits in that episode, including the Giant Heart. Here is a photo of it. (It will be closing on May 6 for six months of renovations.)

 

PAD Day 23: Dylan, Captain America, and Fighting Poets

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem with the title "Heart of the _______" or "______ of the Heart."

NPWM: "...  write a poem about, or involving, a superhero..."

PSH: "Write a poem that records a dialogue between two famous poets arguing a point of controversy. "

I combined prompts two and three to write a poem based on a lyric from what is probably my favorite Bob Dylan song, a fever dream of a fantasy narrative featuring a wide cast of characters, including two famous poets. (The superhero enters only in the last stanza. And admittedly, it gets a bit silly with a rather serious subject.)

Clash of the Poets
 
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn,
Everybody’s shouting
“Which side are you on?”
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower…
—Bob Dylan, Desolation Row
 
Part of the charm of that song
is the dizzying anachronisms
and unlikely intersections of characters
like Cinderella and Romeo.
Eliot and Pound weren’t on the Titanic,
and in fact didn’t meet until 1914.
What’s more, they were good friends—
Ezra helped Tom edit The Waste Land.
But they could have clashed over politics—
both were American ex-pats,
but Pound moved to Italy and embraced fascism.
Eliot, a bit of an antisemite himself,
nevertheless had no love for brownshirts,
and there might have laid the rub.
 
So for the sake of setting, leave them on the Titanic,
scrapping in the control room:
“I can’t believe you support Hitler!”
“Well, you don’t love the Jews any more than I do!”
“I won’t be a party to genocide!”
“Who cares? I never liked your poetry anyway!
‘Ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas’?
What does that even mean?”
“ Well, how about ‘petals on a wet black bough’? Seriously?”
 
And here Dylan could introduce another character:
Then in bounds Captain America,
He’s just polished up his shield,
And says to Pound, “I think you’re Red Skull,
You’d better yield….”

(I"ll circle back to do the "heart" prompt later.)

PAD Day 22: Grab the Popcorn

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write an "earth" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. "

PSH: (from Tara Elliott)

1. Choose one from each column (A, B and C below). ...

If you’re daring, use a standard die to help you “roll” your selection.

A: Craft Skill Focus             
1. Allusion
2. Anaphora
3. Simile
4. Metaphor
5. Personifica.0tion
6. Assonance

B: Restrictions
1. One adjective/adverb only
2. No end-stopped lines
3. No articles (a, an, the)
4. No stanza breaks
5. One verb only
6. No alliteration

C: Must Contain
1. A color
2. A scent
3. “thirteen”
4. Sports team or sport
5. A reference to the body
6. The name of a famous poet

2. Set a timer for precisely eleven minutes. You can edit later, but the time constraint during the initial writing will increase your focus.
3. Write. While writing, do NOT edit yourself other than attempting to stay within the constraints you’ve already set. Write the entirety of the eleven minutes. Yes, even if you think you’re finished. Keep writing.
4. Edit your work.

I rolled a die and got 1, 2 and 6. That means I must employ allusions, have no end-stopped lines, and cite the name of a famous poet. I also have to work "earth" and an unlikely conflict into the poem if possible. So here's the result. I expected "Earth" to spawn a poem about conservation or climate change, but instead I ended up in a completely different direction, describing another existential threat, if only imagined. (A line from another poem I allude to is in italics.)

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
 
Spinning with Harryhausen precision, they land on 

the White House lawn, and in an admittedly defensive 

move, vaporize a company of soldiers, while 

scientists and generals try to figure them out, and 

someone’s girlfriend gets hysterical. It’s the same old 

story—the tactic of the exploding plane, the strategy

of the sinking boat—until we cobble together 

a new weapon that forces them to crash spectacularly 

into our monuments, leaving us to marvel at all 

the special effects, and wonder about Skyhook 

and Donald Keyhoe and Area 51, then wander off into 

another scenario, another poem inspired by bad sci-fi, like 

Raab and his giant crab monsters, the second half 

of the double feature, and maybe we can enjoy 

a little more popcorn before the next stanza.