I’ve just been scribbling a lot the last couple of days. I’ve had so much mental stimulous that I almost can’t actually formulate anything new except snippets of ideas. But this line (lines?) keeps bouncing into my brain. It’s not ready to be born into a whole poem, but maybe someone else can coax it out.
He has always been
New York
to me…
the place I assume I
will someday end up
or always wonder
what if?
Sometimes I find it nearly impossible to write a full piece of anything. When that happens I get out my indext cards (well, really just an old notebook, but you will get the idea). I start writing one liners. here are some for you to run with.
The inside of a kiss
Your compromise was a yawn, foul mouthed and exhausting
Seven year old kills snake with her daddy’s pistol.
She is lazy about her emotional discipline.
See I can go to these indext cards (okay, really my coffee stained notebook) and pick something random to jog my mind. Maybe I write something and maybe I just find new lines to add to the list. Alot of my one liners come from over-heard conversations. Go out and sit in a public place and listen. Write down what you hear.
Feed Your Muse…
…a good book or three. There’s nothing to get a muse thinking like a good read. Poetry, philosophy, fiction – there’s plenty of words out there for your muse to chew on.
Write a poem about… cake. Or birthdays. Or being a kid. Or getting caught doing something. Link back to us with a comment!
Suzanne Vega is one of my favorite inspirations. Her voice is smoky, her words are lyrical and her moods are mercurial.Download link Caramel is one of my favorites, and inspired this poem. Listen and see what it inspires for you – then post your writing at your blog and leave us a comment here so we can come read it!
One of my favorite poetry reference books has a wealth of information about poetry, its forms and the terms associated with it. If you’re interested in reading about poetry and its forms, check out this one…
Babette Deutsch gives easy to understand definitions of common poetic terms – iamb, meter, alliteration, sonnet and lots more. She offers examples to illustrate most of her terms, and the examples are the start to an exploration of the form or poetic device. It’s silly, but I’ve always found reading about poetic forms and devices inspires me to try my hand at them. Do some reading and see what you come up with.
Here’s a potential first line for a piece. It may also fit somewhere else in a piece better:
“You really know how to push my buttons. I have to move them every so often just to get through the day.”
Sometimes you catch something out of the corner of your eye and realize that it’s simply, breathtakingly beautiful. Write about something that is beautiful sometimes.