Incendiary Lit

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: Truncated

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “Now it hangs on the back of a kitchen chair” from Father’s Old Blue Cardigan by Anne Carson.
2. Syllabics: Write in tercets of of 8, 6 and 2 syllables.
3. Color: Silver.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: Spray/decay, eskimo/window. (That’s right, eskimo. Let’s see someone do it!)
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Ants do not sleep.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: Truncated

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “We gained an hour today.” from I Had Wanted to Be an Archer by Jason Tandon from the newest Permafrost.
2. Syllabics: Alternating lines of 4 and 6 syllables.
3. Color: Maroon.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: Tend/spend and Gruff/scuff.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: An ostrich’s eye is larger than its brain.

Firestarter Challenge Week 8 Title: On Uneven Ground

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “Calm Down. No one’s listening. Of course” from The Bad Muse by Lawrence Raab. It has the great assonance of ivy/ties and Tolkien’s famous cellar door. What’s not to like about it?.
2. Imagery: The taste of sour milk.
3. Form: Write a Rhaptzung. Confused? It’s essentially just rhyming couplets with a concentration on sonic devices like assonance, or feminine, inner, and multi-syllabic rhyming. Here is how to write a rhaptzung. Here’s an example of one.
4. Historical Time and Place: Lima, 7/15/07 (7.9 earthquake)
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.

I couldn’t find a copy of Lawrence Raab’s wonderful poem The Bad Muse, but it’s from his terrific New and Selected Visible Signs, (right now at amazon they have 2 used copies for $.50, so it totals $4.49 with shipping. Please try him. He’s very accessible, poignant, and one of our truly great living American poets. It’s cheaper than an imported draft beer. Just drink one less, and get in on the Lawrence Raab Revolution) The Bad Muse was originally in his book What We Don’t Know About Each Other, which also has 3 used copies for sale under a buck. Do yourself a favor, and buy one of them right away.

Firestarter Challenge Week 8 Title: On Uneven Ground

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “Ten minutes now I have been looking at this” from Ready to Kill by Carl Sandburg. It has the great assonance of ivy/ties and Tolkien’s famous cellar door. What’s not to like about it?.
2. Imagery: Feel of a splinter under skin.
3. Form: Write a sonnet length (3 quatrains and an envoi[2 lines]) free verse poem .
4. Historical Time and Place: The Rape of Nanking (Nanking, 12/13/1937.)
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Humans are the only animal that regularly sleeps on their backs.

Firestarter Challenge Week 8 Title: On Uneven Ground

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “Ivy ties the cellar door” from Dreaming of Hair by Li-Young Lee. It has the great assonance of ivy/ties and Tolkien’s famous cellar door. What’s not to like about it?.
2. Imagery: Smell of beer.
3. Form: A How To Poem. Simple enough, but for more of an explanation and some examples, here’s how to write A How to poem.
4. Historical Time and Place: Your hometown, 2015.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: A flea can jump 130 times its own height, which would be like a 6′ human jumping over the tallest building in the world with a few hundred feet to spare. So the only question remaining is when will Fleaman be released in theaters?

Firestarter Challenge Week 8 Title: On Uneven Ground

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “Come live with me, and be my love” from The Passionate Shepherd to his Love by Christopher Marlowe (as well as John Donne’s “Come Live With Me” and Cecil Day-Lewis’ “Song” (or Untitled).
2. Imagery: Moss growing on rocks in a spiral pattern.
3. Form: A Rondeau. In Flanders Fields by John McRae is a good example.
4. Historical Time and Place: Earth, 4 Billion BC (primordial ooze phase of life).
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Most earthquakes originate less than 50 miles from the center of the planet.

Firestarter Challenge Week 8 Title: On Uneven Ground

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “When the morning was waking over the war” from Among those Killed in the Dawn Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred by Dylan Thomas.
2. Imagery: A dented desktop globe.
3. Form: A Sestina. Here’s how to write a sestina, and here’s a wonderful example of how you can make a sestina interesting, in Miller Williams’ Shrinking Lonely Sestina.
4. Historical Time and Place: Ireland, 1848. (during Great Potato Famine)
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: There are no ‘true’ male calico cats, the only males are hermaphrodites and sterile.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Granular

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “Deep in the shady sadness of a vale” from Hyperion by John Keats.
2. Imagery: Squealing of brakes.
3. Form: Write a sequence of short pruning poems. Here’s how to write a pruning poem.
4. Music: Pick a vowel sound to repeat, and a consonant. Think to yourself- I really really like this vowel and this consonant, so I will utilize Assonance and Consonance to employ those sounds in my poem. Yes. Yes I will.
5. Color: Puce.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Granular

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.” from Dedication by Ranier Maria Rilke.
2. Imagery: Smell of lilacs.
3. Form: Limerick. If you feel up to it, try to write a deeply metaphoric limerick that comments on current social issues under it’s crude facade. Here’s more information on the Limerick.
4. Music: \E\ as in “Even eastern eateries eke equally in the economy.”
5. Color: Jade.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Granular

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “You have to always be drunk.” from Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire.
2. Imagery: Smell of mildew.
3. Form: Epigram. The best definition is an Epigram by Samuel Coleridge: What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole, / Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
4. Music: Use the rhyme scheme ABCABC in sestets of four metrical feet.
5. Color: Cobalt.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Granular

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “Drunk, I kissed the moon” from Another Awkward Stage of Convalescence by Bob Hicok.
2. Imagery: Smell of mildew.
3. Form: Prose poem. Here’s poets.org’s take on the controversial Prose poem. If it’s not too vain of me, I included a sample prose poem of my own that appeared in the most recent Pacific Review at the bottom of this article.
4. Music: Concentrate on using many dentals: \d\ \n\ \t\ and \l\ sounds.
5. Color: Burnt Umber.

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Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Granular

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “He had driven half the night.” from Hay for the Horses by Gary Snyder.
2. Imagery: A water-wrinkled book.
3. Form: Elegy. Not necessarily a ‘form’ so to speak but still, give it a shot. Here’s more info on what an Elegy actually is.
4. Music: Use the sound \oo\ many times, as in “new tubes shoot through you”.
5. Color: Tangerine.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Granular

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.” from Saturday at the Canal by Gary Soto.
2. Imagery: A roadkill opossum.
3. Form: A poem in Ottava Rima stanzas. Here is how to write an ottava rima stanza.
4. Music: Anaphora. Use an anaphoric line early on, then multiple times in the middle, and once more at the end.
5. Color: Kelly Green.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Granular

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “The flesh covers the bone” from Alone with everybody By Charles Bukowski.
2. Imagery: An address book floating in the toilet.
3. Form: Concrete Poetry. I know what you’re thinking, how lame, no one likes that gimmick anymore, so you’ve been told. And yes, it is shunned, but it’s also something to experiment with, play with while you’re trying to feel out the boundaries of your own poetry, and help you remember that white space is very important to the poem. Here’s how to write Concrete Poetry.
4. Music: Use \A\ sound as much as you can without overdoing it. How much is that? Trial and error will show you the way.
5. Color: Fuchsia.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Before and After Summer

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: A spring sunshower.
2. Imagery: A half-sunken canoe.
3. Form: Aubade. Here’s how to write an Aubade.
4. Theme: Money ain’t a thing…
5. Persona: An Alien Abductee.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Before and After Summer

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: A surprise party gone wrong.
2. Imagery: The smell of skunks.
3. Form: A Haiku sequence, where all the poems build off of the last in the sequence.
4. Theme: She loves me, she loves me not…
5. Persona: A Supermarket checker.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Before and After Summer

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: A 2nd birthday party (as in 2 years old, not, hey it’s past midnight, I’ve been 21 for a full day! Second Party!).
2. Imagery: The taste of blood.
3. Form: An image based poem of 3 Sestets (6 lined stanzas) in dimeter (2 feet per line, as in, two iambs, trochees, spondees etc, 2 stresses, not just 2 syllables.)
4. Theme: If I could try again…
5. Persona: A snow plow driver after a late night snow.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Before and After Summer

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Bon Voyage party.
2. Imagery: A bent stop sign.
3. Form: Triolet. Here’s how to write a triolet.
   
4. Theme: Remember them days.
5. Persona: A truck driver.

Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Before and After Summer

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: A going away party.
2. Imagery: A mottled green Easter egg.
3. Form: Pantoum. Here’s how to write a pantoum.
4. Theme: Time keeps on slipping, slipping…
5. Persona: A plumber.

Click here for an example of how to play with the form of the pantoum, keeping the same basic form, but changing punctuation and occasional word substitutions, as in Kim Addonizzio’s “The Revered Poet Instructs her Students on the Importance of Revision”
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Firestarter Challenge Week 7 Title: Before and After Summer

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Waiting in line at the gas station.
2. Imagery: A wadded up kleenex.
3. Form: Sestina. Here’s how to write a sestina.
4. Theme: Unrequited Love.
5. Persona: A 60 year old bartender