The Incendiary Lit Firestarter Exercises

Firestarter Exercises (updated 09/03/08)

9/03/08- Word association exercise.

Get out a sheet pf paper, or open notepad all small so you can see this page still. You’ll be making a list of words to use in your poem/story based on words you associate with the following (as usual, go with the very first thing that pops into your head): Eskimo, Tiger, Green, Energy, Horrific, Tremble, Plow, Bacon. Now come up with a poem using at least 5 of the 8 associative words (the words you chose), and write a poem. Have fun!

9/01/08- Fantasy poem

Write a poem that involves some sort of fantastical element in an everyday setting. But, this fantastical thing fits in perfectly, and everyone acts like it’s perfectly normal.

8/31/08- Titles

Pick a title from the following list that sparks a poem (or prose piece): Elegant Disorder, Torn Asunder, When the Stars Fade, Juxtaposed, Hefty Bags Full of Stuffed Animals, Towards neither sunrise nor sunset.

8/30/08- Premonition poem.

Write a poem in which you foresee an event. If you take action to prevent said event, the premonition should be false, however, if the premonition ends up coming true, there is either the moral dilemma (or in the case of a much lighter subject, inject a nice fat piece of irony). Have at it!

8/28/08- A list of words.

Write a poem using five of these seven words: Angular, docile, jot, elevate, tremor, opaque, granule.

8/26/08- A list of words.

Write a poem using five of these seven words: Torment, tempestuous, extra-lingual, perforate, jug, trudge, elemental.

8/25/08- Pick a title, any title.

I enjoy the idea of having a piece sparked from a title, so here are more titles to pick from for today’s exercise: A little taboo, Hornless, Until the Ice Melts, Comma or Coma?, Essentials for a Life of Utter Misery, Why Not?, Opportunities in Emergency Situations, Grammarcize.

8/24/08- A form a color and a first name.

Write a poem that is in the form of a Sestina (here’s how to write a sestina) that includes the color “Indigo” and someone named “Theodore.”

8/22/08- Farewell, Goodbye…

Write a farewell poem for an inanimate object (or objects) that are being thrown away during some sort of a ‘cleaning out’. If you wanna be extra cool, include the words “affable, undue, hilarity,” and “Eskimo”

8/19/08- Titlemania!

(pick a title, and write a poem (or story) that the title sparks in your imagination) Fight to the intermission, Bombastic Splat, Chokehold, Effervescent Entanglements, From the Top Rope, Starring as God, Feats of Strength.

8/17/08- Pick a bird, any bird.

Pick a bird from this guide at Cornell, learn something interesting about that bird, and place that interesting fact in a first person narrative poem. Use the fact as a metaphor. Have fun. Whee!

8/12/08- Titles.

That Emerald Glow, Jumping the Shark, Populous, What’s your genre?, Seizing, You can’t start a poem “And out of the darkness”, Shoebox Notebooks, Serendipitous.

8/10/08- First Dance

Write a short piece about an imaginary first dance at a wedding (or a real one) in which something especially ironic/metaphoric happens. Be it about your newborn baby girl’s eventual future marriage, an ex-girlfriend/wife/husband/boyfriend, brother/sister, your parents, whatever.

08/08/08-All things are aligned. Working backwards on a multi-faceted poem

Today’s exercise, in honor of 08/08/08, is to write about a very odd coincidence. Come up with that odd coincidence, and have three people involved. Or four or more might be more fun. Find something that they could have all done (or done similarly… could be eat at jack in the box, could be that they’ve broken their finger, could be they were in elementary school detention together) and work that into the various little narrative threads that lead your characters together again.

7/31/08- A title and a color. Write a poem with this title, and illustrating at least once this color.

Title: Not long after the Beginning.

Color: Green.

7/30/08- A time and a syllabic count.

Write a poem that occurs at sunset (then end of a sunset particularly) and has 7 syllables each line. If you want more, include an image of a beaten up car that’s only like 4 years old, but trashed.

7/26/08- A sound and a rhyme.

Include the sound of someone chewing in a poem (and try to make it a unique description) and include the rhyme (not necessarily an end rhyme, but keep the words within 2 lines of each other) Sling / Aging.

7/24/08- An image and an insect.

Take an image of a green traffic light in a misty-rain, and include a small flying insect. Come up with one more image on your own which connects the two images on a thematic level somehow. For instance:

Light’s aura green
above the stoplight
like a halo. Windows
down now, I hope
the mosquito who
flew two blocks
in my Buick from
the slaughterhouse
as I smoked the fourth
cigarette and slipped
my feet out of my shoes
and listened to Bob Seger,
tapping my steering wheel
in time with thumbs,
then landed on my freshly
anti-bacterialized hand
with a little trail of red
where it walked me home.

7/22/08- Pinnacles

Write a poem not titled “Pinnacle,” but somehow based around the idea of pinnacle as a penultimate destination… the peak. Use a nice, detailed metaphor to get across some sort of a point about the idea of a defined pinnacle of something.

7/21/08- Titles:

Back in the Electric Chair, Loofah, Incorrigible, Diminutive in Almost Every Way, Scarecrow’s Elegy, Lullaby in a Cheap Motel, Whispering Sonnet in my Ear, Idol Hands.

7/18/08- Titles

Forgetting Again, Bright Nights in _____, Flammable Material, Considering the factors, Indignant Geese, Something like the Past, Not to Prove a Point, Bell, Contiguousness, Antigone at the Mall, Jane Eyre-Schmane Eyre.

7/16/08- Titles:

Crowned, Palm Sunday, Before Monday Night Football, After the clouds dissipated, Generic, Caught Somewhere in the Middle, Once Again, One-Two-Three-Not-it.

7/14/08- Ttitles:

Vibes, Internal Sun Dial, Until the water dried, jumbles of wire, Happenstance and misfortune, In the squiggly line of fire, Death by Nerf, At the Promenade with a sack of quarters, Knocked Down and Flipped Over

7/13/08-More abritrary rules

Rhyme scheme AABCBC. However many stanzas you want. Include three lines which each have a triple repetition of the /A/ sound. That’s a lot of Ayyyyy’s, so try to space out the lines a little. Also, make a literary allusion in one way or another.

7/12/08- Arbitrary Rules

Rhyme Scheme: ABCBAA, for three staanzas, the end rhymes remain the same sound assignment in all three stanzas. Include at least one 2-syllable line in each stanza to spice of the rhythm.And also include the color brown somewhere. That’s all, have at it.

7/11/08

Set a brief poem in 7-11. Late night, or early morning. Describe some small things, you know, come up with metaphors or parallels. Think Campbell McGrath’s Capitalist Poem #5.

7/10/08- Circles.

Write a poem that concentrates itself into a circle. I’m not necessarily endorsing concrete poetry, but you, as the poet, consciously concern the poem’s imagery with circles (in other words, everything you describe should be a circle, or contain a circle), and thematically keep the idea of “Full Circle” in your mind also. Go as far as you can (even if you’re trying to do this without drawing particular attention to the circles, push it a little bit mroe than you normally would). Get loopy with it.

7/9/08- Assorted Jelly Beans.

Write a piece that describes the following scene as the frame tale/an extended metaphor: Counting jelly beans from a ‘guessing jar’ type of thing, to determine who guessed the closest.

7/7/08- One year later.

Take the same event you picked for “The next morning” and now write a poem about one year later. Whether you write it from the same perspective as the first poem is completely up to you. Or you could just inhabit the world of that previous poem, a year after whatever it was that happened to change the world (or person’s life). Try to include as many good images in the poem as you can. At least one really good image every three lines (two would be better).

7/5/08- The next morning…

Write a piece about the aftermath of a large event. Either a party, a natural disaster, an accident, whatever. Think about something big, and think about the next morning for one of the people involved, after they’ve been allowed to think it over, and are coming to terms with consequences, or still glowing about positive consequences, whatever.

7/3/08- Photographs.

Write a poem that includes the description of at least five photos, (fictional or real) which tells the progression of a relationship (husband/wife, father/son, mother/daughter whatever) merely through the visuals. For today’s poem try to remember Williams: “No ideas but in things.” Describe the distances between people, the time difference between photos, the looseness of held hands (or tightness) things that can show a growing apart or a coming together. Arrange the photos in an order so that the narrative of the relationship is clear. Have at it!

7/2/08- Scientific Fact poem.

Find a cool scientific fact, for example, the spray from Victoria Falls is so large that it enables a rainforest to grow around it. Take either that or some other fact and come up with way to use that as an extended metaphor, perhaps for an aspect of someone you know.

7/1/08- Incendiary

Write a short piece that centers around an impromptu, but ceremonial-style burning of something. Be it a group of friends burning a book written by someone they don’t like, a couple burning a car for insurance fraud, or one of a hundred thousand other fires that people could, whether as a joke or seriously, turn in to a ceremonial event.

6/29/08- Pick a title, any title.

Pick a blah blah blah. You get the idea. Write a poem using one of the suggested titles. Have at it: Limited Connectivity, Rain Shoes, Flooded by Fluorescent Light, In a Tree Stump, Following, Effervescent.

6/27/08- Pick a title, any title.

Pick a title and write a piece using that title from the following list of titles to pick your title from, title: Fill in the Blank, Clusterf*ck, The Coil of the Cord, Kerf, Flannel and Satin, With Apologies to ___, Oscillating.

6/26/08- Pick a title, any title.

Pick a title and write a poem using that title from the following list: Experts in their Field, Boxed in, And then the light extinguished again, Chartreuse, Definitely Not.

6/24/08- Try this combination

Use the image of a birthday cake with a footprint, a partially melted straw, and the taste of marinara sauce in a poem that utilizes the /A/ sound (clay day may ray face delay) as often as possible (but don’t use it so much that it’s ridiculous).

6/23/08- Back to free verse!

OK, enough rhyming and dumb metrics or syllabics or whatever you’ve chosen for the ILHCA, let’s write us some free verse, YEE-HAW! Use one of the following images and include at least two mentions of exact times (as in 11:11, 2:30 etc).

Images: A really old Converse All-Star (just one), a house fern with three black leafs, a black and brown cat, a broken Corona bottle, a book that got wet and dried in a wave shape.

6/21/08- No-sided conversation.

Write a short scene of someone waiting for another person, and watching two other people have a conversation through a window. As the character watches have him voice both of the characters almost like a “Who’s Line is it Anyway” bit, but have the dialog hint at something more serious. Don’t outright reveal where the person is, and have that be a sort of plot revelation at the end of the scene to tie it all (the mock dialog and omniscient hints) together as a unit.

6/20/08- Happy Birthday Me!

Hey, it’s my birthday, hooray me for being born! Somebody make me the heroic protagonist in a short-short! Or, not necessarily me, but name your protagonist Zeb and since it’s my birthday, try to work something birthday party related, even if it’s just in the background. Yes, stroke my ego. Please. To make this a little more of an exercise, try to incorporate a little known fact about the animal kingdom and have it disputed (at least briefly) in the dialog. Whether someone is saying the fact isn’t true, as in the trivia-spouting character made it up, or admits that it may be called a fact, but it’s actually not true. And as always, try to have one thematically-linked parallel in the piece… an extra layer beyond the easy, surface story.

6/19/08- Intoxicated.

Write a first person vignette (but please, for your own sakes, make it interesting) that is meant to mimic the experience of being intoxicated. How you do this is your own choice, but options include utilizing whitespace, extra punctuation, sensations etc. Include a short conversation in which the intoxicated person is, or definitely isn’t able to hold their own because they’re too ‘gone’ if you will.

6/18/08- Dialog only short-short.

Can you write a dialog only short-short that has two distinctive voices? There are many ways to alter mode of speech that will keep the voices separate. Terseness, slang, vernacular. Have the title of the piece set the scene as the only non-dialog.

6/17/08- Integrating poetry into prose.

Try to integrate poetry into prose in the form of either a) music, as in lyrics heard in the background of a scene, and at one point stealing the scene- give the song/scene relationship some irony that doesn’t feel heavy-handed if you can; or b) poetry written on a wall, and if you don’t have a better idea, in the bathroom. Make sure the narrator or protagonist has some sort of a ‘want’ and there is conflict… you know, try to make it a short story and not just a vignette this time. If ya feel like it.

6/13/08- Perspective.

This could actually help with the ILHCA if you’re working on it. Write a short pieces of prose from the perspective on an inanimate object. Need more direction? Make it something hanging on the wall in the living room. Comment on odd behavior of the human (and possibly pet) occupants. Set the piece just before a move. Perhaps include trepidations about if the narrator will make the movie (will be left behind or damaged in the truck perhaps). It doesn’t have to be a full story, just a little vignette to get the different perspective juices going. Try to think of what that object might sound like. For instance, in my manuscript Saving the Drowned I include a section narrated by a Bonsai Tree in the main character’s dining room, and I tried to make him very contemplative and zen… have fun. It’s nice to get outside of yourself sometimes.

6/12/08- The backstory.

Today’s exercise is to write the backstory for either a cartoon (or fictional) spokesperson for a product (like the Geico Gecco, Tony the Tiger, Snuggles…) or about the invention of a common product. Have some fun with it and get a little absurd.

6/11/08- Prosey prosey prosey.

Since the Heroic Crown Affair is going now, the firestarters will be taking a little backseat. I’ll still try to update with short writing exercises, and prose exercises mostly to shake out the meter for the day, if you’re shooting for that heroic crown. Today’s exercise is to write a conversation formatted like an AIM conversation, but make it sound like a professorial thesis. Very stilted language. Include as much irony in the actual dialog too, so the formatting/language set irony mirrors what’s happening in the story. Form matching content.

6/8/08- Pick a title, any title week.

Titles: Fanny Pack, The elements are against us, Until the Spark Catches, Kindness Beyond Reason, Squalor and Other Such Downers, Winterfresh.

6/7/08- Pick a title, any title week.

Titles: On the cracked tile, Poppy seeds, Indifferent to the current climate, Scruples, Haptic, The little bit of black, Happenstance.

6/6/08- Pick a title, any title week.

Titles: Lunar, Knight, Bishop, The Sin Eater, Back by Popular Demand, Epicenter, What was said on the porch, My Favorite Effigy.

6/4/08- Pick a title, any title week.

Titles: Peach Pit, Before the Rain, Green Sequins, Amalgamation, To the owner of the building:, Please Apply Within.

6/2/08- Pick a title, any title week.

Titles: After the Apple Collapsed, Back by Popular Demand, Insouciance, Arriving at the terminal two hours late, Aggregate, Like Hershey’s Kisses melting.

(here’s an example I just wrote)

–

Like Hershey’s Kisses melting

we fanned out on the futon with oscillating
fans fanning our sweat-slicked-limbs. Without
fans we’d likely dissolve on the spot, seep
through futon and leak downstairs through
bathroom fan which helps nothing but the cause
of racket, still theirs is always hammering away.

These concrete boxes, divided like a poor
Jamaican girl’s dollhouse, the realistic doll
studio apartment without equiptment to heat
or cool air, only fans to pass the heated air
in an oblong current around the room like
a tetherball slipping just above our fingertips,
so clear we can make out bits of dust we’d
seen pass fifteen seconds before, just cruising by.
—
5/31/08- Pick a title, any title week.

Titles: My favorite piece of Americana, Afterglow, Flippant, Drawing lines in the sand, Pink dreams of Spam.

5/29/08- Arse Poetica

Write a satirical Ars Poetica. As in, write a ridiculously bad, tongue in cheek poem about writing poetry. Use at least one literary term incorrectly.

5/27/08- An image three times.

Find an image, or use this one: a twenty dollar bill torn in half under a bus bench. OK, show the image itself as vividly as you can. Then you’ll pull back and show how that item came to be what it is where it is, (for the 1/2 bill possibly the bus driver couldn’t accept the bill for the potential passenger who tore it in half out of frustration) . Then back up even further and show that image and story’s affect on the narrator, however small. Show the narrator considering the image and story one last time, and end the poem on a minute (as in tiny, not 60 seconds) detail of the image that can represent the ending sentiment, proud, sad, moody, vigilant or whatever.

5/26/08- From a Pop Song, poetic gold.

Take a popular song that you had a small (or great) secret liking of, and write a short narrative that includes in two sections at least one line of lyrics. This can be a flash fiction (maybe with the song playing in the background) or a narrative poem, your choice. For either, though, try to include as many /t/ and /k/ sounds as you can. That’s something best honed in the second draft.

5/23/08- A color, a syllabic count and an assonant recurrence.

Color) Charcoal grey.
Syllabic Count) Each line should be 7 syllables.
Recurring Vowel Sound) /A/ As in: Apes may play with a grey blade some day.

5/22/08- An image, a rhyme scheme and a anaphoric phrase.

Image) An overripe tomato with a half-dollar sized bruise.
Rhyme Scheme) AABCBC / BBCACA / CCABAB
Anaphoric Phrase) (phrase that begins at least 3 lines in a row) “Before the”

5/21/08- Happy Birthday AJ!

Today, in honor of my little bro’s birthday, you should write a short piece about a younger sibling’s birthday. See the festivities through the condescending eyes of a teenager, but also include a description of that sibling’s look of joy after opening a present. Include the smell of vanilla in there if you can.

5/20/08- Extended Metaphor that isn’t a season.

Write a poem today which uses an implicit extended metaphor (exactly like it sounds, an extended- as in like 4 or more lines- metaphor- something representing something else because of certain similar characteristics). So compare someone to something without saying that there’s a someone necessarily involved. IE- Know in your head that you’re comparing two things, but only show outright that you are describing the one thing. Drop small hints, things that can link it to a person, but aren’t definitively a person… if that makes sense. So, for example, if you’re comparing someone to, say the bathroom in April. Bear with me, this is on the spot composition:

April, before Spring Cleaning grips me,
the bathroom sits like a dirty robe
in the corner. Dust mites and wisps
of shrugged off strands of hair.
Excitement has left the once clean,
well-kept bathroom during the winter,
the slow days. Days I almost feared
being alone. But the window opens
to pink blossoms on the tree I never
learned the name of. The one that
doesn’t make me wonder why I’m
wasting my time with him, but just
gives me a million little spirit fingers
from each pink petal on his limbs,
who doesn’t watch Sportscenter
for hours at a time, despite the obvious
repetition. The obvious repetition.
The obvious cleaning, bleaching,
scouring of the winter’s migration
of mildew from dark hidden places
to the wide open. It advertises its
relationship with me, it’s stale,
lecherous tie to the one who pays
rent and buys groceries. The obvious
repetition. The bleach. It’s under
the counter. It’s ready. The pink
blossom fingers are dangling so close
to my sill I can feel them breathe
that sweet pink breath of April.

(Don’t know why I channeled a female voice suddenly, but, you get the idea. I don’t think I needed to ever state during the poem that it’s about a woman sick of a stale relationship in April, deciding to break up with her boyfriend. It’s implicit.)

5/19/08- Flash fiction at the playground.

Write a flash fiction that revolves around an incident at the playground. This could be a fight, witnessing something for the first time as a child (drug deal, flasher, shooting, whatever) or even being witnessed by children doing something not too cool. Be sure to focus on concrete details, and to include at least one sound and one taste.

5/18/08- An image and an endword pattern.

This is a riff off a sestina. Write a 5×5 poem. 5 stanzas of 5 lines each. The endwords (words at the end of the line) should have this pattern: 1) ABCDE 2) ECDAB 3) DABEC 4) BDECA 5) CEABD. Include an image of a cockroach in 2 different stanzas.

5/17/08- A poem, a flash fiction and a monologue.

Find one image and use it as the subject of a poem, a flash fiction, and a dramatic monologue. The narratives should not be the same, and if possible, to stretch the literary muscles a little, try to use the image in a positive light, and try to use the image in a negative, foreboding sort of light. Two sample images: A cardinal sitting on lilac bush; a partially crushed Bud Light can. The poem should be at least ten lines, the flash fiction should be 250-500 words, and the monologue (which is basically just a character’s speech without any non-dialog) which can be used, perhaps, in a later larger work. Fun. Enjoy.

5/16/08 - Sequentially Yours: the poem sequence exercise.

Write a poem sequence of at least 4 12-lined poems. Have each poem describe someone’s morning leading up to something either traumatic, dramatic, amazing, whatever. Some sort of event from the perspectives of 4 different people, and then follow up with one quatrain that ties it all up. Mention the people whose pov’s were used in the earlier poems.

5/15/08 - Sound Fun!

Today’s poem will be free verse, with varying line lengths. Have at least one line be only one word long, so be sure that word earns its place. Include the sound of an acoustic guitar, the sound of change clinking together, the sound of a shoe stopping abruptly on tile, the sound of someone chewing very loudly near you (give it a good simile), and at least one very well described “click” sound.

5/14/08- Frame Tale madness!

Write a piece of short fiction which is like a babushka . A story about telling a story which involves telling a story. Whether you want to use formatting devices to separate the tales (italics, indentations, right justified, center justified, parenthesis, brackets, whatever) it’s up to you, but have at least 4 little anecdotes attempted… a fun idea might be to start a story and get interrupted. Enjoy!

5/13/08 - Flash Fiction Fun!

Your character’s name is your middle name. Place that character in a situation you’ve been in recently where something could have gone horribly wrong, and have the horribly wrong situation pan out. As the story closes (at under 1000 words) have the character imagine what it would’ve been like if the horrible (traumatic, whatever) thing didn’t happen. Think of something mundane you did soon after that near miss, and have your character imagine, longingly for that mundane thing. Have fun throwing your character to the sharks.

5/12/08

Today’s theme will be”A Reading Interrupted” and that can be, but doesn’t have to be the poem title (title your poem whatever you want, who’m I to tell you that? Your mom? If my mom told me what to title a poem I’d totally, well, consider it) . Write a piece that includes the narrative of someone trying to read something, (book, newspaper, sign, cereal box, whatever) but their reading is continually interrupted, and it’s beginning to anger them. You decide if that person goes postal or just UPS (and moves along…) or if they do neither. You decide. For an additional challenge include the words “Burnt” “Endive” “Possible” “Garnish” and “Pencil.”

5/11/08- Mother’s Day!!!

Write a short narrative piece that takes place on Mothers Day, in which things keep happening to stop you from calling/visiting your mom. You can get absurdist if you’d like, or dramatic, or somewhere in between. For an additional challenge also try to work in the words “Halved” “Epigram” and “Godiva” and an image of a screwdriver.

5/9/08- A color, a smell, a place and an inconvenience.

Incorporate all four of these items in your piece today:
Color: Beige
Smell: Pine trees
Place: Rural Wisconsin
Inconvenience: No cell phone reception

5/8/08- A color, a taste, a last name and an inconvenience.

Incorporate all four of these items in your piece today:
Color: Purple
Taste: Sour
Last Name: O’Neil
Inconvenience: Rush Hour Traffic.

5/7/08 -A color, a taste, a first name and a craving.

Incorporate all four of these items in your piece today:
Color: Red
Taste: Salty
First name: Elle
Craving: Spaghetti

5/6/08 -Slowing things down exercise.

Write a scene or a prose poem in which you describe what at least five things are doing in super slow motion.For instance:

Ten Minutes After Tommy Called with “The News”

A pot of water just about to release the first bubbles of boil. His right hand slowly swatted at that one fly. Outside a sparrow adjusts an orange straw it’d just added to its nest. The telephone sat. That’s all the telephone did. The bearer of miscarriage news. Tommy, at the other end of the connection must have his arms shrinkwrapped around Fay. A streaked black mountain range on her upper cheeks. Dots of dust ride the room’s currents like millions of millionaire jetpack-wearing superheroes. So small. Like most things.

5/5/08 It’s rhyme-time!

OK, here’s a toughy for you guys. Here are the rules:

1) The poem will have an ABABA rhyme scheme,
2) The poem must be at least 3 stanzas long.
3) The first word (or second if you absolutely need an article) of every A-end worded line begins with an assonant pair (bake, paid, weigh are assonant matches) for the B-end word. Whatever the end syllable is for that stanza. So, it would be like: “I don’t hate / waiting for the time / I can replicate / fate from a cat to a guy.” But do it better, and try not to repeat words, like I did with I.
4) Fewer than half of the lines may have any sort of pause at their end. That’s right, enjambment for at least half of the lines of your rhymed poem. You can do it.
5) It has to tell some sort of a narrative.

5/4/08- Underwater Poem exercise

Imagine that one day you discover in the bath or pool or ocean or whatever, that you can suddenly breathe underwater. How do you use your new skill? Do you explore underwater realms? Do you come up with a creative underwater heist? Or do you go back to normal life and only break out the talent when you’re drunk and boisterous? Be sure to describe something green that you see underwate, as well as see some form of life that you come up with a cool simile for (that compares to something in land-life) as well as a description of the sensation of being underwater (the pressure) as opposed to being surrounded by air.

5/3/08- Ten Words

Write a poem using the following ten words: Populate, growl, cull, opt, flay, orange, habit, fudge, scrounge, aerate. If you want another challenge, include an image of a garbage can, and try to incorporate a lot of /A/ sounds (stay out of my way, or you’ll pay, listen to what I say).

5/2/08- 3 exercises

1) Write a sestina using among the end words”Threw” and “Under.”

2) Write a narrative prose poem about someone doing something while wearing headphones (ipod, cassette player, .45 in a shag carpeted room, you decide).

3) Go to the grocery store and buy a vegetable you’ve never eaten. write down five adjectives, and five similes for the look of the object. Then write down two (unique) adverbs of how you’d imagine the vegetable must feel. Cook the vegetable (or eat at least a bite of it raw) Come up with three brief descriptions of the taste (think texture, think juiciness etc) and if you can, think of a similar vegetable in taste (but not necessarily looks). Use at least one of each of those descriptions, and come up with a short narrative poem (or flash fiction) about that vegetable, be it a farcicalpiece about their secret lives when humans aren’t around, or a serious poem about buying ’something new’ at the grocery store after a particularly traumatic event. You decide).

5/1/08- Spring’s sprung

Today’s poem will be involving nature during, well, now. Spring. May First. You don’t have to mention that specifically. Think Spring. Think Spring until you see something ‘natural’. Be it lilacs, new leaves, sunshowers, birds returning, or for those of us without any real seasonal change, maybe talk about clicking by Spring Training on TV, and the announcers could mention something about spring in that baseball team’s hometown. Whatever. Write a spring poem. If you want more challenge, include the words vaporize, gully, padlock, finale and escalate.

4/29/08- Ode to the lesser considered body parts.

Think a knuckle, a spleen, a pinky toe, sideburns, freckles/moles etc. Pick two body parts you wouldn’t normally think of as ‘romantic’ and write a love poem about those attributes of your subject, whoever that may be.

4/28/08- Time

Look at the time right now. That’s when your poem is set. Figure out a reason that time could be significant to someone of the opposite sex as you, with either twenty years of life added, or subtracted from your age. And that’s the who, the when and part of the why. You figure out the rest.

4/27/08- The Revenge Poem exercise!

Take a small instance of being wronged, being cut off in traffic or someone being snippy in the bank line, and imagine the most absurd, horrible torture you can for that person. Think Rube Goldberg with this one. Like:

You, who is somehow unable to move your finger two inches to signal before cutting me off, I hope your cat attacks a rat that’s just migrated from Estonia and has the Bubonic plague, that flea hops onto your cat and infects you, and just as you’re about to hit on the cute girl at work a pustule bursts into her Ketel One Cosmopolitan, and a little bit of the yellow smudges her glasses and she throws up in your face. And across the room your wife, the one who cheated on you three times, just so you know, has been watching you flirt, and refuses to be at your bedside in the final moments of your pain-wracked life. Mostly, because you didn’t offer the ‘thanks’ wave after I had to brake for your merge. I was watching. Be sure to pet your cat a little extra. Just in case.

4/26/08- Random grab bag of images!

Take two of the following images (or more) and write a poem using them. If you want a challenge include the words Triumph, Generic, Torrid and Sleight as well.

1) A calculator with a cracked LCD screen
2) A small waterfall
3) A sliver of a bar of soap
4) An upside down Yield sign
5) A paper plate torn in half
6) Three cracked peanut shells in an ashtray
7) The “:)” (smiley face)
Smell of home (whatever that would be)

4/24/08- Mathday!

Since today’s the 24th of April08, and 2×4=08, in your short piece today include someone trying to do a simple math problem (or not so simple) and had someone else correct them with the right answer. It could be a logic problem if you want, trying to figure out how many “pirate-sized” shots (2oz) out of a bottle while at the liquor store… whatever you want.

4/22/08- Super flash fiction!

And that doesn’t mean like, micro 50 words or less, it means, superhero! In this flash fiction include a brief scene with a demotivated superhero. Regardless if it’s real or not (or even if superheroes are real or not) let us know why the superhero is depressed, and how it affects your personal/professional life.

4/21/08- Write a geeky poem.

Everybody gets geeky about one thing, even if it’s something macho and tough like weight lifting. Whatever. There is one thing that you know more than the average bear about, so write a poem using that inside knowledge. Whether you want to explain anything, or take an ‘elite geek’ ‘Nick Burns’ type of approach is up to you.

4/20/08- The absurd proposal.

Write a piece of flash fiction that involves an absurdly complicated wedding proposal. It could either work perfectly or be a disaster, whatever. Maybe make it Rube Goldberg-esque.

4/17/08- Grab bag day!

Use at least two of these items in your piece:

A Hershey’s Kiss, a pigeon with a broken wing, an orange maple leaf lying on freshly mown green grass, an ABAB rhyme scheme, the anaphora of “heaps”, a cracked concrete step (stair), off-rhyme of newly/toothy, a phrase that utilizes three instances of assonance without a dissonant vowel syllable, use the consecutive assonant triplets in every other line of your poem, break at least two compound words at the line break (like WCW’s “wheel/barrow”), write a tritina.

4/16/08- Candy ode.

This one’s fairly straight forward: write an ode to your favorite kind of candy. Even if you have to make it up. No real formal structures, write it free verse if you want, a paradelle if you really want.

4/15/08- An erotic poem.

I knew, ewwy, right? Well, try to write a poem that involves a little erotica, not necessarily the whole poem, but something. Avoid tired phrasing and lame metaphors (try to avoid what we like to call the futbol syndrome. Acorn Review members will know what I mean) and keep the poem under 16 lines if you can.

4/14/08- Poem from a TV show.

If you have any tv shows on dvd, pick an episode you especially like. Then pick a small character in the episode, perhaps some sort of an outsider. That will be the perspective for the poem. Try to explain the situation/events as that character would explain it to their friend/mom/grandchild/subordinate etc. Think House. Think X-Files. Think Arrested Development. But mostly, think for yourself, for someone else. Word.

4/13/08- An exercise involving future speculation, 3 words and a famous historical figure.

That’s right, speculation about the future (distant, or near) use the words: invigorate, hapless, and terrestrial, and also include some famous historical figure (Could be Ben Franklin, Louis XIV, Marie Curie, or even someone less historic and more famous, like River Phoenix, James Dean, Elvis etc). As poets and fiction writers (or whatever you choose to call yourself) you absolutely must be able to pull seemingly disparate things into an order of some sort, or theme. A central theme (or themes) are very important to any piece of writing, they help keep the reader avidly reading, but also feeling like they know what’s going on before you surprise them. This challenge isn’t terribly extensive, but it is a framework to work with. What can you come up with?

4/12/08- Four images.

Base a poem off of one of these images, or more. Or write four poems. Whatever works for you.

1) A crushed blue plastic cup half buried in drying mud.

2) Dead ivy on a brick wall.

3) A corroded AA battery.

4) A field of sunflowers under dark grey clouds.

4/11/08- An exercise in terseness

Take a poem of yours that you only kinda like. One that, maybe, tries to do too much, or doesn’t quite have the proper tension. Whatever. Count the words. Take that number and divide it by two. That’s how many words the poem will become. Take the number of lines, divide it by three, that’s how many lines you will cut. Especially look at prepositions and articles when you’re cutting, and any images or peripheral things (not the central theme) that don’t add their syllable’s weight when compared to the best images/themes.

4/10/08- A writing exercise about Vernacular/speech patterns/slang.

Write a piece of conversation in which one person continually corrects another person for speaking ‘improperly’ despite the subject matter being very, very immoral. The immoral is glossed over, but the slang just kills the second person. Be it a crime, sexual act, blasphome, whatever, something relatively bad (remember, these are characters in your piece of fiction, not you, so don’t be entirely afraid of the first person).

4/9/08- A Perspective writing exercise

For this short piece of prose or poetry, the persona for the piece is someone of the opposite sex. Find something in their behavior that you find completely inexplicable. Think of three possible reasons for that particular “thing” whether it be something about makeup, nutcups, tampons or jock itch, whatever. Come up with three possible reasons, then two more, ridiculous reasons. For instance, that a nut cup is actually a mind control device used by aliens to feed more of the young boy’s thinking power into his genitals in order to insure the human race continues to procreate and provide entertainment for the Galaxy on their reality TV show (Or, don’t steal the end from South Park, either way).

Format your piece like someone of the opposite sex talking to someone else of the opposite sex about her/ his husband/ wife/ girlfriend/ boyfriend/ brother/ sister/ get it yet?/ anything’s perception of why they do that one weird thing they do, and explain, laughingly the real crazy reason. Have fun!

4/8/08- A Thirty minute novel exercise

In thirty minutes or less, write an outline for a novel. Doesn’t need to be long at all, but come up with 1) a plot- including ten relevant plot points, which can be long or a couple words, 2) a setting and 3) come up with a main character with:a) a name, b) one prominent (and being utterly unremarkable can be a prominent) facial feature, c) one nervous habit, d) one somewhat unique phrase that they’ll say at least three times, and e) one past relationship’s ending that will be mentioned/described.

In the end of the thirty minutes, you have an outline for a novel. And whether you write a single word more of that depends on you, how much you like your idea. But, I will tell you that if you take the exercise seriously you’ll find at least one thing that could make its way into a poem and improve it. Having that much of a novel outlined can also dramatically improve the enjoyment of writing (depending on the person) as you know where you’re going and where you’ve been, like Arnold Friend (anagram “An Old Fiend”) from Joyce Carol Oates. Some people will be repulsed by the idea, find it a false structure that will inhibit their writing. Those people, well, probably aren’t reading this for one, but for two, can simply write this and erase it. The idea is to dive into the story. It’s like jumping into a pool. It’s all or nothing for only a minute, then it can be back onto the deck sunning with the other poets. Word.

4/7/08

For this exercise, write a prose poem that is at least 5 lines (on the screen, normal font) long, but only 2 sentences. Just for kicks, also include one bird name, and something styrofoam.

4/6/08: For those who missed out on the 2-day contest sign up, today’s exercise is the same words for the CV2 contest. If anyone writes a poem using these words, please send them in for the alternate 2-day poem page I’ll be posting Monday.

Use these ten words (no alterations at all, plural, tense, nothing. It has to be exactly like it is here [other than capitalization] ): Vessel, Filament, Proof, Article, Thorax, Wrench, Buckle, Sienna, Rattle, and Nervous. Line limit is 48 lines.

4/5/08: 10 words

In honor of the CV2 2 day contest, here are ten words (different) to try your hand at writing a poem with: Torment, escalate, lewd, swivel, blown, evidence, palpate, screw, kept, and finally, skitter.

4/4/08= 1/8.

Write a short piece in which a character is trying to do a math problem in their head, but they keep getting interrupted at first by friends, but then by random strangers, to the point where the character realizes that it’s strange how often they’re interrupted.

4/3/08- April third indifference…

whatever.

Write a piece about someone very unimpassioned. Lackadaisical. Even though absurdly interesting things are happening around him/her.

4/2/08- April second, intense calm…

Write a short poem using ripples as a metaphor. Whether it be ripples in a pool, the ocean, a bathtub, someone’s stomach, their makeup, the fabric of their shirt. Ripples can be anywhere… find a parallel and work that metaphor, yo!

4/1/08- April Fool’s day, madness!

It’s, why it’s pandemonium. Hysteria! (or Histeria) but, bring the spirit of April Fool’s into a new piece. Have someone play a joke on someone else, either elaborate and funny, or simple and hurtful. Some people take April Fool’s Day very seriously, and some people are just jerks. Either way: Have one character play some sort of a prank on the narrator (or narrator pull the trick) and it can’t go well, otherwise where’s the story? Perhaps a huge overreaction. Just try it already, I need to get back to putting buckets of water over every door in the house.

3/31/08 - Last-day-of-March Madness!

I’m not terribly sure what that means, but there it is. Write a piece of flash fiction (under 500 words) with an unreliable narrator who claims to be something outrageous: an alien, a rhinocerous, an oak leaf, (in Me and Lennie and Sue the narrator is a “tooth”) whatever. Have that narrator tells us a little story in which he/she takes an unbelievably optimistic perspective on something pretty terrible. Pick anything: Huge car accident, someone being diagnosised with a disease, government conspiracies, whatever. Have fun with it!

3/30/08

Board game: (Include the playing of this board game in your piece, perhaps as a parallel for another event in your narrator/characters lives) Monopoly.

Syllabics: Write in 5 syllable lines.

Conversation Couple: (Write a snippet of conversation between these unlikely duos) Professor of Mythology and a dirty south gangsta rapper.

3/27/08

Board game: (Include the playing of this board game in your piece, perhaps as a parallel for another event in your narrator/characters lives) Clue.

Syllabics: Write in alternating 3 and 7 syllable lines.: 3/7/3/7/3/7 etc

Conversation Couple: (Write a snippet of conversation between these unlikely duos) Elvis and JFK in Heaven (or some form of afterlife).

3/26/08

Board game: (Include the playing of this board game in your piece, perhaps as a parallel for another event in your narrator/characters lives) The Game of Life.

Syllabics: Write in 5 syllable lines.

Conversation Couple: (Write a snippet of conversation between these unlikely duos) The ghosts of John Rockefeller and John Wayne Gacy.

3/25/08

Board game: (Include the playing of this board game in your piece, perhaps as a parallel for another event in your narrator/characters lives) Risk.

Syllabics: Write in 7 syllable lines.

Conversation Couple: (Write a snippet of conversation between these unlikely duos) A Boston Red Sox Right Fielder and a Sony Engineer.

3/24/08

Board game: (Include the playing of this board game in your piece, perhaps as a parallel for another event in your narrator/characters lives) Sorry.

Syllabics: Write in couplets with syllable counts 6, and 9 respectively.

Conversation Couple: (Write a snippet of conversation between these unlikely duos) A dominatrix and an H&R Block Accountant.

3/21/08

Three images, a rhyme and a famous inventor:

A Phillips head screwdriver, A oxidizing penny, and a sweatstained baseball cap; blot / knot; The Wright Brothers

3/19/08

Three images, a rhyme and a famous inventor:

An old, almost empty tube of sunblock, a stack of empty pizza boxes, and a still-green lemon; grizzly / miss me; Reverend Samuell Henshall (inventor of the Corkscrew)

3/18/08

Three images, a rhyme and a famous inventor:

A palm tree, a rainbow in an oily puddle, and a burn in the shape of a pigeon; Edison/medicine; George de Menstral (inventor of Velcro)

3/16/08

Image) A molding tangerine.
Form) A Rondeau. Here’s how to write a rondeau.
5 Words) Behave, bevel, jar, pewter, engine.
Assonance) (make it a point to include as many of these vowel sounds as you can) /O/ as in “Those shows ‘fo close no snow.”

3/15/08

Image) A shattered cd.
Form) A Sestina. Here’s how to write a sestina.
5 Words) Latent, aged, halt, clammy, epigraph.
Assonance) (make it a point to include as many of these vowel sounds as you can) /A/ as in “Graves gave knaves they bait.”
3/13/08

Image) A crushed beer can on the sidewalk.
Form) An acrostic poem a word spelled with the first letters, and also a word using the last letter in order.
5 Words) Popular, enigmatic, asp, hew, corrode.
Assonance) (make it a point to include as many of these vowel sounds as you can) /I/ as in “My time might by Midas might?” (don’t need the consonance of the m’s though.)

3/12/08

Image) A rotting windfall apple.
Form) A 7 stanza-ed pantoum.
5 Words) Escalate, interpret, cache, heap, cooed.
Assonance) (make it a point to include as many of these vowel sounds as you can) /oo/ as in “Do you do dues soon?”

3/11/08

Image) An oscillating fan
Form) Sequence of 4 cinquains (remember, it’s not syllables but stresses you count 1/2/3/4/1. It’s a metrical form).
5 Words) Poach, clementine, clove, cluster, tarmac.
Assonance) (make it a point to include as many of these vowel sounds as you can) /O/ as in “No Joe Schmoe knows those soaps.”

3/10/08

Image) A digital clock at 11:11
Form) An English Sonnet
5 Words) Helpful, energetic, jutting, harried, boxy.
Assonance) (make it a point to include as many of these vowel sounds as you can) /A/ as in “same day rates stay.”

3/09/08- Rhyme Scheme Week goes ballistic!

This week, not only do you have to rhyme endwords, but each line’s first word will also correspond to a rhyme.

Rhyme Scheme) A–A/A–B/B–A/B–B/ (repeating)

3/08/08- Rhyme Scheme Week!!!