NaPoWriMo #6 – Food

Welcome to Writing Prompt Pit Stop! Here we are at Day 6 of NaPoWriMo and the challenge today was to write a poem about food. Now, that’s a deep and tasty subject. I was going to write a lot longer poem, but again am running short on time. So, I liked writing the Lune form poem on Day 1 and decided to go with another here – using 5 words, 3 words, and 5 words again. I chose one of my all time favorite foods from childhood till now. So, following is my poem “My Favorite Food,” and then the prompt is directly after. Enjoy!

 
My Favorite Food

Aroma eats away my willpower,
entices with slices,
pepperoni, cheese: pizza, everyday please.

The Day 6 prompt:

Write a poem about food. This could be a poem about a particular food, or about your relationship to food in general. Or it could simply be a poem relating an incident that involves food, like David Ignatow’s “The Bagel”. Still not convinced? Perhaps these thirteen food poems will give you some inspiration.

If you get something that you want to share, feel free to post in comments below!

Keep writing!

Lylanne

NaPoWriMo #5 – Heirloom Seeds

Welcome to Writing Prompt Pit Stop! Today is Day 5 of NaPoWriMo, and this was a real challenge to come up with something on this proposed prompt. I almost just opted to go to another site and find another prompt, or just write a poem of my own for day 5. The prompt was to use “heirloom” seeds/plants in poems in some way. I’m not a gardener by any means. I don’t have a green thumb, and never have been interested in taking it up as a hobby. Yes, I do love what gardens produce, and have many memories of my grandma’s garden, and helping her with it – and I confess…I have had a garden here or there in the past of my own…but it’s not a love that I have to have in my life. So, that’s where the internet comes in handy with seed names. I perused the Burpee Seed catalog, and the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange for ideas to work with – finally, here with less than an hour in day 5 left – I have my poem. Below you will find “Fire in the Sky” with all seed names in italics, and then the original prompt follows. Enjoy!
Fire in the Sky

Del Sol,
in a Solar Flash,
Chianti kissed,
the Bashful Ms.
Mars, melted
Coconut Ice
Glaciers, and
moved Candy
Mountains, she
started dreaming
of Big Rainbows
and a future
Sunny Bunch.

Hillbilly Neptune
her former Honey
Bear, Sweetie pie,
for the last Quarter
Century, had other
ideas about her
Super Choice,
vowed a Country
Gentleman’s revenge;

challenged the “Big
Red Ripper,” to an
Iron and Clay rumble,
at next week’s Scarlet
Ohno Revival. A promise
to give the universe
a Cosmic Eclipse –
blinded by a broken heart.

Here is the Day 5 prompt:

Today, I challenge you to spend some time looking at the names of heirloom plants, and write a poem that takes its inspiration from, or incorporates the name of, one or more of these garden rarities. To help you out, here are links to the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and the Baker Creek Seed Company. Also, here’s a hint – tomatoes seem to be prime territory for elaborate names. And who knows, maybe you’ll even find something to plant in your garden!

If you get anything that you’d like to share, please do in the comments below.

Keep writing!

Lylanne

NaPoWriMo #4 – Cruelest Month

Welcome to Writing Prompt Pit Stop! It’s Day 4 of NaPoWriMo already, and I’m still hanging in there. I’m also still following along with the prompts that the NaPoWriMo site is providing. I figure when they’re prompts that inspire something – why look elsewhere? Besides, even if I wanted to look elsewhere, I don’t have time to write to every prompt at this moment…but maybe eventually, I’ll find some to try later on when grading is a little less hectic…I digress. Anyway, the prompt I followed today was to write a poem about “the cruelest month,” and I could say there are a lot that could qualify – but I did settle on one that I could live with – and it is right up there with the cruelest of them all. So, I will post my poem, “The Most Woeful Month,” and then the actual prompt directly after. Enjoy!

The Most Woeful Month

The best is not always saved
for last as December proves
what an unusually cruel month
it can be. Yes, it boasts joy-

fully Christ’s birth, yet charity
and goodwill, are given less
and less, as masses worship
24-hour marketing overkill.

The darkest days arrive, winter
homes here, no surprise –
cuts us short with December solstice.
But it’s the loss that marks the mood:

the month is mean; it’s the end –
the deaths of my grandma on Christmas
Eve eve when I was 12, my beloved
18-year-old cat, the same date, many

many years later. The month I lost
a close aunt to the big C; all catalysts
for me not to see the 12th month
through twinkling bright, idealistic eyes.

Here is prompt # 4 from NaPoWriMo:

In his poem “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot famously declared that “April is the cruelest month.” But is it? I’d have thought February. Today I challenge you to write a poem in which you explore what you think is the cruelest month, and why. Perhaps it’s September, because kids have to go back to school. Or January, because the holidays are over and now you’re up to your neck in snow. Or maybe it’s a month most people wouldn’t think of (like April), but which you think of because of something that’s happened in your life.

If you get anything that you’d like to share – post in the comments below!

Keep writing!

Lylanne

NaPoWriMo #3 – Fan Letter

Welcome to Writing Prompt Pit Stop! It appears that even with all of the other prompt opportunities out there each day, I’ve been sticking with the ones provided by NaPoWriMo – at least so far. I can’t promise that I won’t stray and do something different one of these April days, but here we are on day 3 already and I took their challenge again. This time it was to write a fan letter to a celebrity. I could have easily written to any one of my favorites of all time, such as Kurt Vonnegut, Frank O’Hara, The Beatles, Carly Simon…well the list goes on far and wide…but I felt, today, that those may be too predictable, so I went another way…even though it’s still a fan letter. So, below you will find my poem, “Solving Mysteries,” followed by the prompt that I used. Enjoy!

Solving Mysteries

I barely remember Bess Marvin,
or Ned Nickerson, the token
boy. Alliteration was all
he was good for. Nothing
in my eyes, could top

                                   The Mystery of the 99 Steps,
and adventures with George,
except the 42 volumes
that came before, in my books,

read over and over again;
I spent so many hours
with you, teaching me:
girls could be cool,
                                    independent, smart,
                                    always solving clues –

me dreaming of being like you,
or your hero sidekick; swapping
secrets with my favorite sleuth:
Nancy Drew.

Here’s Prompt #3 from NaPoWriMo:

Today, let’s turn our vision outward, and write fan letters. I challenge you to write a poem in the form of a fan letter to a celebrity. Now, this could be a celebrity from long ago, and needn’t be an actor or singer (though it could be). You could write to George Washington or Dorothy Dandridge, Marie Curie or The Weeknd.

I haven’t mentioned, but if you try something and want to share – go ahead and post it in comments below! See you tomorrow!

Keep Writing,

Lylanne

NaPoWriMo #2 – Family Portrait

Welcome to Writing Prompt Pit Stop! It’s day two of NaPoWriMo and today’s challenge from the same site as I used yesterday, was to use a family portrait as a prompt. So, I’ve written a lot about my parents and grandparents in poems, but not so much about my daughters…so they get a nod here (and they don’t know it yet, but in another poem that will be featured at an event in Indy later this year). I will post my poem, the photo that I took it from, and then the prompt that I used. Here’s my poem, “Circa 1982”:

Circa 1982

A cherished photo
takes me away
from present day
distances – not of hearts
but of miles. The years
measure the most
enduring love filling
my life: two daughters
smiling impishly along with
me, their young mother,
at the camera, so happy
together in Indiana –
in our home, always filled
with laughter and ease,
us three, happy still
photos show throughout
years of growth, and grand-
children – they grow up
so fast. In a flash
of quickly snapped photo-
graphs: my life, my loves,
the best of my past, preserved.

1982

Here is prompt #2:

Write a poem that takes the form of a family portrait. You could write, for example, a stanza for each member of your family. You could also find an actual snapshot of your family and write a poem about it, spending a little bit of time on each person in the picture. You don’t need to observe any particular form or meter.

Have fun writing!

Lylanne

 

 

NaPoWriMo #1 – Lune

Welcome to Writing Prompt Pit Stop! Well, I’m finally getting around to deciding if I’m up for the challenge of NaPoWriMo this year, after spending two years participating in The Found Poetry Review‘s Challenges, I was contemplating not doing anything as “formal” as putting myself out there every day with a poem from a prompt during National Poetry Month – but let’s face it, I can’t pass up a good challenge – especially when it comes to writing, and poems in particular. So, I’m late in the day to the game, but I’m putting myself out there again. I’m going to follow a poem prompt posted somewhere on the challenge boards each day, post my poem here and share the prompt that I used. To kick it off I’m going with NaPoWriMo’s prompt of writing a Lune. In all of my years of writing poems, I’ve never tried this one, as I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of it! So, here’s my poem, “The Truth”:

The Truth

April always guilts a poet:                                                                                                                                 put words on                                                                                                                                        or stand naked and alone.

Here’s the prompt found at napowrimo.net:

This is a sort of English-language haiku. While the haiku is a three-line poem with a 5-7-5 syllable count, the lune is a three-line poem with a 5-3-5 syllable count. There’s also a variant based on word-count, instead of syllable count, where the poem still has three lines, but the first line has five words, the second line has three words, and the third line has five words again. Either kind will do, and you can write a one-lune poem, or write a poem consisting of multiple stanzas of lunes.

Give it a try!!

Keep writing and I’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Lylanne

 

 

 

 

Writing Prompt Pit Stop: PoMoSco #23 Click Trick

Welcome to Writing Prompt Pit Stop! I didn’t get this one completed on the 23rd because of grading and going to auditions for a play that I’m directing, so I had to go back and do it as I plan to get all 30 poems in for the 30 days of National Poetry Month! So for this PoMoSco prompt, we were to use a computer program to create our “erasure” poem. I used Paint and Microsoft Word since I didn’t have time to play around with the free version of Photoshop…which I used to know a bit about…but that was years ago! Here is my Click Trick poem, “Reputation.” Enjoy!

Here is the Day 23 prompt, Click Trick:

Start by gaining access to Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Acrobat. Free 30-day trials of both software programs can be downloaded at http://www.adobe.com/downloads.html.

You’ll also need a digital copy of your source text in an image or PDF format.

If you are using Adobe Photoshop:

Open your source text in Photoshop — when you do so, it automatically opens the image in its own layer. Add a new layer on top of your source text. Select the brush tool and choose a color swatch of your choice. You can use the eyedropper tool to select the color of your page background (for a true erasure look), or select another color of your choice. Paint over your source text, obscuring lines until only the words of your erasure poem remain.

For a video tutorial, watch Jenni B. Baker’s 8-minute demonstration of how she creates erasure poems for her Erasing Infinite project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T__RD1aDsPY.

Save your completed work as an image file (JPG or PNG preferred).

If you are using Adobe Acrobat:

Open your source PDF text in Acrobat. Navigate to the “Tools” then “Protection” Toolbar. Click “Mark for Redaction” and then drag your cursor over the sections of the text you wish to remove. Click “Apply Redaction” to remove that section permanently. By default, Adobe places a black bar over any redacted text; however, you can change this color (to white, for instance) under “Redaction Properties.”

For a video tutorial, watch How Tech.Office’s demonstration, “How to Redact in Adobe Acrobat”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Cm4Owomlg

Save your completed work as either an image file (JPG or PNG) or a PDF.

The Found Poetry Review. PoMoSco. Prompt 23. 25 Apr 2015.