Notes from One Writer to Another
#AprilPrompts – Day 9 – THRILLER | Donna L Sadd.
Here’s a contribution:
Thriller
She has retreated
to a basement
where there is
no back door
and the grimy
window is too high
to reach, and the
skulls of previous
victims crunch
slightly under
her feet. She shares
a dark corner with
a rather large spider,
a snake of indeterminate
toxicity, and a few
odd mice. Then,
suddenly
down the steps,
a shaft of light…
The token
in my story
was going to be
a golden heart,
until I heard
every book
crossing the desk
centered on
that symbol
of life and love,
so I decided
to move a beat
further into
another constant
of life: change.
Here is another Poetry month daily prompt site. It is from Donna L. Sadd. Her suggestion today is to write a poem about the muse.
Well, mine is strange. When it comes to mythology, I can’t help considering the thoughts of Jung. Early poets and artists were usually men, and the muses are female all three or nine of them. (Often, real women filled those roles for artists, Sometimes, they even did some of the work and didn’t get credit for it.) I wonder whether the concept of a muse applies to female writers. Certainly, every artist enters the realm of something Freud called the unconscious, when time disappears and something else takes over. For me, this is a place/space rather than a person. Your thoughts?
#AprilPrompts – Day 2 – Muse – #NaPoWriMo | Donna L Sadd.
Muse
Nine-sistered
shadow
side of men,
splintered
daughter of
Mnemosyne,
goddess
of memory,
and Zeus,
master of Olympus,
or a group
gathered
by Osiris
to seed
civilization
in its wake,
one and many,
on the wings
of their pet
Pegasus,
they pull an
alternate progeny,
children of
image and
story, to rival
hungers
of blood.
Today is the first day of National Poetry Month! Today’s prompt on Robert Brewer’s blog asks for a “New Arrival” poem. Visit the link below to post your own. Mine is below.
2013 April PAD Challenge: Day 1 | Write a Poem a Day Until May | WritersDigest.com.
Arrival
Sudden
on spare branches
against storm-darkened
sky, tiny
leaves glow,
immortal green,
on globe willows;
not there
yesterday,
dusty next week,
they spring
from nowhere,
expected but
astonishing
miraculous as morning
or the word
“again.”
You still have a day to write a poem about architecture on David L. Harrison’s blog. There are some wonderful contributions. Take time to read them. You will be inspired.
Adult “W.O.M.” Poems | Children’s Author David L. Harrison’s Blog.
Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 205 | If I Were Happy Poem | Poems | WritersDigest.com.
It’s Wednesday on Robert Brewer’s blog. Today, fill in the blank in this phrase and make it your title: If I were…
Read the responses and add your own.
Here’s mine:
If I Were an Eagle
If I were an eagle,
I’d angle my wings
and slowly circle
over the frozen lake,
watching for an unwary
rabbit venturing out
across an unmarked
patch of snow. I’d
pass the cottonwood
aerie where I was raised
with my brother
and not wonder where
he had gone. I’d own
only the brittle winter
sky and a bare branch
with a hungry view.
Today’s challenge on Robert Brewer’s blog is to write a poem that fictionalizes a true event. �If you want to give it a try, click on the link.
Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 202 | Fictionalized True Event Poem | WritersDigest.com.
Here’s mine:
Going Home
On the bus
from my new
home to my
old one,
to catch
a last smile
from my
dying father,
I looked
out the window
at a familiar
pass shrouded
in forest fire
smoke, but
off to the right,
there was a
clearing, unseasonably
green and glowing,
like one of his
paintings and I
knew he was
finally home.
Linda Armstrong, 12/19/12. All rights reserved.
via Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 202 | Fictionalized True Event Poem | WritersDigest.com.
In going back through my poems to create a chapbook manuscript, I find that I did not start posting them to this blog until well into the month. To make it handier for me, as well as sharing these great prompts with you, I will put up the missing ones as I find them. They may be in no particular order. This one is a “poem that scares you.”
The link below will take you to responses from other poets on Mr. Brewer’s site.
2012 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 3 | Scary Poems | WritersDigest.com.
Mine addresses the vagueness of things so many of us fear.
The Terror
It had not
taken form
and remained
a threat
without outline
in thin light
between night
and dawn.
Some sensed
it, an off scent
in the air
an odd buzz
in the near
silence
and their efforts
to reason
with their pounding
hearts were
driving them
mad. It was
not easy
as once
it had been
and something
undeniable
was coming
slowly
closer.
I enjoyed my day off writing. I spent it sorting out photos on one of my drives. I have many duplicates and a number of duds. Time away makes many things clear.
This morning a poem arrived in my email from a Linked In contact, Marek Wysoczynski. It was a Three Wishes poem.
Every year when I was teaching, I did a Wishes poem with my students, and it always produced great results.
This morning, then, write a Three Wishes Poem, a poem about wishes, or a poem cataloging every wild wish you can think of.
Here’s mine:
Three Wishes
I am five
beside a
shallow well
at a garden
where my
parents walk.
I step up
to the edge
holding three
bright copper
pennies, small
works of art
that could buy
waxed lips
or bubble gum
at the corner
store, but
I want more.
I want a carriage
for my dolls
to push them
down the sidewalk
so everyone
can see how
grown-up I am.
I want skates
so I can keep up
with my friend Jill.
I want a cuckoo clock
like the lady
across the street
who marks each
hour with magic.
Eyelids clenched,
I drop each penny in
imagining how
that single wish,
if fulfilled,
will make me
happy forever
and ever.
I am five
standing beside
a shallow well.
Linda Armstrong, 12/2/12. All rights reserved.
There are two related prompts for today’s Poem a Day Challenge at Brewer’s Poetic Asides blog. You can write about “right” or “left.” I wrote about being left-handed.
If you submit your poem on the blog, write it first in a word processing program, then paste it in. The blog is so busy you get a “you are posting too fast, slow down” message. If you get this, use the backspace on your browser and keep submitting until it goes through–usually on the third or fourth click. You don’t have to post to participate in the challenge. You can read everybody else’s for inspiration and just keep your own file at home. You will still be eligible to submit your finished book (20 poems) in December.
2012 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 6 | Left or Right Poem | WritersDigest.com.
Here’s mine:
The teller
filled out
my withdrawal
slip writing
as I do
left-handed
and upside down
I asked her about
the inevitable bump
on her middle
finger and
whether she was
an artist. She
said she drew
but wasn’t
great and I
admitted to being
no Leonardo. Then
I took my money
and she said
she had never met
another person
who wrote like
her, and that
remains true
of us both.
One Way to Wonder 