prompt 157 Zen and the soul of body maintenance

What happens after a dark spell? (I’m assuming your protagonist had one. If not then skip that sentence.) The yellow orb is back! Your protagonist is having a Zen moment. It’s a body & soul thing. Write the body and you write the soul, poets. Be a poet who writes about the body. Taking it literally? Maybe your protagonist is into body art. Show us that tattoo. Or you can write about the body. You probably know Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to my hips”, and can’t help admiring how she did it so sensually. Here’s a small swagger of it:

these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.

You may decide to describe the protagonist’s body. Do you want to focus on one body part like Lucille (hmm, how about the ear?) or go over the whole as if it’s an interesting landscape? Or have the protagonist describe someone’s body, especially if that body loomed in some way. This is how Sharon Olds writes about the partner’s body in her poem, “I love it when”:

I love to feel you grow and grow be-
tween my legs like a plant in fast motion
the way, in the auditorium, in the
dark, near the beginning of our lives,
above us, the enormous stems and flowers
unfolded in silence.

Body is soul. That’s the theory we want you to explore. Be transcendent.

Since we’re thinking Zen, and the positive aspects of body maintenance, so to speak, try not to go dark on this one. Get some fire into your protagonist’s belly. I like to move it move it. That’s the spirit. Go on, be inspired by the Madagascar song.

So this is the fourth poem in the series. We’re working on ten prompts for the series. You may choose to write selectively to any prompt as if it’s a stand alone prompt or you may choose to write a series of poems on the protagonist. The choice is yours. You are not compelled to write ten poems on the protagonist. Only if you want to.

You can link your poem to this post once it’s written. You have all week to write. Next Thursday, we’ll see you for a new prompt. Like we said, you are free to write a series or treat these prompts as separate jumping off points for a new poem. However, if you choose to write a series, then the idea is that the protagonist will somehow tie all your poems together so there’s a kind of storyline going on. We’ll go on exploring, making the ordinary extraordinary.

prompt 156 It was a dark and stormy night

Surprise, surprise! This is a half time prompt.

We figured since someone (Barbara) asked, and we’ve said we’re doing ten prompts for this series. We don’t know if that will make some (or most) of you baulk. But for the rest of us, things felt a little slow mo, especially if you’ve already written to the last prompt. So this one is entirely optional. Ignore this prompt if you’ve already gone dark & stormy. Don’t ignore it if you think you want another one. But read again since you might miss out the origin story. Especially if you don’t want to miss that one out.

So life isn’t a bowl of roses. It has dark and stormy nights. Your protagonist has one. As you suspected, it’s a metaphor. Why is the protagonist gloomy? If that’s the wrong question, just paint gloom. If you’ve painted it before (and you have), paint it again. Do not paint yellows. In a storm the world literally goes dark. Wherever you are, lightning flashes and loud claps of thunder will find you out. Go with that moody feeling. Make it illuminating. You know, the protagonist broods about something obviously. Or the narrator. The narrator is creating a mood. Whoever the narrator is. Old Frank, for instance. Or drop Frank. Write an interior monologue. To make it interesting, consider weaving in an origin story. The protagonist’s origins. The origin of the universe. Be sleuth-like. Do some back tracing. To first causes. If you want to, you can do a big reveal. And the feeling? Perhaps a feeling of longing, or missing. Describe the essence or memory of the thing. You’re the poet. You can write whatever. But take us somewhere in this journey with the protagonist because the journey continues.

So this is the third poem in the series.

You can link your poem to this post once it’s written. You can post your poem to any prompt in this series at any time. On Thursday, we’ll see you for a new prompt. Hint hint: It’ll have to feature the protagonist. The idea is that the protagonist will somehow tie all your poems together so there’s a kind of storyline going on. We’ll explore. We’ll make the ordinary extraordinary.

prompt 155 A red-letter day

Welcome back. You’ve described the usual. Now describe a red-letter day. It could be a recollection or it could be a reference. Or it could be just about feeling special. In fact that is what you should actually aim for. What made the protagonist feel special? What is indelible? The day the protagonist discovered a passion for something maybe. It can be a public occasion. It can be completely internal. You may wish to take one element from the first poem and develop it. And just to jazz things up, and if it fits the story of your protagonist, drop the name of a celebrity. You know, it could add some razzmatazz or glamor and perhaps, glamor is what the protagonist needs. Substitute glamor as needed. A margarita?

So this is the second poem in the series.

You can link your poem to this post once it’s written. You have all week to write. Next Thursday, we’ll see you for a new prompt. Hint hint: It’ll have to feature the protagonist. The idea is that the protagonist will somehow tie all your poems together so there’s a kind of storyline going on. We’ll explore. We’ll make the ordinary extraordinary.

prompt 154 who is your protagonist?

Write about an ordinary day where nothing much happened except the usual. Tell us what’s the usual. You could go that way or you could decide to make some surreal thing happen.
You’re the poet. You can write whatever.

(And if you survived Napowrimo, all the more you should adopt the “I can do whatever” attitude.)

To make it interesting, you’d have to give a sense of the protagonist in your piece. Whether you use the first or third person you have to have a protagonist. Give the person a name. If you’re following this prompt site, then you will have to bear in mind that you’re going to write a series of poems featuring that protagonist.

So this is the first.

You can link your poem to this post once it’s written. You have all week to write. Next Thursday, we’ll see you for a new prompt. Hint hint: It’ll have to feature the protagonist. The idea is that the protagonist will somehow tie all your poems together so there’s a kind of storyline going on. We’ll explore. We’ll make the ordinary extraordinary.

There’s an example of ordinary/extraordinary here. It just happened to be prose but we’d rather you stick to the form of a poem.

prompt 153 changing the impossible

  
Poems can be on the tip of our tongues, close as our fingertips. While regard for words is important of course, so is the care and feeding of our imaginations. So an ending to our April tales…
 
The poem prompt.
If fish could fly and birds could swim… Go ahead, write your poem from that beginning please. What other improbable impossibilities can you imagine now? Maybe even including yourself! What isn’t but almost is? How would you like to re-imagine possibilities? You are here given permission to make your own version of the universe. Go romp. You are the potter’s hands, the poet’s pen, the imagination inside of clouds. Take that beginning and go wherever you wish.
 
And if you notice, yes, some birds do swim and some fish do fly, so why not you!
 
Remember, this “prompt” posting is immediately open for you to post your poem links.  Right now, tomorrow, or a week from now, anytime by next Thursday please.  So yes, put your poem links right here when you’re ready!
 
Happy poem writing!

prompt 152 share your poems now!

Wednesday now, and if you haven’t already posted a link to your poem yet, now’s the time, today or tomorrow please. Remember that we are now placing our links in the comments of the original prompt posting below.
 
prompt 152 animals
Both PROMPT and RESPONSE are now done together as one to the original prompt posting. Comments are not accepted to this reminder. After a few days this reminder will be removed.
 
This will be the last (probably… ) reminder about posting your poem link comment in response to our prompt. Hopefully you remember by now the new WWP poem schedule (anytime! yea!). Think of the new Thursday prompt as your final “cue” (all aboard!).
 
During April the NaPoWriMo weekly post will remain as a sticky post to the top of this blog for your other April poems.
 
Happy April poeming and we’ll see you tomorrow for our next usual weekly WWP prompt.

NaPoWriMo, week four

  
National Poetry Writing Month, April 22nd week four
 
 
Welcome to April’s fourth week of poems. Are you catching a second wind? Have you learned to breath underwater yet? Yep, that’s a light at the end of the tunnel we think. We are happy to continue offering this poem basket space to share your poems here. Please post specific links to any poems you write during this week and would like to share, whether posted only here or here and somewhere else as well.
 
Write a poem every day, fine by us.  Write fewer poems than every day, that’s also fine!  No counting here, just a gathering place. Poets and poems welcome here.
 

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.
Sylvia Plath

 
During April We Write Poems will continue doing our usual Thursday weekly poem prompts.