MONDAY PROMPT / May 9
This week’s prompt
Remember last week when we said we had an idea/scheme for poems you may have written recently? Here it is:
Look over your recently written poem pile with the idea that giving is both noble & fruitful. Find a line or two from a poem and hand them over to the Big Tent community. Give us your favorites. Give us the wonderful lines that just didn’t fit your poem. Give us lines that seemed to come from some strange planet and plopped in your backyard.
Yes. Copy and paste a line or two and leave them in the comments (of this post). Don’t dilly-dally. Get them planted in the comments so folks have lines to pull from!
Then pick a line or two for yourself (from this lovely fecund pile) and write yourself a poem using this/these line(s) as your springboard. (Do give credit to your benefactor in your poem post.)
How prompts work under the Big Tent
We post prompts on Mondays, and you have all week to write your poems, based on our fabulous prompt or any other inspiration. Come back on Friday when you will find a “Come One, Come All” post where you can use the comments section to 1) leave a link to your poem or 2) leave the poem in its entirety.
You’ll have all day Friday (and all weekend!) to post your work and read each others’ work. Take your time. Enjoy all the poems that are new to the world.
Some hints
Hint: We’ve set Big Tent Poetry to Central Time.
Hint: An easy way to check on new post comments is with RSS reader, if you use one. Here’s the address: https://bigtentpoetry.org/comments/feed.
Hint: If you are new to our site, your comment(s) will be held for moderation for your first few posts. If you put more than one link in your comment, your comment(s) will be held for moderation. We’re checking the filters often, so don’t despair! That said, if it takes more than a half a day to see it come live on the site, do email us at info (at) bigtentpoetry.org. (But be patient, okay?)
Circus etiquette
We figure you know how to play in the poetry community, but here are the basics:
Be nice. Have fun. Remember we aren’t a critique forum. We want to support each other as we bring more poetry into our lives. Only provide critique if someone specifically asks for it.
Although we love seeing our badge in the sidebar of your blog, we would appreciate it if you would also link back to the site in each of your poem posts. Linking within your post helps people travel back and forth from your site to the Big Tent Poetry site, and it helps perpetuate Big Tent Poetry “findability” in Google searches — and that helps us all.
Happy Victory Day all! Here are my two lines from a poem I put together for the November Poem-A-Day Challenge with Poetic Asides:
“The warehouse of your anxiety
should be torn down”
And here is the complete piece. http://phoenix-em.com/mariyakoleva/2010/11/nov-pad-challenge-day-16/
I hope someone will find it useful :-)
My two lines from two different poems
small miracles of light bathe fields in gold
marvel at the miracle of the ordinary.
i don’t know that these are worth anything~ maybe someone will have better luck than i did:
rejection carried through veins like blood
-or-
i won’t tell you that i want you
no more waiting for you to want me
A couple of lines here from a poem that’s become a source of words, metaphors and verses rather than a complete piece.
From the valley, a blue updraft
of dust and seeds and wings.
What an interesting prompt. I’m looking forward to the products.
This might spur some writing: “dishonest, against our better judgment.” (Could be his, her, my, their better judgement.) It came from my recent poem, paying for damage.
What Fun!
The difficulty
Of squeezing an elephant
Through the eye of an needle
Great fun, indeed! I’ll give your lines a try, annell. It is really hard to choose, and I would like to use everybody’s lines, but, let’s face it – I can’t possibly accomplish all that.
These are from poems I wrote during Journal Writing time in my classroom…nothing special, just a couple of simple images.
~You spread a quilt over the leaves and pull me down beside you.
~This morning the sun said yes to the fog.
Intriguing prompt. My lines are from a recent poem entitled “Faith”:
until roots burst forth, contained
no longer by a shell, not so silently
the only word left is compassion (http://stoneymoss.org/2011/04/03/3-april/)
* * *
I make a picture of our passion/ as if I’m a medical illustrator (http://stoneymoss.org/2011/04/04/4-april/)
Great ideas! Here’s one from me from the last month.
We feel compelled to talk about it
Like birds on a wire
Maybe you want to mull over this line:
My dreams are the color of turquoise
(http://enerihot.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/napowrimo-22-coasting/)
I used part of your turduoie line:) Thanks.
Here’s my wonderful line. In my poem it’s two line but I like see you play around with the line break. If you use, could let me know :)
Fold me up and leave me to collect dust.
Very intriguing.
Here are two from notebook poetry
~ the river tells me thank you
~ grey bird turns yellow when its wings open
From two different poems:
-There’s a clover patch outside infinity
-Sequined thoughts no longer shine from
unclear memory
Bracing him. Bracing
me. Walk him step by step in
shoes without laces
http://www.dishwaterdreams.com/2010/09/he-calls-love/
little respite
poured enough courage in my cup
to get me through
From two different poems:
Every boy is small with so much inside,
or
bound in these imperfect forms
“We downed them just to be polite”
From Kilud. I was talking about sprats, but I suppose there are many things that could be downed, politely or otherwise.
And if that won’t do:
“Midnight catches us by surprise.”
from Comfort Food.
Two lines from me.
“Reflecting temperamental silk soaring scarves of clouds;”
“Field’s of red and yellow rooted flowers and a windmill twirling”
Here are two from me.
living is not herding sheep
and
I am clay malleable by happenstance
~ Brenda Warren ~
I offer the following two lines:
“an image as broken as the mirror”
“I can’t recall the contents of those days”
I keep trying to find a piece of something to leave here, but since I only started writing in Dec., I got nothing. So here’s a poem I wrote but never finished. Don’t think there’s any “gems” here, but wanted to contribute!
Write the cure as though it’s already happened.
Allow me to speak of my recent successes
My brand new shoes and my pretty new dresses
My house so perfect, my baseboards divine
My bathroom luxurious, my furniture fine,
I wake up each day, and with time to spare
I peruse through my books and play with my hair
My home is so clean, it shines like the sun
Every corner’s been scrubbed, the laundry is done
I glide out the door, my energy’s high
I bid to my family, a loving goodbye
I know they’ll all sail effortlessly through
Excellence seems to follow them too!
We’re always quite prompt to work and to school
We have manners for miles, we know every rule
People are always happy to greet us
Those who don’t know us, wish they could meet us
Always a bit late, here are my two lines
I’ll pray that God is watching you read this poem from “Strictures and Structures”
I come to the sound of my own soul singing from “Within The Poem”
http://soulsmusic.wordpress.com/
Elizabeth
Here’s my line—
“…crawled through a hole and disappeared.”
Ho. I saw the “closing shop” post, and missed the prompt. Well, if anyone else is late for the party, here are some lines:
She didn’t pause for give and take but added: Fate
used to be as easy as a chaise lounge in July
The diva from a comic book the silly thing
gave me a drag, drank down my drink and levetated back to work
Kissed their ears the way a cat does rasping
I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to include some of this in my kinda-centro. I always enjoy your language!
Late, late, for this very important date.
Some, um, well, not left-overs so much as not-well-enough-baked-overs from last month.
“It’s just a blink apart from every day”
“I need to dig out my bicycle now”
“a hand slipping firmly off that side’s rail”
“finding suddenly flat pavement asplay”
I admit I’m still sitting on a few lines. They keep poking my butt. Maybe I’ll move on them…
BTW, if you use Twitter, an interesting source of lines: http://yes.thatcan.be/my/next/tweet/
Thanks, Jason! I’m sorry I didn’t use any of your lines, either, but I hope to come back to the well for future inspiration. Thanks for being a part of our circus life!