Poetry Challenges

[gumOnShoe]

The following are designed to help you write better poetry. Putting effort into these may improve your poetry. These are actual college level assignments for a writing workshop. If you participate, it would be a good idea to comment on others work, if that is what you expect. Examples are included. Enjoy.

Challenge #1 - "The The Poem"

Instructions:
Title your poem "The <insert object>"

Use extremely concrete language to create an perfect image of the object. No abstractions, No people, everything should be about your object.
No rhyming.

Sample
Copyright:
September 11, 2006

The Fan

Black rubber stoppers prevent it from
scratching the surface it sits on,
though at first glance one must
wonder how such a small fan could do
any damage.

Black rubber coils from the wall
to the center of whirling machine
where lies the motor, encased in dull black plastic.
A coil of copper wraps around like a spring.

This fan’s birth might have been
a moment of violent sculpting,
but now its metallic cobalt blue body
is hard and smooth, cool to the touch.

The whirling metallic blades
sing inside the metal cage that
protects wandering fingers.

One word gives hint to its origins,
“Lakewood”
I wonder where that might have
been as I watch the light dance
in patterns on the rotating petals.

<><><><><>

Challenge #2 - Praise Poem

Instructions:

- Glorify some object
- show what others carelessly overlook
- Dont use any expected praise words (ie beautiful, awesome, amazing, etc.)
- No Cliches
- No love poem for your partner (ie girlfriend, boyfriend) (although this will be a "love" poem to your object)
-Choose an object that isn't glorified normally, make the reader love what they have been taught not to love
- No rhyming
-Title needs to hint at or specifically name the object

Sample:

Copyright: 2006
Praise Poem

Messy Room

A schizophrenic collage of life’s leftovers,
discarded for time, dots the room.
Left over pens and pencils take root
sprouting amidst a stream of ketchup and mustard.
Orange peels, a sweetened smell of fresh rot,
meander through bottle trees.

A canopy of papers sway and rustle, waiting
like an ancient library of memories to be
discovered haphazardly
whilst hiking through the wilderness.

Mountains of clothes rise on horizon,
telling tales of adventures in far away lands.
Stains and smells of distant markets
mix with damp brown residue of a slip.
A hint of perfume lofts around the highest peak,
a good night.

All things placed place purposefully.
Intention brimming and spilling over
the edges carpet:
creation in seven tomorrows.

Challenge #3 - Persona Poem

Instructions:
- A persona is a "mask," a self you display for others.
- The person speaking is someone very different from the author (radicly)
- take on the body of this other being
- Don't write in dialect
- Know the character
- Write about a human
- Indicate who is speaking somewhere, clearly
- Create a sense of space. What is around, where are things? Space gives a person personality
- Should be 1st person.

Sample (sucky):
Copyright 2006
Mom Does it for Them

Up the stairs, just home from work,
in time for crumb to spill
to the floor, with my happiness.
Dog doesn't bother, too full.
My counters are marred
everywhere by chocolate fingers.

30 Minutes

I've set them to fixing,
ignoring protest and blame.
Their fun can wait. They should know.
I turn on that stove, my anger
simmers like the water in the stained pot.
They notice and avoid me,
still not understanding.

20 Minutes

Pasta is in her hair, like straw.
He grins for a moment next to her.
She cries piercingly.
Then I make him regret it.
Time disappears quicker than noodles.
He stares at his plate,
head rested on fist, fork twirling spaghetti.
Good, he does regret it.

10 Minutes

Down to the car, quickly, we leave.
Again the touching, the screaming fill my car
like a giant metal cage with taunting prisoners,
that even by leaving I can't escape.
The radio won't go loud enough.
I ground them, I'd pull over,
teach them with the belt, the way I was,
but I- We'd be late.

One Minute
He's forgot something.
He should know. He'll regret this.
He'll feel the way I do,
Because I do it all for them,
and they don't understand.

<><><><><><>

Challenge #4 - Locale Poem

2 Options
a) Some Town:
Take field notes on a town you've never been too, and then write a poem about it. Buy Triggering Town to understand this challenge. Basicly, make up a set of fictional characters solidly grounded in some place. Create a voice and a believable place.

b) Epiphany:
-structure of poem:
Very concrete description of a place
Meditation "inwardly with the I"
Epiphany
Come back to earth and see things in a new light
- You have to describe the out of body with the body

Example:

Locale Poem
Copyright: October 5, 2006

Yom Kippur at Temple Emanuel

Those mahogany pews belonged
in a church, along with the shadows.
Blood red upholstery barely softened the rows
of close, restrictive, uncomfortable pews, pews
that made the space seem smaller than it was.
The bimah at the front held the ark
that was grafted with ten bronze commandments
appearing to burn like the Ner Tamid.
Our Ner Tamid, our covenant with God
on this holiest of days, a Saturday, was electric.

When my congregation entered,
it sat to the back, Tallit and yarmulkas absent.
We sat as close to the exits
as we could possibly manage,
cramming together until we choked on perfume.
So many on uncomfortable benches
like passengers on a train. We were ready
to leave quickly with service’s end.

The sanctuary reminded me of a coffin
with the dead tarnishing like brass on our walls.
It seemed familiar…
to be packed together once more,
bone against bone, starving,
speaking as one,
saying to never… but I’ve forgotten
what it means to read Torah,
and Talmud, and Mishna, and Nevi’im.

The rabbi continues with the congregation
as I half-stare at my open prayer book.
Somewhere in my mind
floats the recipe for cheeseburgers.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

Challenge #5 - Art Poem

Goal: Extreme Description
Instructions:

- This poem should describe an existing plastic (ie physical) work of art. Sculpture, Painting, etc.
- Perfect detail!
- Let the reader see it without being there
- Find an object and study it before writing
- No famous works of art
- Title should be:
<title of piece>
Artist, Medium, Year

Example:
Copyright 2006

Man and Machinery
Diego Rivera, Fresco, 1932

The empty spaces are full
of the rhythm
grind, grunt, slam
drummed by ash men
working the volcano.

To be here is to struggle,
to push and to pull until
the factory excretes
a car.

Hands, extensions
of metal arms,
lubricate machines
with sweat and
cleanse owners
of self with
grease.

Shadows
work the fires
that illuminate
the metal into
orange lines
men cling to
touching every
part.

If these people
were ever to leave
they might crumble
into soft powder
littered with
the steel that
kept them strong.

<><><><><><><><><><>

[ZekeySpaceyLizard]

This is newgrounds, gum.

Most of the kids here have never touched a book.

All you're gonna get is some horrifying goth poetry out of this, unfortunately.

:/

[nazmi]

you wrote like 5000 things!

[Idiosyncratic]

The Guitar

A sound of a beautiful song
Plucked from the strings
Gathered round to hear the master
Taking notes right out
A brown body with red lining

I know it's teh suck.

[gumOnShoe]

Challenge #6 - Sonnet
Write a sonnet:
14 lines, 10 syllables a line, Iambic pentameter, Ryme Scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGG
If meter and rhyme are too dificult to encorporate skip it

Another sucky example:
11/27/2006
Ender’s Bane

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.”
– Andrew Wiggen (Ender)

Young man who sits before worlds on TV
and knows not how to love his enemy,
your thumb’s callous heart presses endlessly.
It dances to death drums, rubbed too bloody
by fingers that closed Poke’s throat and drowned her.
Do you masturbate to her—your last kiss?
You who lied love can not escape murmur
of the insect mind who would reminisce
of your deeds. She, a beautiful queen, weeps
to redeem you, her destroyer. Is her
voice quelled by the light and sound that seeps
like blood through the mind? Does the controller
control you? When was it that you lost your soul
to the game and sold out the universe whole?

<><><><><><><><><>

Challenge #7 - Short Poem

- Has to have a title
- less than 9 lines
- No Haiku
- No abstractions
- Juxtaposition important

Example:
Copyright 2006

Beneath the Dying Oak
I lay, grass scratching my neck, fireflies landing on exteded fingers
The tree, like a charcoal smudge on the sky,
stretches its branches to hold the sky togeather
or maybe to give the stars a a coffin.

<><><><><><><><><><><>

Challenge # 8 - Free Form
Do what you want, but only after you've done the previous seven. Don't be stupid about this one.

Example:
Copyright 2006
After the Fight

Time, water, drips and freezes
till they are deadly sharp
hanging precipitously on roofs.
And when they fall they kill. We
put those bricks up
haphazardly, that roof too
for the same reasons all do. Ignoring
the frost covered grass.

I remember the bird of last winter. Sounds
of falling newspaper were its wings
and its terror was your terror too. Neither
understood other.
Bodies into walls, doors, falling
petrified into corners. Escape
impossible for those who could not,
fumbling in the dark, find the clear way.

Windows were sealed.
I let it go by closing it off further, until
only the exit, a narrow blind stairway was open. Now,
you and I shut doors together with others
who helped put up these stones. Hoping
that when we built this place we left a door out.

<><><><><><><><><>

Challenge #9 - Self Portrait
- Describe yourself, not your physical self, but your mental self. Don't get abstract, as usual. Be as weird, but physical, as you like.

Example:

Self-Portrait
Copyright: November 20, 2006

My Self

I am a single rain drop
in a Phoenix summer
resisting vapor’s form,
determined to touch
dusty pavement
because I can.

I am the mountain
on the horizon
to which you glance,
each day,
small to the eye,
untranscendable to the foot,
ignored by the mind.

And I am the creek
that winds and waivers
through the cracked earth
polishing rocks to pass the time
but destroying, unexpectedly
when the storm takes me.

<><><><><><><><><><>
Challenge #10 - Days of Poem

Describe a memory, can make up bits.
Memory should be a representative snapshot of an entire year in one instance.
Describe pre-highschool memories in brutal detail.
Stay away from "happy" memories

Example:
Copyright 2006

7th Grade
1999, Reynoldsburg

My mom once asked me if I was a monster.

The long hallway near the lunchroom
in between band rooms,
with plain white tiles, plain white walls,
and a plain white ceiling
fades in and out of dreams.

I remember walking down, book bag on back
and folders in hand, being late.

I remember
fists and fingers flying into my back,
books spilling onto the floor,
my body falling to the ground,
pain in my side,
tears down my face,
and sharp kicks I delivered to their legs.

I remember crawling away,
hiding, curled up, crying in the storage closet
surrounded by violin cases, hard pillows.

I remember being punished for kicking back,
for escaping, for not taking it.

I remember the guns, the bombs
that others used to say, “No more,”
that year in a place called Columbine.

My mother asked me
if I was like those monsters.
I never did bring a gun to school.
It wasn’t my way, but I understood
what could drive a person to do it.

[gumOnShoe]

At 11/27/06 08:40 PM, ZekeySpaceyLizard wrote: This is newgrounds, gum.

Yes it is.

Most of the kids here have never touched a book.

This isn't for most kids.

All you're gonna get is some horrifying goth poetry out of this, unfortunately.

It would be unfortunate, but some will try anyway. This is here for them.

/

:/

Anyway, I did this a while ago and the first worked ok, it includes the first challenge, but I got caught up with school and never posted anymore: http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic.php?id=56 3130

[gumOnShoe]

At 11/27/06 08:48 PM, Idiosyncratic wrote: The Guitar

A sound of a beautiful song
Plucked from the strings
Gathered round to hear the master
Taking notes right out
A brown body with red lining

I know it's teh suck.

Well, yes it does suck, but not with out potential. Basically thats a couple ideas you want to relate to the reader in your real poem. The problem is that you havn't presented an image. Poems present highly specific details that just blow the reader away. "The The Poem" is designed not to really impress, but for you to talk about every single feature of that guitar, down to the last inch. How many frets, what colors, what does it smell like, taste like? Strings, are they in good working order, etc.