If you enjoy this suite of prompts, please buy a copy of Nicole Sealey's book.

1. Medical History
Your family's medical history is one way to get a feel for who you are and where you come from. What other list-style poem ideas can you come up with to define your history? A list of your ancestors' and family's jobs? Hobbies? Mapping out where they lived?

2. A Violence
What trait expected of your gender/someone your age/someone from your family/someone with your occupation/someone with your gender attraction do you not only Not Meet but have No Desire to meet? What does it say of you? And others?

2.5 A Violence
Ghost line: "You look just like/ your mother," he says, "who looks just like a fire/ of suspicious origin." A body, I've read, can sustain/ its own sick burning, its own hell, for hours.

3. Candelabra With Heads
Yesterday, I was sent a link to an Icelandic museum's necropants, a pair of pants made from the  skin of a dead relative. The practice is believed to only exist in folklore, and not in real life, and was supposed to bring wealth to the person who wore their ancestor's skin. This gives a new horror to the phrase "Don't judge a person until you've walked a mile in their skin." 
Using a grusome image, tell a story from your family history.

3.5 Candelabra  
Palindrome Poems are poems that are written to a pivotal line, at which point, the poem is then rewritten in reverse order. Create one on the subject of your choice.

4. Hysterical Strength
What supposedly incredible experience do you find an ordinary occurence necessary to get through life?
 
5. Legendary
Center a poem around a color. Use this color repeatedly in images. Deconstruct the color. Reconstruct it. 

6. It's Not Fitness, It's A Lifestyle
The rise of social media has given us a wider understanding of how people use their prejudice against people for no other reason than to make themselves feel powerful by hurting complete strangers rather than listening  to them or having a conversation. What prejudice have you felt or imagined levied against you as you were just going about your life? (If you're a straight white dude, you can write about the prejudice people have against your job, your age group, a specific community you belong to [poets, cosplayers, wrestling fans, etc.], the city you live in, etc. DO NOT write about prejudice people have against you for being a straight, white dude. No matter how much you believe it's true, nobody wants to hear that bullshit.)

7. Happy Birthday To Me
Reflect, specifically, on the most recent year of your life. Without making references to any specific incidents, how did you feel during that year.

8. The First Person To Live To One Hundred And Fifty Years Old Has Already Been Born
If you had the opportunity to be immortal, or, at the very least, several centuries old, what would you do with all that time? Would it be worth it?

9. In Igboland
Ghost Line: I want / to learn how  to make something/ holy, then walk away.

10. Legendary
 I hate to brag, but I'm a one-man parade,/ Jehova in drag, the church in a dress./ Outside these walls I may be irrelevant,/ but here I'm the Old and the New Testament.
You are unlikely to write a more powerful brag than that. But try. Write a stanza or two focused on a talent or body of knowledge you have, then close the poem with an epic brag about it.

11. Heretofore Unuttered
Tell about a time when you were happy to go unnoticed.

11. And
Use asonance, internal rhyme, and alliteration to make a soundscape a listener would be happy to be lost in.

12. Cento For The Night I Said, "I Love You"
Write a cento using at least five sources. Remember to give credit. Credit the original authors. Make sure you've credited your sources. For the love of all that's holy in writing, mention the sources you borrowed from every time you read the poem out loud or write it down. The boundary between cento and plagiarism is HUGE and THICK, and it mainly centers on giving appropriate credit.

13. Virginia Is For Lovers
Tell about a time you massively misunderstood something a friend was trying to subtly tell you. How did you react when you finally figured it out? Was it something you needed to atone for?

14. Clue
Base a poem on a popular board game or video game that you enjoy. Or one you hate. Give time to what most appeals to you.

15. C ue
Take a poem from the previous fourteen prompts and make an erasure of it.

1. Soot
In religious lore and mythological fables, there are often stories of gods coming to Earth in disguise to learn more about humanity. If you were a god, what disguise would you use, and how do you believe this would help you discover more about us oh so interesting creatures? Alternately, if you were Not The Least Bit Interested In Humans, what would you hope to learn during your time on Earth?

2. Wild Pear Tree
It's been January for months in  both directions is an incredible first line for a poem. For me, Augusts are the interminable months of the year. Is there a month for you that seems to go spectacularly bad (or, if you're feeling hopeful, a month that goes splendidly) each year? Tell us why, and how you would either choose to make it stop, or to make it stretch on forever.

2.5. Wild Pear Tree
Akbar also discusses sliding into a bathtub filled with pears as if into a mound of jewels. Center a poem around an unusual physical situation, and try and provide the reader with a thoroughly unexpected tactile comparison that makes more and more sense each time you read it.

3. Do You Speak Persian?
​Is there a language you studied or learned when you were younger that you no longer use on an even semi-regular basis? If so, what words do you remember? What words do you wish you still had easy access to?

4. Yeki Bood Yeki Nabood
every day someone finds what they need/in someone else  Who was not just important to you but necessary to who you were when you were younger. What is your relationship to that person now?

5. Portrait Of The Alcoholic With Home Invader And Housefly
It can be difficult/ telling the size of something/ when it's right above you -- the average/ cumulus cloud weighing as much/ as eighty elephants.  ​ Using very precise images, explain something seemingly or actually intangible you previously misunderstood but now are comfortably knowledgeable about. For example, peoples’ ages, physical distance, the transition from liquid to gas, etc.
 
​6. Recovery
What do you believe should have killed you? Don't tell us how you survived or what you will do now that you've lived through it. Merely describe the situation and sensations before you knew you were going to live through it.

7. Drinkaware Self-Report
Find a very brief  (ten questions or less) quiz designed for self-help or accountability. Rather than answering the questions literally, tell a brief anecdote that you feel answers the question better than a yes, nor or quantifiable answer.

8. Calling A Wolf A Wolf (Inpatient)
envy is the only deadly sin that's no fun for the sinner  Write from the perspective of someone who's envious of something you have achieved. Do not judge them for their envy.

9. Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
What trivial things do you remember that have, in no way, benefitted you? What information that you wish you'd retained, do you think it has replaced?

10. Portrait Of The Alcoholic With Withdrawal
Start a poem with the  following ghost line: everyone wants to know/ what I saw on the long walk/ away from you

11. Some Boys Aren't Born They Bubble
Humans dance uniquely. I mean that other animals seem to mostly dance with purpose. They have a go-to move for mating, or for fighting. There seems to be an infinite amount of ways a human can dance, and it's not always (sometimes, sure, but not often) clear what their motivation is. Tell us the story of a particular dance.

12. Heritage
Penance is both a religious and secular oddity. We punish ourselves or others in a way that usually benefits neither us nor the person being punished. This is a strictly human behavior that defies   logic. When did you punish someone (or something...say if you smacked a computer that wasn't working fast enough, or kicked a chair because you stubbed your toe on it) in a way that, in retrospect, didn't help either of you. When were you punished in that fashion?

13. Milk
Despite the weird resurgence of Flat Earthers, our planet is still round. Yet creatures moving across the ground, through the water, and in the sky, appear to be moving in straight lines. What illusion most   perplexes you, even though you are fully aware that it's an illusion?Portrait Of The

14. Alcoholic With Doubt And Kingfisher
Faith is a story/ about people totally unlike you/ building concrete walls around their beds.  If you are a person whose life is faith based, tell us a story about something you did in defiance of faith. If you are someone who does not tend to make decisions based on faith, tell us about a time when faith played an unlikely role.

15. Desunt Nonnula
What were your favorite words growing up? Even if you didn't know what they meant, what words did you use so frequently, they could have been your catch phrase on a terrible sitcom?

16. Learning To Pray
So much of who we are as children is mirroring adults' behavior. If you can remember such a time, tell us about it. If not, have you ever seen another child mirroring an adult? How did that affect you?

17. Portrait of The Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober
Imagine being the sand forced to watch the silt dance/ in the Nile. Imagine being the oil boiling away an entire person.  Become a specific body of liquid, whether the last drop of gasoline spilling from the pump into the tank of a car, or the remnant of a rainstorm.

18. Supplication With Rabbit Skull And Boquet
Ghost line prompt: I'm growing into my science  

19. Exciting The Canvas
Write a deconstruction of the words light and shadow.

20. A Boy Steps Into The Water
Attraction to something non-traditional always seems dangerous, whether its lust for a person, desire for an item of clothing we can't afford, drive to play a video game that would definitely make us late to work. Focus on something you want but don't need, and, in fact, will never get. Forget why it wouldn't work out, just tell us about the experience of wanting it.

21. Wake Me Up When It's My Birthday
Keep a soul open and it's bound/ to fill up with scum.  If we don't grow as people, we become terrible. There is a reason why calling an adult "infantile" is not a compliment. Why we dislike grown adults who have tantrums. Why we dislike the desire inside us to throw a tantrum when things don't go our way. It's cathartic to wail and rattle our limbs, but it never solves anything, so, whe we adult properly, we use the language and logic we lacked as children. What part of yourself do you fear becoming stagnant? How are you working to change it?

Perpetual Motion. Many writers I know, and several non-writers, often fight their urge for wanderlust. To drive aimlessly, to schedule a poetry tour that they know won't make them money, to follow a band around the nation, to find cheap airfare and fly off to a country in which they don't even know the common language. What inspires your wanderlust? Do you fight it and win? Do you have a good on-the-road story? Does wanderlust not affect you directly, but influences the life of someone you care about? Tell us about it.

2. Poem For Men Only. Masculinity is tough, huh? Between Mens' Rights Activists, and the men who struggle against that stereotype, your average open mic listener has spent entirely too much time listening to men talk about masculinity. So take a break for this prompt. Write about a female or non-binary inventor. If you are female or non-binary, write it however you wish. If you're male identified, then completely remove yourself from the poem. Don't talk about how the female or non-binary inventor inspired you or changed your life or what her love life was like, write a list poem about them, or find an angle that never mentions the inventor's beauty or courage. Tell us about the invention. Try to avoid mentioning men at all.

3. Oh Mercy. Writing on the moon is So 20th Century. If you wanted to use a legendary, non-traditional way to send a message to someone, how would you do it? No, not by using The Internet or television, Mitch. Give us something as big and attractive as the moon.

4. My Country. If you're American, what horrible but very American thing have you done in your life? If you hail from another country, what thing have you done that's considered a negative stereotype of someone from your nation.

5. One Season. What's the worst thing a friend has ever called you? Why did it bother you? Were you able to keep being friends?

6. The Delay. Let this set of lines from the poem serve as your inspiration: "some of us would rather die than change. We love/ what will destroy us/ as a shortcut through this world/ which would bend and break us slowly/ into average flesh and blood./ I close the book and listen to the noises/ of an ordinary night."

7. Sweet Ruin. What's the most destructive thing you've ever done that you're willing to talk about in public? Tell us the story with a particular focus on the images and environment around you, rather than the just the emotions and rationalizations.

8. Proud. Apart from the incident from the last prompt, what's your biggest regret? Does it speak to the sort of person you are? Again, tell the story with a focus on the details of the physical place around you, rather than what was going through your mind or heart.

9. Second Nature. Surely, we've heard people talk about what they were in past lives. And, sure, reincarnation seems just as realistic as either an afterlife or a void of existence. But forget about your reincarnated past. Tell the world about your future lives. What will you do? Will it be reward or penance for the life you're living now?

10. Carnal Knowledge. In his poem, Tony Hoagland talks about being 18 and kissing a girl who'd just had his penis in her mouth, and how that changed his perception of the world. "by now you were beginning to suspect/ that everyone/ lives a secret life of acts/ they never advertised" Did you have a moment like this? What was it? When did it happen to you? Feel free to approach the poem with as much adolescent melodrama as possible.
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11. The Question. There's a set of lines in this poem "anything can be explained./ The shape of apples, for example,/ by their love of travel." Tell us about a property of an inanimate object that we've likely never considered. How did it get that way? Is there a purpose to it? Be as surreal or ridiculous as the subject asks of you.

12. A Dowry. Naming things is such a powerful aphrodisiac or weapon. Spend some time renaming things that surround you as you write. It's like that old meme where they call raccoons "trash pandas" or snakes "nope ropes". Or it's like that time your friend had a nervous breakdown and started naming walnuts after all of his exes before he smashed them with a hammer.

13. You're The Top. Do you have a favorite song lyric that sort-of but not-quite rhymes (mine is The Dresden Dolls "I didn't think so" and "I'm still convincable" from Coin-Operated Boy)? Why does it work for you? Find something non-traditional in a poem or song that you enjoy. Be it a weird rhyme scheme, an image that makes no sense, or a bizarre form. Tell us why you love it.

14. Two Shades Of Orange. Describe your higher power as a city or village or island or neighbrohood that you love.

15. Doing This. When have you crossed the line with someone you care about? It can be something as small as passive-aggressive silence or as large as you're comfortable presenting to an audience. Don't excuse yourself for it. Hold your past self-accountable, and try and convince said past self to do something, anything other than the terrible thing you've done.

16. The Word. Y'all this prompt isn't about the poem. In my purchased-used copy this book by Tony Hoagland, after the poem by Tony Hoagland, someone has written Tony Hoagland's name. Lest some errant reader of this book be confused, almost halfway through the collection, as to who wrote it. Where do you fall on the overexplainer / over-explained-to spectrum? How does this affect your life?

17. Volunteer. Create a statement about your relationship to your country, as seen through the lense of your favorite music.

18. In The Land Of Lotus Eaters. How  does a specific classic fable or mythological story relate to your oh so modern life?

19. The Collaboration. Find a friend who has read a book that was important to you. Together, write about whether or not the book is important to the world at large. (If said friend isn't a writer, just have a conversation, and use their words, with attribution, of course, in your poem/story.)

20. History Of Desire. Tell the world what you thought "the world" was like when you were seventeen. Don't correct that view or apologize for it.

21. Properly.  I frequently have to stop myself from just suggesting "write a love poem where you donm't objectify the person/thing you love" over and over again. So this time, I'll say, write a love poem to a person or tangible thing. Use only scientfic language. Instead of objectifying it/them, classify it/them. Their beauty is irrelevant. Their mechanics is what we're interested in hearing about.

22. Men And Women. Who has been wrong to be in love with you? Why? How? Don't try and change that person's mind, just explain their incorrectness to a third party. (Us.)

23. Travellers. Ok, fine. Love love love. Love love love. Tell us about the word love. Tell us about the feeling of love. Tell us about the allure of love. Use lovey language to love the love out of love. But don't attach it to an object. Forget who or what you love, just talk about how great love is. Ok?

24. Geography. Describe the moments just before you sleep or just after you wake.

25. A Love Of Learning. "Affection by association". You start to love a thing because someone you love or admire loves that thing. Maybe it's a band, a sport, a writer, a color, the temperature. Write about a time you discovered your love of a thing was steeped in someone else's enjoyment of said thing.

26. Paradise. ​Start a poem with an unusual item of clothing. See where it takes you.

27. Ducks. The next time youre in a waiting room (hospital, dentist, podiatrist, massage therapist, reiki practicioner, job interviewer, etc.), check out the art. Ust it as inspiration for an ekphrasis. If you're perfectly healthy, and don't want to hang out in a waiting room, there are airports and fast food restaurants you can go in and enjoy inoffensive art for free.

28. All Along The Watchtower. Watch a recording of your favorite video or concert. Strip the music and lyrics away. Tell us everything else about the performance. The physicality of the performers. The stage dressing. The lighting. The audience.

29. Emigration. Very few people enjoy getting old or getting sick. Without mentioning the physical effects, what is that experience like for you?

30. Threshold. Every poet talks about bodies as landscapes. Find another way to describe your own or another person's bodies. Preferably, not someone you're currently in love with.

31. Safeway. Let's go back to age seventeen again. Or some age that is important to you. Find a single moment that sticks in your mind about being that age. Document that moment as though nothing is wrong, then give us a classic swerve in the last stanza, letting us know what was really happening, that you weren't aware of at the time.

32. Smoke. Address one of your faults like the old friend that it is, and strike up as a casual conversation.

33. Astrology. Alright, look. Everyone's going to write a poem that involves the stars at some point. Invent some constellations. NOT OF YOUR LOVER'S FRECKLES. Tell another person in your poem what thost constellations mean.

34. In Gratitude For Talk. Find a line in a poem that you wish you could talk to the author about. Imagine how that conversation would go.

35. A Change In Plans. Give an alternate theory of how a non-human animal evolved. Never mention humans. Make it obviously about humans.

Jeanann Verlee's  Prey presents a series of poems about predators and their prey. It's a an exquisitely articulated chronicle of trauma. It's a fantastic book, but it was difficult to come up with a suite of prompts to represent the poems without the fear of inducing trauma on anyone following the prompts, or ignoring the necessity of the subject matter of these poems.

I've tried to be as true to these poems as possible without making this too emotionally difficult for people following the prompts.

1. The Curse. Imagine a curse that would substantially alter your life in a negative way.  How would you navigate yourself in a world where that curse was happening to you?

2. He Wants To Know Why Sometimes In The Face Of Conflict... What do you do when you're faced with an uncomfortable moral conversation or situation? Do you ever sit back and evaluate why you have that response? Is there a historical logical reason? Do you wish your instinctive responses were different?

3. Ode To My Mother's Backhand. It's easy to write praise poems about the people we love, and poetically burn down the houses of those who hurt us. Unless you've been invited to a roast, I don't recommend writing a take down of someone you love. Instead, try and write something positive about something who hurt you. Feel free to stay away from major trauma, and maybe focus on someone who just slightly annoys you or who has caused inadvertant chaos in your life. Maybe someone who cut you off in traffic, or the acquaintance who unknowingly said something terrible about a person you care about. 

4. Secret Written From Inside A Snake's Mouth. What is something you swallowed that you need to get out of you. Again, you can choose to go the traumatic route, but it can also be a guilty pleasure, or a secret that you've been holding on to for years for no discernable reason.

5. The Happy House. If the childhood home you lived in has been sold in the last twenty years, odds are good the real estate agent has put pictures of it online. Google Maps can show you what the outside and the yard look like now. Compare what you remember your house being like (feel free to use photos if you have them) with the way your house looks now. Don't involve people in the poem in any way, just use the physical changes in the house to tell the story.

6. A Good Life. Choose a villain. It can be a villain in your life, a famous villain of history, or a fictional character. Stripping away all judgement, present us with the basic story of their life. Don't remove any of the horrific acts they've committed, just don't use adjectives or metaphor to influence how the audience feels about them. Let the barest bones of their story give the audience everything they need to hate or fear this person of their own volition.

7. The Hunter, His Weapons. Is there a type of weapon you are an expert in? Or, at least, have some experience with? A gun, a knife, a bow and arrow, your mouth, a hammer. Without using an act of violence, tell us about this weapon. Is there anything positive you can do with it? Why are you so familiar with it?

8. Unkind Years. Ask a simple question. Between the subject and the direct object, present a series of scenarios or alternate questions that render the question irrelevant.

9. The Sociopath's Wife Meets The Wheel Of Death. Using a magician's tool as a metaphor, tell a story without a magician.

10. Secret Written From Inside A Coyote's Mouth. Waiting can be excruciating. What is the thing you felt you waited the longest for. Without ever telling your reader if the wait was worth it, describe how you waited.

11. One Winter While Unemployed. Definitively turn down a job offer.

12. Rearrangement Poem For The Mansplainer. Find a speech or internet comment or article that falls somewhere in the spectrum of making you uneasy to being filled with rage. Rearrange the words to completely alter the meaning. Don't change the tenses or leave out words. Let it be jagged. As long as it presents a new message. Either a complete change in the narrative, or a condemnation of the original meaning.

13. Frat Boy. Tell us a story about a time where you restrained yourself from committing violence or showing anger. Tell it from the perspective of the person whose actions you had to restrain yourself from responding to.

14. Casanova Comes To Dinner. When you write a poem, if you're lucky, you reach a point where you create a devestating line, which becomes your favorite part of the piece. Or, maybe you get an amazing line in your head, and that's where your poem comes from. For this experiment, freewrite something poetic, but feel free to give it more of a short story or essay feel than a poem. Make it at least a couple of pages long. The longer, the better. Now chop away every line that doesn't devestate you. It's ok if it feels choppy. Don't bridge the lines in any way. Just be left with your favorite parts of the poem.

15. The Summer Of Supplemental Income. A person walks into the room. You, initially find the person attractive. But the closer you look, the more frightening the person appears. Take us with you on this journey of observation.

16. Commodity. Write a pantoum about how things have changed as you've aged.

17. Question For The Boys Who Watched From The Window. Write out a dramatic scene on any subject. Include as much sensory memory as possible: sights, sounds, very specific images. Also use a variety of similes and metaphors to describe the events. When you feel satisfied with the story, go back and remove all the subject sentences, all of the "likes" and/or "as"es that you used for similes. Edit out everything that isn't an image or sensation.

18. Pack Hunt. There was a slam season a few years ago where everyone who ended up making the team representing our venue had, at one point, presented a poem in which a dog died. Injured or dead pet stories are always devestating. So, tell us a story about a pet in which it was never in any peril. And, please, let the animal be alive at the end.

19. Scene Written From Inside A Falcon's Mouth. ​Tell the reader about a time where you acted uncharacteristically. Look deeper into the situation, and see if you can discover that, maybe, at the core of the story, your uncharacteristic act is absolutely an essential part of your character.

After reading through the first half of Solmaz Sharif's collection, Look, I've written out some prompts inspired by her poems. Like most of the prompts I provided, they desired outcome isn't intended to be that you have a bunch of poems similar to Sharif's. I usually glom on to a line or a concept that the author plays with. Or I might just be inspired to write a prompt based on the title that, in no way, reflects what the author wrote on the subject.

I hope you find these helpful. Feel free to Tweet links to any poems you make from these prompts to CantabPrompts.

1. Look. Due to the instant access to current events that social media provides, more current existers are exposed to information about their country than ever before, which creates a much more decisive nation, no matter which nation that is. What is The Absolute Most you would endure from your country before you denounced it.

2. Battlefield Illumination. Using just one image, contained in one sentence, tell a complete story.

3. Lay. Tell us about an uncomfortable position you were in. Physically uncomfortable, not morally ambiguous.

4. Contaminated Remains. Create a detailed warning sign that you wish existed. It can be for something serious such as Rules For Interacting With Alligators In the Wild or something less literal like Guidelines For Interacting With My Overly Fragile Male Ego.

5. Safe House. Pick a dictionary page full of interesting words. Begin each line or stanza with a word from that page. Go in alphabetical order.

6. Deception Story. The doctor tells us the needle is not going to hurt. The bus driver tells you their bus is full but the next one is right behind theirs. The check is in the mail. There are lots of little lies people tell to make both you and themselves feel better. When was the last person someone told you a small deception that you immediately recognized as horseshit? Would you rather have had them tell you the truth? When was the last time you told one of these little rot lies? Do you think the other person believed you? Whom do these small deceptions serve?

7. Special Events For Homeland Security. Advertise or describe a party for a group of people based on a profession or hobby that you would absolutely Never Go To.

8. Dear Intelligence Journal. Write a letter to a piece of entertainment or literature that has, on some level, failed you. Tell it how it could have done better by you.

9. Free Mail. How has a group you belong to been misrepresented by society? This can be your gender, your race, your favorite fandom, your occupation, people with similar physicality, your ability, etc. Don't take the easy way out with this. Get really specific.

10. Force Visibility. Is there a word whose meaning you once knew that you, however briefly, couldn't remember. Does that speak at all to you? The person who used it? The situation in which the word was used?

11. Break Up. Write two poems on a similar subject. Create a their poem by allowing the two poems to converse with one another. Maybe alternate stanzas from each. Find some way to merge them into a poem with two distinct voices.

12. Ground Visibility. Create a poem out of a series of disjointed images. Don't bridge them with narrative exposition. Allow the images to tell the story on their own.

13. Desired Appreciation. We all have misconceptions about how being a certain age will change our relationship to the world. What did you think would change after your most recent Significant Birthday. Did it? Will this keep you from putting expectations on your next Significant Birthday?

14. Inspiration Point, Berkley. Maybe you know a painter named Barack Obama or a computer analyst named Stormy Daniels. Tell us about a person who has a famous name but isn't the famous person associated with the name.

15. Defenders/Immediate Family. Tell us about an unglamorous job you performed. Something that needed to be done but would be consider either/both gross or emotionally taxing.

16. Stateless Person. Tell us about a person mostly ignored by history. Perhaps the spouse or child of someone famous. Maybe an inventor of something vital to our society. Educate us. But, you know, poetically.

17. Family Of Scatterable Mines. Make a list of five unrelated possible destinations you might fly or long-distance-drive to: tropical vacation, wedding, funeral, family reunion, moving, etc. For each destination, detail what you would pack (feel free to be surreal or metaphysical). Each trip should have its own stanza, but don't let us know what your destination is, or the reason for your trip, let us guess based on what you've packed.

18. Master Film. Life is complicated and overwhelming almost all the time, right? Was it like this for our grandparents? Our ancestors several generations back? Imagine one of your ancestors between jobs or relationships. What was that like for them?

19. Expellee. Do you remember a time when you were sick as a very young child? Did you know what was going on around you or did it seem alien?

20. Mess Hall. Late twentieth century movies about childhood and coming of age would have you believe that every time kids shared a dining hall, a food fight erupted. I must have gone to the wrong schools. Do you have any memories involving dining halls or being in a restaurant with a large group of friends/acquaintances/coworkers?

21. Theater. When were you the most frightened you've ever been? You don't need to explain why, just focus on the details of the when.

22. Soldier, Home Early, Surprises His Wife At A Chick-Fil-A. What was the most inappropriate surprise you've ever received that didn't involve trauma? Mild embarrassment is okay, but the focus of this should be something that was more irritating or amusing than emotionally damaging.

23. Vulnerability Status. What's the most ridiculous facial expression/pose you've ever been in? Were you aware that it was unusual at the time, or was it pointed out to you? What events preceded it? Was the facial expression/pose ever repeated? Have you ever seen anyone else make something similar?

24. Reaching Guantanamo. Write a series of five letters to the same person. It should be a very personal series of letters. Once you are finished writing them, go back and white out/erase/somehow obscure the personal information that you wouldn't want to share with the world at large, or remove information you think the government would classify before sending the letters.

5. Yodaing Your Inner EE Cummings

The best E.E. Cummings poems (and they're not all great) are rhyming jumbles of misordered syntax that make complete sense the very first time you read them. The worst E.E. Cummings poems sound like pretentious, forced, classroom exercises. You understand why a bunch of publishers passed on some of his manuscripts.

You were probably smacked in the eyes with some Cummings poems in high school or college, if those were your thing. If not, there are a plethora of sources .

Try writing two or three poems modeled after his syntax and rhyme scheme. Know that the end result is not to have two or three good EE Cumming homages. Allow them to be awful, if you need to. If you hate them, pull some odd syntax from the wreckage of these poems and delete the detritus before anyone else sees them. Save a list of rhyming end words for lines that you didn't want to salvage. Maybe you can use them in future poems, if you decide to write something with internal rhyme.

Once you've filed away all the pieces of these poems that you want to save, take your favorite weirdly grammared phrase, and make that a title for your next poem.

6. Google Translate Is Just 21st Century Slang For Babelfish

In the early twenty-first century, several poets, myself included, had poems where we took source material, entered it into the Babelfish online translator in English, and asked for it to be translated into, say, Spanish. Then we had it translated to, say, Mandarin. Then we ran it through, say,  Arabic. Finally, we translated it back into English.

What we were given was vastly different from the original input, and, oh, but wasn't it wryly amusing to see how the translation telephone game had changed our words.

For this exercise, run something you've already written, but maybe don't love (or maybe something you love, your choice) through at least three different languages via Google Translate. If you end up liking the poem that comes out of that exercise, cool! You've got a poem. But, if not (and it's probably going to be a not), find unusual phrases that you never would have come up with on your own, but make sense to you, and try building poems around those phrases.

Or, to put it another way:

In the early 21st century, many poets, including me, had poems using our original material that the Babelfish translator introduced in English and suggested to translate it into Spanish. Then we translated it and spoke to Mandarin. Then we went through it, we spoke Arabic. Finally, we translate it into English.

What we offer is very different from the original input and oh, but it's not ridiculous to see how the game of mobile games changed our word.

Before this exercise, run things you've already written, but you can not (or maybe liked your choice) like at least three different languages ​​with Google Translate. If you like a poem from workouts it's very cool! You have poetry. But if it does not happen (and maybe not), find unusual words that you never get to yourself, but it makes sense for you and try to create poems about it.

Or also, to say:

​In the 21st century, we introduced Babelfish Artiner in English, including poetry, including poetry, and offered it for Spain. Then we got killed and talked to the monitor. Then we left and talked in Arabic. After all, we ask you to speak English.

What we find is different from the original settings, but it does not prevent the tone of the sound changing the tone.

We've done things we've written before, but you can not (or maybe choose the best) with a Google Translator on at least three different occasions. If you want poetry from good works! If you are not a poet (and perhaps you are not), learn great words that you are not, but try to build poetry with and with you.

​Sadly, poet John Ashbery died this week. He wasn't a huge influence on me or my writing, but I often enjoyed how he chose to evoke feelings rather than use a traditional narrative.

To celebrate his memory, I read one of his more recent collections,  A Worldly Country . Here are twenty prompts based on the first twenty poems from the book.

1. Worldly Country: Imagine a day where complete chaos has run over the world.  Not a violent apocalypse, but a day of complete inexplicable weirdness. But just One Day of it. The next day, everything's back to normal. What caused that day? And what happened during it? Will we ever know how it got back to normal?

2. To Be Affronted (directly from the text of the poem): Imagine a movie that is the same/as someone's life, same length, same ratings./Now imagine you are in it, playing the second lead,/a part actually more important than the principals'./How do you judge when it's more than/half over?

3. Streakiness: Imagine that it's not people who prefer to go out in good weather, but weather conditions that prefer to come out only for certain people. What's their criteria? Do clouds have a different agenda than the wind?

4. Feverfew (directly from the text): What if we are all ignorant of all that has happened to us?

5. Opposition To A Memorial: Describe, in detail, the quality of an intangible concept. For example, what would "I can't find my cellphone" look like if it were a house. How would you envision "How am I going to explain this to my mother?"

6. For Now: Forgive yourself for something you did out of ignorance. Still keep yourself accountable, and lay out a way you can, in some way, account for that mistake.

7. Image Problem:  If your life was a novel, let's assume it was divided up into chapters. Where does your fist chapter end? Why there?

8. Litanies: Make a short list. A list of days, or seasons, or flavors in a single packet of Skittles. Something manageable. Now decide which of those things is The Best of them, and offer that thing praise, and excuse it any shortcomings it might have.

9. Like A Photograph: Everyone reading this has, at some point tripped, and then carried on as if nothing had happened. If you have mobility issues, maybe your transport very temporarily stopped working. What was your inner-monologue like immediately following the issue? Did any part of your actions or speech betray that monologue?

10. A Kind Of Chill: Even non-human animals must get bored of their jobs from time to time. Narrate a nature documentary of an animal with ennui.

11. One Evening, A Train: Dismiss someone or something from your presence. Let it know, in no uncertain terms that they/it is not only no longer needed, but no longer allowed near you.

12. Mottled Tuesday:  Something is about to go horribly wrong at a grocery store or retail establishment. Watch it unfold. Tell us about it.

13. Old Style Plentiful: Passive Aggressive Notes was a popular website about a decade ago. Write an extremely passive aggressive ode to something or someone you like, but which is driving you crazy. 

14. Well-Scrubbed Interior: Is there a part of you that you feel is understaffed? Maybe your temper could use more employees, or your heart needs a new manager. Write a want-ad to fill the positions you can afford to fill.

15. Cliffhanger: In all plays, even Hamlet, the scenery/is the best part. Describe the scenery in your favorite play, movie or book. Focus on the scenery. If you can somehow make that tell the story without using any dialog or describing people's actions or motivations, then you are a true professional.
 
16. The Ecstasy: If history was a single building, what would it look like? Would you want to stay there? For how long?

17. Filigrane: Give an evacuation order for part of your past. Explain how it will benefit from leaving you. If the spirit moves you, give it conditions for the possibility of its return.

18. Ukase: Write a celebration of nature using a thesaurus for at least 1/3rd of the words in the poem. You don't have to slot the frilliest words, just the vocabulary you wouldn't commonly chisel.

19. Casuistry: What would happen if morning didn't come when it was expected? What would come in its place? How would you handle it?

20. Andante Favori:  The end of summer can be a depressing time, particularly when you're a kid and have to say goodbye to all of your summer friends (or are summer friends mostly a construct of living in a seasonal economy tourist trap?).  Tell us about how the change of a season affected your emotional well being.

This is the second part of prompts written by Zanne Langlois based on Devon Moore's Apology Of A Girl Who Is Told She Is Going To Hell.

Part One is here.

​Devon Moore: Apology of a Girl Who Is Told She Is Going to Hell Part II For the rest of Devon Moore’s collection, I’m going to base these next prompts on themes and patterns, rather than connecting them to specific poems.

The most fundamental theme in the collection is loss. An alternate title poem for her collection could have been “For the Lost.” Many of the poems are like negative space drawings, in which Moore defines the outline of the space a person leaves. In most, but not all of the poems, the lost person is her father. It is in many ways an elegy, but without the pastel shades and blurred edges of the the filter we often apply to the lives of the recently dead. At various places, she refers to the task of the poems as resurrection, taxidermy, and patricide, revealing the complexity of grief over the loss of a parent, particularly a parent who had been missing from their child’s life in crucial ways even when they were alive. Many of the poems walk the line between grief and regret, and show the ways in which the second amplifies the first.

Prompt: ​Write a negative space poem. Describe the shape of the hole left when a person close to you either died or left. It doesn’t have to be grief-shaped. It could also show what there is space for now that there wasn’t before. Maybe there’s a new appreciation for something, or something you started together has stayed in your life even after the person is gone (as in “Gardening with Gravity”).

OR 

Prompt:​ Find a small item left by someone who has died and imagine it as a sign of their presence. What is it? How and where do you find it? What do you do with it? What do you do because of it?

Another theme is miscommunication and misinterpretation—what we think we are saying vs. what it heard, and vice versa. Some of the poems explore the way kids misinterpret things because of their naivete, while others focus on the miscommunication between adults, especially those in romantic relationships.

Prompt: ​write a poem in which every line could be interpreted two ways, and those two ways would cause conflict between the people communicating if one was meant but the other was heard. Perhaps have the gap between the two possible meanings be a harbinger of what is to come. Bonus: use a few homonyms to show the nature of a relationship. “Going to Ocean” uses current and currant. Explore the different things two words that sound exactly the same can mean, and explore miscommunication and mismatch through them.

Here it occurs to me that I’ve been focusing almost entirely on content, as opposed to craft or structure. Most of Moore’s poems are written in free verse, with the exception of one villanelle, which I’d read a number of times before I realized it was a villanelle, which made me like it even more. But for the most part, I can’t really identify a structure in the poems. What does come through is a specific voice. The speaker in Moore’s poems often has a slightly breathless sound, like a child who is telling a story they are excited about—run-on sentences, non-sequitors, illogical or overly logical conclusions. As when a child tells a story, all the details get the same level of importance, even if their significance varies greatly.

Prompt:​ Describe two or three specific emotionally charged moments from your childhood. Your parents announcing their divorce, the arrival of a new sibling, the loss of a relative or a pet. The first time through, describe the event from a place of adult understanding, to capture the bones of the moment. They go back and translate it into the thought patterns / speech patterns of a child at that age. Maybe 6 year-old you is explaining what happened to 30 year-old you. Maybe they are even trying to comfort 30 year-old you with their explanation.

OR

Prompt: ​Identify someone in your life who has a very distinctive way of speaking, in terms of cadence, diction, sentence structure. Write a poems in their voice, in which you directly address the reader. Think about what filler words do they use between their ideas, how long their sentences tend to be, where they pause, etc. If possible, write about a topic they care about.

Moore’s poems are full of everyday objects that pin the poems to a particular time period— Okinawan saucer, ruby slippers, Nintendo, mandarin orange scented soap, Bouncing Betty, snowglobe, etc. These objects do a lot of the emotional work in the poem, sometimes as talismans, sometimes as symbols, sometimes as props that identify the setting of the poem. 

​Prompt:​ List 20 objects that define the first decade of your life, both personally and culturally. Some brand names, some items specific to your family. Items at your relatives houses that you coveted, items in your house you were not allowed to touch, items you touched every day, items that only came out on holidays. Food items, toys, clothing, furniture, etc. Now use at least 10 in a poem. Here are some places to start: 1) Find the time capsule you buried in yourself as a child. Pull out each item and explore the memories it evokes. In what part of your body is each one stored? Maybe it’s an archaeological dig. 2) Create a museum diorama of your childhood. Maybe a series of them. What do the descriptions on the wall next to each exhibit say? 3) Where are these objects now? What happened to them after they disappeared from your life? What disappeared with them?

​I'm really enjoying Yusef Komunyakaa's  Talking Dirty With Gods but the poems are so short, and so similarly themed that it didn't take long for me to stop wanting to come up with prompts based on these poems, preferring, instead, to just read the book. Here are the prompts I came up with before I called it quits.

1. Hearsay: Star, he's the sperm bank's/Most valuable donor. But contrary/To what you may have heard, this/Bellerophon, he isn't a great lover. What are two titles that you might imagine would intersect but don't.

2. Homo Erectus: Komunyakaa discusses primitive men who bash the skull/Of another man's progeny to retain power in a group. What's the worst thing you'd be willing to do to keep whatever level of power you consider yourself currently having?

3. Utetheisa Ornatrix, the First Goddess:  Ghost line: she's a snag/Of silk from a blood orange/Kimono
Night 
4. The Centaur: Write a poem about a part of you that keeps another part of you from achieving your goals. The brain/heart, brain/genitals, heart/genitals, are the easy ways out. Try and focus on two other parts of you that come into conflict.

Today's prompts are from the first two sections of Jon Pineda's Little Anodynes, which kept showing up as a recommendation based on other poetry books I'd ordered, so I decided to check it out.

1. First Concert: This is a pretty literal prompt. What's the first concert you remember going to? Nevermind how it relates to the type of music you like(d). What details of the concert do you remember that aren't related to the actual songs? The smells, the view, the community of people. What was it like?

2. Prayer: When was the first time you experienced public nudity that was not your own. Something that felt out of place, be it a streaker, a person getting changed on a beach. You can start with how you feel, but what about how they felt? Were there other people around? Do you remember whether they seemed to be reacting similar or differently than you?

3. Notes For A Memoir: Another literal prompt. Write down a small detail of memory that you think would make an interesting aside in your memoir. Don't expand on it yet, just give us the kernel.

4. Strawberries: Have you ever held a baby? It doesn't have to be a baby human. Puppies, kittens, cubs, alligator hatchlings, whathaveyou. What was it like? Do you have any desire to do it again?

5. Ceiling And Ground: What's something you threw away in the spur of the moment that you know you can never have back? Have you ever needed it since?

6. Collectors: What was something you treasured as a child that, as an adult, you now don't consider valuable?

7. Silence:  Is there a pet or person who you once thought was important to you whose name you've since forgotten?  Tell us a story about them. 

8. The Ocean: Have you ever picked up a conch (or similarly sized) shell  and put it against your ears? Did you hear the ocean? If not, what did you hear? If so, what did you imagine that meant? What do you wish you could hear if you were to find a conch shell right now?

9. Sealed Letter: One of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes serials is about him eating a shocking amount of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs in order to get a beanie hat, which he waits impatiently for.  When the beanie arrives and isn't as great as he'd hoped, he, like many children and all cats, ends up playing more with the box than the toy. What's the most disappointing thing you've ever waited for? -or- if that's too much of a downer, What's the most fun you've ever had with a cardboard box?

10. There Is An Edge To Each Image: Have you ever had to get stitches to close a wound? (Whether or not it's from snitching is inconsequential) Do you still have a scar from it? I've had a small divot in my forehead since I broke it open on the edge of a coffeetable when I was three years old. I mostly forget it's there, but sometimes when I look in the mirror, I remember precise details about that night that I don't think I would ever remember if not for the seeing the scar. What's your scar story? Try and stick with physical scars. Emotional scars are a different prompt.

11. Distance: You've almost definitely seen a commercial or infomercial about a poverty stricken area where a supposed charity organization asks you to make donations to help save a child's life. How do those commercials make you feel? Have they always made you feel that way or has your reaction evolved over time?

12. Ellipses: When you're high up on a mountain, or ascending in a plane (or a hot air balloon if you're freaky like that), and the world seems super zoomed out so that the people look like ants, or maybe the houses look like ants and the people have shrunk invisible? Write a poem that zooms out on the world that way, like you are so far above it (literally, not snobbishly) that it's difficult to make out its consequence.

13.. My Place: Describe your laughter or the laughter of someone you love.