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Tips From The Bar

  
 
Almost every week from 2010-2020 I give a prompt for poets at a bar that didn't survive the Covid pandemic.
Many of the  2011/2012 blog post titles are from the brain of Simone Beaubien.
From 2020-2023 I gave occasional prompts as part of The Saturday Night Poetry Exchange.
Though I am no longer behind the bar at a poetry reading, I'll try and make a prompt a day in 2024.
Lime Warrior Photo by Matthew R McGonagle

I Never Remembered The Actual Menus

4/27/2016

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From Nicole Homer's Prompt Blog, this week's prompt is to write a complete history of a relationship using ten meals you shared.

I read my outline poem this week, and realized

1.) I had really good visual and auditory memories of particular meals with a certain ex, but I couldn't remember what type of food we ever shared, even though we shared many meals over the years.

2.) I needed to use the prompt to write ten poems, each based around one meal. 

May Nicole's prompt(s) give you such inspiration. And if they do, maybe contribute to her patreon.
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I Am Familiar With The Treason Of An Ambitious Mouth

4/20/2016

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A coworker at my non-poetry related job recently became injured, and, as a result, I've been working both jobs on Wednesdays, leaving me more tired and cranky than usual during the open mics. Because I'd foolishly agreed to be in the current Champion Of Champions slam, I had to have a new two minute poem prepared by roughly eleven o'clock p.m. Though, I've been writing almost a poem a day all year, there weren't any that I was excited about reading that I hadn't already read on either the open mic or the slam. So, I sat down at the bar during the hour and a half window between jobs to write a new poem.

Tonight's ghost line prompt is "I am familiar with the treason of an ambitious mouth" came to me without reason or concept. I spent about fifteen minutes working on a poem about the times I've said things that I thought would yield positive results, that I later regretted. It didn't go where I wanted it , so I stared at the line for a while, and remembered the story about one of my exes falling asleep mid-fellatio, and began to write about that. When that wasn't leading me anywhere promising, I got lost in a maze of other ways to escape that opening line.

When I think they're edited to the point where they're deserving of public posting, they'll be up on Because You Politely Requested It. 
Picture
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Prancer Was, Unsurprisingly, The Guy Fieri Of Santa's Reindeer

4/13/2016

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PictureAnother casualty of the unsuccessful genre of cervanic Kiss cover bands.
Boston Poetry Slam's Social Media Curator, local badass, and celebrity bar patron, Cassandra De Alba was tonight's feature, so in honor of the release of her current chapbook about woodland horse cousins, you are presented with the following four word prompt. Do with it what you will:

Deer in the highlights. 




Googling variations of "deer with highlights", "deer with different colored hair", "multi-colored fur deer" mostly give you the results of very human people with very boringly highlighted hair. The deer hairdressing industry seriously needs to boost its internet presence.

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It's Like Drawing A Diagram Of Donald Trump's Heart

4/6/2016

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Fantasy writers such as JRR Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, George RR Martin, Frank L Baum, and whoever the person was who created Myst (it was two guys named Robyn and Rand Miller), created entire worlds replete with atlases, maps, family trees, and histories that predate the action in their stories/novels/games. In addition to the physical attributes of the world, they also construct elaborate mythologies and belief systems for their characters that aren't always similar to our own.

Create a mythology for a place that is important to you. It doesn't have to be some place real, but it can be. You can use your mythology to explain why it's not ok to leave trash in movie theaters, or how The Cantab basement got that particular bouquet.
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    Links
    Write Or Die

    Scott Woods's Twitter Prompts

    ​Rachel Mckibbens' Prompt Blog

    The 30/30 Prompt Blog

    Asterisk And Sidebar Prompts

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All work on the Crooked Treehouse is ©Adam Stone, except where indicated, and may not be reproduced without his permission. If you enjoy it, please consider giving to my Patreon account.
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