Task 58 Letter to Future Self

Write a poem in the form of a message or letter to your future self.

Task 57 Poem Perspective

Write a poem from the perspective of a character in a fairy tale.

Task 56: Dream

Write a poem based on a dream you had. Try to reproduce the sensations of the dream.

Task 55 Your Shadow

Write a poem about your shadow. (Some ideas for brainstorming: How does it change when you move? What does it look like in different kinds of light, in different situations? What would happen if you lost it? Does it have a secret life?)

Task 54 In a Fog

Write about not being able to see ahead of you physically or metaphorically. 

Poem #101 Viva Voce

They’d been playing for a funny

Screwed up his red eyes

In the house

There’s people I don’t like

Studying through

The telephone telling morning over

Something out hung up Young man

With all your stories

Be polite introduce people

Fell down dead

Don’t ask a lot of questions

I’d know the truth about exactly what happened

A curious case down the gravel path

Give you a lead until you get the statement

So horrified by the sight: Man with the red nose

Laid them on top of the ready pile of jammed powder

I’ve tasted the luck been my very worst friend,

Beginning to the end a touch hangin’ round by his coffin

A minute before morning

Drunk out beer bitter hanging

Laid on the shelf

Tell him for hours

In fountains of air,

Eyes flood, salty sea.

Task 53 Set of Three

Choose a set of three elements and write a story that contains all three of them! 

1.    A stolen ring, fear of spiders, and a sinister stranger.

2.    A taxi, an old enemy, and Valentine's Day.

3.    Identical twins, a party invitation, and a locked closet.

4.    A broken wristwatch, peppermints, and a hug that goes too far.

5.    Aerobics, a secret diary, and something unpleasant under the bed.

6.    An ex-boyfriend, a pair of binoculars, and a good-luck charm.

7.    An annoying boss, a bikini, and a fake illness.

8.    The first day of school, a love note, and a recipe with a significant mistake.

9.    A horoscope, makeup, and a missing tooth.

10.  A campfire, a scream, and a small lie that gets bigger and bigger.

Extreme challenge: combine three of the elements with one of the other short story ideas on this page.

Poem #100 The deep recesses of our lives

light flows nameless something smiles

love to week to speak their thoughts

blank indifference lived distinguished alien heat

love must we, if ever, even for a moment

lips unchained frivolous distractions

capricious play

the deep recesses of our lives

eddying uncertainty 

Task 52 Rigid Rules

Create a short story that is 26 sentences long, each sentence beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. (Add other, arbitrary conditions, if desired, such as one sentence should be one-word long; there should be one question mark, one quotation, etc.) Rigid rules often produce fascinating results—such as with well-written sonnets, which have 14 lines and tight rhyme schemes, each line governed by a specific number of syllables and alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.

Taken from http://inside.warren-wilson.edu/~creativewriting/Prompts.php

Task 51 The Story Behind It

Review a section from the Police Beat or Classified Ads of a local newspaper. Choose one and tell the story behind it.

Taken from http://inside.warren-wilson.edu/~creativewriting/Prompts.php

Task 50: A Special Place

Describe a significant place, allowing the details to reveal why the place matters. Describe it from a tree or rooftop or from a hawk’s point of view. Describe it from the height of a dog or a turtle.

Task 49: Socks

Write a funny** story involving socks.

**You can change 'funny' to any emotion--sad or angry or mushy, etc, and 'socks' to any normally boring overlooked topic, but for some reason, socks seem to work best as a prompt. (from Audrey deLong, North Carolina)

Taken from http://writingfix.com/classroom_tools/dailypromptgenerator.htm

Task 48 In Another Life

If you are an only child, what would your life be like (hypothetically) if you had siblings? If you are a sibling, what would your life be like (hypothetically) if you were an only child? (from Trina Grant, Alabama)

Taken from http://writingfix.com/classroom_tools/dailypromptgenerator.htm

Task 47 A Twinkling Eye

A twinkling eye can mean many things. Write a poem about a twinkle in someone’s eye.

Task 46 Dear Diary . . .

Think about your favorite TV show,book, or movie.  Become one of the main characters and write a diary entry based on the last episode or, if a movie, based on a specific scene.  Start with "Dear Diary..." (from Heidi Grassi, Nevada)

Taken from http://writingfix.com/classroom_tools/dailypromptgenerator.htm

Task 45: A Story About . . . #2

You walk into your house and it’s completely different — furniture, decor, all changed. It doesn’t look like the same house anymore. And nobody’s home. Write a poem or a story about the experience.

taken from https://www.writingforward.com/writing-prompts/creative-writing-prompts/25-creative-writing-prompts

Task 44: A Story About . . . #1

The kids were raised on the mantra “Family is everything.” What happens when they find out their parents aren’t who they pretended to be? Will the family fall apart? Write A Poem or a Story of their lives . . . 

taken from https://www.writingforward.com/writing-prompts/creative-writing-prompts/25-creative-writing-prompts

Task 43: A wink and a smile

Tell bad drivers, rude customers, and evil dictators how grateful you are for what they’ve done. Do it with a wink and a smile.

taken from https://www.writingforward.com/writing-prompts/creative-writing-prompts/25-creative-writing-prompts

Task 42: Silver Lining

Write about something ugly — war, fear, hate, or cruelty–but find the beauty (silver lining) in it or something good that comes out of it.

Poem #99 time to time echoes into all our day

Mystery of his heart course on forever

Long try in vain to hidden self

Eloquent will no more

Inward striving thousand nothings

time to time echoes into all our day

This is rare beloved eyes a loved voice

Forever phantom upon his face

Monday Written over intimacy

Places of doubtful nothing

Haunted  and gone

twisted hills of unfamiliar men

your pathway strays in old days we still had

warm leafless dreaming

Poem #98 blond girl, locks, flats, darting

lies some loss of habits blindfold

companion too rare but once

with me my shepherds unblessed

storms their passing

like blossoms red fallen I heard

volleying through the raining and tossing breeze

Too quick fragments shine dreaming

blond girl, locks, flats, darting

Trembling by come back

A strain the world

Easy access

Lilly white blushing faces

Poem #97 Moths

Let me fly father field

By the sunset orange and pale

Unlashes I cannot reach the happy omen

From thy broad lucent forgetting

Still happier air great subtle soul folding

Dyeing in a heat. 

Poem #96 Pipe thou waste of visions

Immortal sickle to his silver voice

Fold call these despair mild

Lonely  slopes haunt soft wanderer

Fugitive to honor

The world’s market bought sold

Unfollowed heart like nothing

Feeble gave ground its strength

Beloved Long happy learnt men

Pipe thou waste of visions

Light wandering night

Grown not reach of

Fatigue and fear. 

Poem #95 View my complete profile

Eating time,

My own little monster

Found life easy, Waiting his turn

At the string of lies dreamt

Tenant of a Pick Me Up

About me

View my complete profile

Pictures, rants, motivational posters

An audience of 365

Lathing furiously at the little spaces,

My life sold as rent. 

Task 41 Use all the words #2

Use all of the following words in a piece of writing: dash, hard, staple, billboard, part, circle, flattened.

taken from https://www.writingforward.com/writing-prompts/creative-writing-prompts/25-creative-writing-prompts

Task 40: Animals into Monsters

Turn ordinary animals into monsters that prey on humans: dog-sized rats, killer rabbits, or a pack of rabid mountain lions. Give the animals intelligence and set them loose.

taken from https://www.writingforward.com/writing-prompts/creative-writing-prompts/25-creative-writing-prompts

Task 39: Use all the words

Use all of the following words in a piece of writing: feast, fire, modify, squash, robbed, forgotten, under-stated.

Task 38: Continue to write 2#

Continue the story:

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“No.”
“He actually compared your hair to a poodle?”
“Yeah, I was a bit surprised, too.”
“So, what did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. I got up and...

Taken from: https://letterpile.com/writing/100-short-story-novel-prompts

Task 37: Continue to Write 1#

Doug stuck his hand in the box and immediately pulled it out. "Ow," he said. He licked the side of his index finger as if it had honey on it.

(Continue to write about who Doug is, where he is, and what is in the box...)

Taken from https://letterpile.com/writing/100-short-story-novel-prompts

Task 36: As The Object

Take any object out of your bag or pocket or purse. Speaking in first person AS THE OBJECT, answer the following questions (in any order):

What is your favorite thing?

What are you scared of?

What is your secret?

What is your wish for the future?

Task 35: Conversation Poem

Write a poem in which one person is speaking to another. The first line presents one

speaker, the next line the other, and so on. For example:

Put your shoes on, son

But I can't find them

I'll count to ten: one…

I can't, they're gone

Hurry, or you know what I'll do-

I’ve found them. They've got knots!

I'm not waiting any more. two... etc.

Suggestions: Butcher to customer, teacher to pupil, small child to Santa Claus, driver to

police officer, teenage boy to another, editor to author, actor to director, lizard to worm, snake

to snake, clown to a small child

Task 34: Curse Poem

Write a poem that begins with pronouncing a curse or a spell on someone or something. For example:

A curse on Samantha

Who ate my dessert

I hope her belly begins to hurt,

I hope her toenails all turn green

(I hope this doesn't

Sound too mean.)

Suggested curses: A curse on gossipers, smokers, speeding drivers, rainy weather, daylight

saving, pot holes, homework, long queues, late buses, flat lemonade, jack hammers, boredom

Task 33: Warning Poem

You must come up chose a warning such as:

- Don't stick objects in your ears

- Don't cross a road without checking for traffic

- Don't attempt to feed a wild animal

- Don't play with matches

- Don't talk to strangers

- Don't drink ink

- Don't be a busybody

and must make a poem of four lines about the potential dangers of disobeying that warning. For example, if the warning is `Don't smoke', the poem could be:

If you ever smoke

Your lungs will fill with goo

Smoking shortens your life

What a dumb thing to do!

taken from: http://education.maritime.history.sa.gov.au/documents/PoetryWordgames.pdf

Literary Theory: Deconstruction Theory

Task 32: Boring Poem

In this poem, the second and alternate lines are always the same. You must write the first and subsequent odd-numbered lines. For example:

I get up and go to school

Day after day, day after day!

Do what I'm told,

Day after day, day after day!

Listen to the same old warnings,

Day after day, day after day!

Get most of my sums wrong,

Day after day, day after day! Etc

Suggestions: Week after week, month after month, year after year, payday after payday,

weekend after weekend, minute after minute.

Taken from: http://education.maritime.history.sa.gov.au/documents/PoetryWordgames.pdf

An Interpretation of Wordsworth’s relations with the city in “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”

You are Only Beautiful When you Are not Yourself or

That dress looks pretty!

An Interpretation of Wordsworth’s relations with the city in “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”

William Wordsworth known for his appreciation of the natural world focused on nature and man's relationship with the natural environment is the poet of “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3,1802” a sonnet written in appreciation of the city of London as its subject. At first glance it appears that the poem describes the city in a very positive way, communicating its power and 'splendor'. A suggestion being made by Wordsworth against his traditional approach that suggests that the view of the city is a rival for anything naturally occurring: 'Earth has not anything to show more fair' is the opening line. The city becomes commodification of the natural and therein beautiful only in its sleeping state the opposite of what it is.

Thus, rather than an admiration of the city the poem becomes visible to the reader as  unnatural and monstrous, beautiful only in reflection of the natural and beautiful only when it is not all of the things characteristic of a city such as people, motion and perhaps even more dramatically only beautiful when it is dead. Negative language seemingly used in lines 1, 9 and 11 to create the impression that the city is superior to nature, that London is the pinnacle of creation. "Never did the sun more beautifully..."(9) "Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!" (11) However, this is immediately contrasted with a reverence for the natural in that, it is only through the contrast of the city and the beauty of natural which therein is made more beautiful and the ultimate revelation that the city in this particular moment is void of those things which are characteristic of a city.

Wordsworth begins the sonnet dramatically as if daring the reader to disagree with him “Earth has not anything to show more fair:”(1) however, this is a type of exaggeration given that his implication is that at the this particular moment it seems to him the most beautiful scene in existance this image of the cities beauty will however be turned on its head at the couplet. The line concludes with a collen suggesting that he will illustrate what the earth has too show however instead of what "showing" what the scene is as one would expect given the shortness of the sonnet form. He justifies his decision to stop his coach along the way to look at the view from the bridge: “Dull would he be of soul who could pass by/ A sight so touching in its majesty:”(2-3) through his claims that anyone who didn't stop, who just passed by with a glance, would be "dull...of soul." The use of dull here potentially a reference to the monotony of everyday life to the a foreshadowing of the peoples dullness and incapacity of witnessing the beauty of the natural in their daily lives. There however and understanding that the people are a part of the city, and in being a part of the life of the “mighty heart” of line 14 and incapable of viewing the beauty of the city by the act of being part of it. The use of the phrase "touching in its majesty," in its combining of the public and the private in that the word ‘touching’ implies an intimate act whereas ‘majesty’ is something not usually associated with these intimate actions a potentially reference implying once more the relationship between the city and the natural as something not usually witnessed and these two forces as tradition. The intimacy of this moment is also one that is foreseen as being taken away by the coming to life of the city. 

The poem continues relating the city to the natural and once more to its human subjects: “This City now doth, like a garment, wear/ The beauty of the morning;” (4-5) nobody wears garments but people here the city is wearing however here the city is wearing something that is beautiful therein it is not the city thus what is being admired is not necessarily the city but the cloth that it is wearing. The rest of the poem with the exception of the couplet is hence a reflection of the clothes and what they do for the city.

This image of being clothed is immediately followed by nudity  “silent, bare,/ Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie/ Open unto the fields, and to the sky;”(5-7)because of the semi-colon before them, "silent" and "bare" more likely to refer to sights of the city , however the ambiguity could allows it to the morning to also be seen as silent and bare however silent, bare in line 5 that don't seem completely attached to what comes before or after them and while the morning is always silent and bare the city is not always silent and bare. In line 6, he is preforming a type of a scan on the city in this state the use of temple outsized of paganizing the city creates an image of the city a body in that in which the listed items mapped out from top to bottom by the speaker are its body part. The use of open if not sexually revealing, implies a receptiveness to the beauty of the morning a beauty which is not usually accepted on part of the city thus the use of the word open/ bare are direct references to the city accepting something in its sleep which it would not recognize or accept at any other time.

The octet ends with another reiteration of the image of the city not being a city “All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.” London is known for its fog and it seems strange to imagine London without fog or without any smoke from chimneys obscures the bright light—emphasizing the image of London as  the agent of the beauty and what ultimately appears beautiful is the sunlight whose image can through the glass be ever changing and theirin achieving the affect of "glittering" The changing image of the light is one which due to the inactivity of the city cannot be associated with the city but must therefore be associated with the image of the sun and thereby something natural. Returning to the bold claim posed the beginning of the poem he notes that "Never did sun more beautifully steep/In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;" (9-10) here the claim seems to be that the beauty of London surpasses the countryside, these sights is far superior to the "First splendour" that falls upon any boulder or mountainous cliff ("rock"), or a hillside in the country being superior however it does not seem here that this beauty is retainable given that the unnatural state-- and the beauty which is reflected is one of the nature or the sun which "steep" into the landscape of London. The image of steep evoking that of a teabag steeping into water in that the water has to be pure in order for the tea to leave its flavor and therein uninhabitable by human life in order for the water to be clear reiterating the image posed in lines 4-5 in which the city is wearing the beauty of the morning a beauty which is attributed to the morning (a natural circumstance) and not to the city itself whom is simply garbing itself within the beauty in its ability to reflect it.

Line 11-12 continue with this image of the city as something comparable to the natural and only beautiful in its ability to reflect the natural: "Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!/ The river glideth at his own sweet will:" in which the speaker claims that London makes him feel calm which appears strange considering that it is the city and this something which one could traditionally and Wordsworth usually does associate with a calm serene hillside such as the one described in line 10. Lines 13-14 reflecting his full awakening to that the beauty of the city and this moment in which he has been caught is not something traditionally associated with the city: “Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;/And all that mighty heart is lying still!” Thus, when awake the city will be none of the things which the speaker so relished of the landscape when it was lying still. However the phrase “that mighty heart is lying still” becomes more than simply sleep but extend itself to a form of death. While the lines Dear God  . . . and all that mighty heart is lying still! with its two exclamations emphasizing the enthusiasm with which the lines are delivered it seems that the reader is greatly surprised by the lack of life of the city. A heart here is implied as lying still it means that it is not being which by extent implies that it is dead.

Words on lines three ('majesty') and 14 ('mighty') suggest the strength of power of the city, rather like a lion, or a monarch while like in some of Wordsworth’s poems this may have refer to the natural here it expresses the city. Nevertheless the message is subversive, while Wordsworth is in awe of the power he is experiencing this power is in line three a reflection of the natural and in line 14 ultimately something at rest and therein admirable otherwise ‘dull’ and equivalent to a type of a sleeping giant powerful but lacking in mental capacity.  

The poem is showing beauty of the garb that is too say the natural world rather than individual wearing the garb the city itself and their in attention is being drawn to the lack of natural beauty of the city is made even more apparent by the emphasis on the beauty of the natural which it does not traditionally possess. The image of the city in a September morning does grant Wordsworth to appreciate the natural world more so than prior to this moment but only as a thing which emphasizes the beauty of the natural, he has become at once fully aware that "Never did the sun more beautifully..."(9) "Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!" (11) These are not however expressions of the beauty of the now sleeping but rather of the beauty of the natural world which becomes exipted through the display on Westminster bridge on September 3 of 1802.