Torso of ApolloEdvard Munch’s “The ScreamGrecian Urn
In keeping with our theme for the month, The Page Transformed, this week we’ll be looking at the ekphrastic poem, or poetry written in conversation with a work(s) of visual art. In its most traditional form, the ekphrastic poem is an elaborate, highly detailed description of a work of [...]
The deep of winter can be a particularly difficult time, especially for those who (like me) are affected by short, dark days and perpetual gray skies. El Nino has wrought some particularly freakish incidences of heavy snow this year on the East Coast and some has dumped some uncharacteristically heavy bouts of rain on parts [...]
This week we’ll be experimenting with poems of invocation; that is, poems that employ direct address to construct and position a “You.” When thinking of the “addressee” of a poem, we are often tempted to think simply of audience. In the poem of invocation, however, “You” is a much more active presence in the poem; [...]
This year’s Year of the Tiger begins on Sunday, Feb. 14th (according to the Gregorian calendar).
For most people, the approach of the New Year (whether according to the Gregorian or Lunar calendar) signals a time to reflect upon our habits and to make lifestyle changes in order to have a “fresh start” in the coming [...]
The cento is a poetic form composed entirely of secondary (usually poetic) texts. The word “cento” derives from the Latin word for “patchwork,” or “patchwork cloak,” and in its classical form, was composed exclusively of language from either from a single poet or from several. Ausonius, the Roman originator of the form, stipulated that the [...]
A favorite prompt of mine from Kenneth Koch’s classic book Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry is an exercise in which he asks his students to compose poems using words from a list of Spanish vocabulary. Writes Koch in his commentary:
“Writing these poems enabled children who knew Spanish to enjoy their knowledge [...]
Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 81 years old today. I wanted to do a prompt this week which engaged thoughtfully (in some way) with his legacy—with the work that he began and which continues today—and so I was pleased to stumble upon Laura Gamache’s lesson plan, “The Right to Inquire” (on the Teachers [...]
Everyone has a private vocabulary (or vocabularies) to which only they and those that they know are privvy. Some of these “private” terms are particular to an individual person’s worldview or imagination (I have a friend who refers to internet survey memes as “salsa”), while others develop in the context of relationships with a particular group of people (whenever our 12th grade calculus [...]
This week’s prompt is adapted from a writing exercise in Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community (T&W Collaborative, 2005), a writing handbook now on sale on the Teachers & Writers Collaborative website.
What happens when we die? Where do noises go? How far is far? These types of questions without answers [...]
It’s been a superhero kind of week. Inspired simultaneously by this song, this NPR story, and by an article (I think from Teachers & Writers’ Collaborative magazine) in which a writing teacher asked her tentative students to write about their secret superpowers, I developed a prompt about superheroes to use with a group of adult [...]
