# Help me write a poem, please please please! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 6, 2004, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296 "2004-11-06T00:56:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![papergirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@papergirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/papergirl)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/1 "2004-11-06T00:56:56Z")
I have poetry group next week, and I haven’t had a poem to bring in a long, long time. I’m not a very consistent writer–sometimes I’ll write several poems in a month, sometimes none for several months–right now I’m on the downhill side of several months. I’d sure like to have SOMEthing by Tuesday. So…I need an assignment. A list of several words would do. Or an evocative line or image might do it. Anything to jumpstart the creative writing battery. Anyone? And of course, maybe some other stalled poets will be inspired, and post their poems here too… Thanks! karol ---
**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/2 "2004-11-06T01:03:20Z")
Of all the assignments that are painfully blown, None is worse than not doing homework on your own. ---
**Author:** ![papergirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@papergirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/papergirl)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/3 "2004-11-06T01:08:06Z")
No, no, no. This isn’t homework. I’m 39 years old, for heaven’s sake. I don’t get graded on this stuff. I’m a poet. With whatever poets call it when they get writer’s block. I need something evocative, a writing exercise, not a poem written by someone else. There are books on the market full of writing exercises, but this is more fun–more immediate, if you will. We did something similar once before. I’ll have to go search for the thread. I’m just tired of taking muffins instead of poems. I think they’re on to me. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![rackensack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/4 "2004-11-06T03:43:45Z")
There’s always the old standby poetry-writing exercise: write a sestina. If you want to make it especially challenging, go up to six random people and get them each to give you one of the line-ending words. Or find some other way of randomly generating the words. Just don’t read Dana Gioia’s “My Confessional Sestina” before starting out 😃 . ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/5 "2004-11-06T04:17:10Z")
Write a poem using these five impossible-to-put-in-a-good poem words: love shard(s) tendril(s) soul rutabaga Okay, so rutabaga was a joke. I’m still leaving it in. Get cracking! Extra points if you make it a sonnet. Me like sonnets. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/6 "2004-11-06T04:21:07Z")
Go to the bookstore and get one o’ them magnet poetry things. Heave the whole box at your refrigerator, and write down whatever sticks. My favorite random magnet poem: essential butt moment ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/7 "2004-11-06T05:37:24Z")
Never forget: “Moon” is a good rhyme for “June.” ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/8 "2004-11-06T05:50:06Z")
Oh, and there are a few poems [here.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=394186) ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/9 "2004-11-06T06:19:22Z")
Drift Float Slip Rolling Threads Off the top o’ my head. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/10 "2004-11-06T13:12:29Z")
Purr Pinwheel Cork Cherries Bone Goddess Mirror ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/11 "2004-11-06T13:19:13Z")
> [@](#): > > American poet William Stafford offers this advice to poets who suffer from Writer’s Block: “There is no such thing as writer’s block for writers whose standards are low enough.” This sounds terrible at first. “What? I’m supposed to write junk? I need a good grade! I’m better than that!” No, Stafford is not encouraging writers to produce garbage. He is suggesting, however, that it’s easy to take yourself too seriously, to think you’re going to write a poem or an essay that is going to be the greatest poem or essay ever written, that you’re going to formulate the greatest, loveliest, most intelligent statement ever made. So you sit there, thinking how unworthy you are, cursing the day you were born, wondering why you ever went to college, hating the very act of writing that has you so stymied. A writer has to let that go, forget about judgment. Go ahead and write drivel at first, as long as you write. Out of your nonsense and ramblings, however, believe that something good will come, some idea will catch fire right there on the page, there will be sparks, patterns will emerge. Be willing to throw stuff out. It’s all right. Do you think Shakespeare didn’t litter his kitchen floor with balled-up pieces of paper? One nice thing about the word-processor is that you’re not wasting paper and trees; you’re just exercising the delete key. But this is no time to worry about the environment. Fill that wastebasket with paper and trust that something will come of all this scribbling. It will. Get going. From [here](http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/brainstorm_block.htm) ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/12 "2004-11-06T14:07:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Write a poem using these five impossible-to-put-in-a-good poem words: > love > shard(s) > tendril(s) > soul > rutabaga Roses are red, Rutabega are green, Shards of pottery Are rarely seen. Roses are red, Tendrils are droll, Caesar is dead, And there’s love in my soul. Next? ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/13 "2004-11-06T14:34:00Z")
_Good_ poem. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Sample\_the\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sample\_the\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sample_the_Dog)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/14 "2004-11-06T14:37:04Z")
I’m writing a poem about colors. The first lines end in “purple”, “orange”, and “silver”. Anyone got any rhymes? So far, all I got is “door hinge”. ---
**Author:** ![FilmGeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@FilmGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FilmGeek)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/15 "2004-11-06T16:53:30Z")
I find finding a rhythmic situation helps me. I wrote a poem about the circus to the rhythmic back and forth of the trapeze. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/16 "2004-11-06T19:33:45Z")
> [@Sample\_the\_Dog](#): > > I’m writing a poem about colors. > > The first lines end in “purple”, “orange”, and “silver”. > > Anyone got any rhymes? > > So far, all I got is “door hinge”. I’m shopping in the produce aisle Picking grapes both green and purple. What will make my esophagus sting? With my ulcer, a burp’ll. My mom is cuter than your mom Although her hair be silver You may think your mom’s a MILF. But my mom is MILF-er. ---
**Author:** ![papergirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@papergirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/papergirl)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/17 "2004-11-07T00:51:55Z")
It’s a beginning, at least. A little wordier than is typical for me, but that’s typically what happens when I’m stuck. I’ll hone it down a bit over the next couple of days. Wanna see? I don’t know how many of the words I used…just wrote them all down and had at. REUNION For that brief week in December, the household pinwheeled around the kitchen, the unpolished kitchen table filled with food—persimmon pudding wrapped in foil, loaves of cheap sliced bread, a single blue-striped bowl filled with improbable, sweet cherries. Everyone was home—my brother back from the Army, so shorn that he became a stranger when he slept, my sister back from a ruined and undiscussed marriage, even the cousins from Butte arrived to sleep on the floor of my bedroom. We talked late into the darkness, feeling the high angled ceiling of my upstairs room float further into rolling darkness as the house grew quieter around us. Outside, the moon was huge. Outside, the bone- white sycamores stretched toward something no one, not even Leslie, the witchy one, could discern. We wrote terrible poetry about love, and wept as we whispered it aloud. On the last night, we decided that we were all still virgins. Technically, at least—even Karen. Early the next morning, I woke to my lie and sleepy warmth of my cousin Lisa against my back—Lisa, who in eighth grade had broken the nose of a boy who shoved his hand up her dress. Had I ever been brave? I couldn’t remember. Outside, the early light caught on shards of river ice, and a part of me still stood stunned and bleeding on a wooded riverbank. In my warm, sleeping room I watched the shadows slip to the floor, the last day of safety beginning to wane, I whispered to my own pale face reflected in the mirror, _come back, come back, I need you._ ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/18 "2004-11-07T01:29:19Z")
[QUOTE=bodypoetI’d sure like to have SOMEthing by Tuesday. So…I need an assignment. A list of several words would do. Or an evocative line or image might do it.[/QUOTE] Alright, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to write a sonnet in Shakespearian form: an apparent love poem that is actually an allegory for the recent US Presidential election. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/19 "2004-11-07T01:58:41Z")
> [@bodypoet](#): > > It’s a beginning, at least. A little wordier than is typical for me, but that’s typically what happens when I’m stuck. I’ll hone it down a bit over the next couple of days. > > Wanna see? I don’t know how many of the words I used…just wrote them all down and had at. > REUNION > > For that brief week in December, the household > pinwheeled around the kitchen, the unpolished kitchen table > filled with food—persimmon pudding wrapped in foil, > loaves of cheap sliced bread, a single blue-striped > bowl filled with improbable, sweet cherries. Everyone > was home—my brother back from the Army, so shorn > that he became a stranger when he slept, my sister > back from a ruined and undiscussed marriage, even > the cousins from Butte arrived to sleep on the floor > of my bedroom. We talked late into the darkness, feeling > the high angled ceiling of my upstairs room float > further into rolling darkness as the house grew quieter > around us. Outside, the moon was huge. Outside, the bone- > white sycamores stretched toward something no one, > not even Leslie, the witchy one, could discern. We wrote > terrible poetry about love, and wept as we whispered it aloud. > > On the last night, we decided that we were all still > virgins. Technically, at least—even Karen. Early > the next morning, I woke to my lie and sleepy > warmth of my cousin Lisa against my back—Lisa, > who in eighth grade had broken the nose of a boy > who shoved his hand up her dress. Had I ever > been brave? I couldn’t remember. Outside, > the early light caught on shards of river ice, and > a part of me still stood > stunned and bleeding on a wooded riverbank. > In my warm, sleeping room I watched the shadows > slip to the floor, the last day of safety beginning > to wane, I whispered to my own pale face > reflected in the mirror, _come back, > come back, I need you._ Beautiful! ---
**Author:** ![Sample\_the\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sample\_the\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sample_the_Dog)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296/20 "2004-11-07T03:31:17Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > Beautiful! Yes. I very much enjoyed it, too. (I think it’s prose… but I loved it. Ever consider prose poems?) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-write-a-poem-please-please-please/273296.md?page=2)