Poetry Challenge #79-Fibonacci Awakening
Hurrah! Everything is in bloom! Take a close look at the way the leaves on a plant and petals on a flower grow. Notice how they often grow in a pattern: One in the center; next row 2; third row 3; fourth row 5; fifth row 8 and so on. This pattern, which allows each leaf/petal to have maximum exposure to light and moisture while maintaining a tidy spiral pattern, called is the Golden Ratio, is the Fibonacci Sequence in action! Pure poetry, right! Which leads naturally to today’s prompt:
Fibonacci Sequencing Succulent
Poetry Challenge #79
Fibonacci Awakening
Number sequences are fun ways to create a form for a poem in that they pose a puzzle without too many rules.
For this prompt let’s add some geeky science fun to our poetry with Fibonacci.
A Fibonacci sequence begins with 0 and 1. Each number is the sum of the two previous numbers. The third number would be 0+1=1. The fourth number is 1+1=2. And so on.
Write a poem matching the number of syllables or words on each line with the first six numbers in the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8.
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
When you finish step outside and find the Fibonacci Busting out all over!
If the Fibonacci has you fired up for More MATH! Here’s a fab Math Challenge game!
*Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 8 years days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in comments or on social @kellybennettbooks
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Poetry Challenge #77-Heave-Ho!
Sing-Alongs are always challenging—and sometimes embarrassing—even for me. (And those of you who know me, know I love to sing—badly.) The worst is when someone sticks a microphone in my face and I don’t know the words. That’s when I resort to the trusty mumble-mumble-murmer-murmer— la-di-dah-daaaaaaaa
My Best Friend’s Wedding Classic!
Songwriters who like audiences who sing-along— pirate ship captives & those wanting tips, for example—make singing along easier by writing song with repeated refrains—the more often repeated the better. Which brings me to today’s prompt.
Poetry Challenge #77
Heave-Ho! Chant-She-Blows!
“The chant poem is about as old as poetry itself,” writes Robert Lee Brewer in his Oct. 23, 2012 post. “Chant poems simply incorporate repetitive lines that form a sort of chant. Each line can repeat [as they do in Blues’ songs], or every other line [as in a Sea Shanty].” Sailors sang shanties as they rowed or heaved on ropes to keep everyone working at the same pace. It’s believed “Shanty” is a morphism of “chanty” meaning both the type of song and a name for the sailor who leads the singing. By way of an example, below is a Chant Poem Cindy created.
“Snow fell this morning, soft and white and cold,
I was thinking of our bench in Central Park today.
I liked it more before I got so old,
I was thinking of our bench in Central Park today.
I left the city a long time ago,
I was thinking of our bench in Central Park today.
Now I hear sounds of birds—the caws of crows,
I was thinking of our bench in Central Park today.”
Follow these three easy steps to create your own Chant Poem—Or “Shanty” if you will!
Find a headline in a newspaper or magazine that you like the sound of. That will be your chant.
Write a four line rhyming poem where the first 2 lines rhyme and the last 2. AABB
Insert the chant between each line of your rhyming poem and you have a chant poem.
“They know a song will help the job along…”
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
*Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 3200 days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Prompt #76 Thirsty Thursday
Maybe because there’s a heat wave on—the likes of which I can’t recall.
Maybe because it will soon enough be Thursday and I’m thirsty.
Maybe because water isn’t cutting it, I recollected a play called The Drunkard by William Henry Smith, which brought to mind the song cowboy song Cool, Clear Water, you know the one: “Don’t you listen to him Dan/He’s a devil not a man/and he spreads the burning sand with water/Cool, clear, water….” Thus today’s 7-Minute Poetry Challenge.
Poetry Prompt #76
Thirsty Thursday
Draw inspiration from the title, Thirsty Thursday, write a poem about thirst using as many “th” words as you can throw into it.
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
Here’s to You! & Your 7-Minute Poem!
When you’re finished reward yourself with a nice tall glass of something cool. Cheers!
Thirsty Thursday Playlist:
*Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 8 years ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #73-Contrapuntality of Life
I love music, love singing, love listening—am lousy at playing music. Yes, I’ve tried. I took piano lessons from 13-17 and finally, when I could not grasp the concept of “chords” my teacher wrote me off as hopeless. But that doesn’t stop me! (My current challenge is a ukulele…I’m trying to learn using the “think system” ala Prof. Harold Hill.)
Poetry Challenge #73
Contrapuntality of Life
Contrapuntal is defined as two or more independent melodic lines in music. You can write a contrapuntal poem by combining two independent poems—one line of one and then one line of another. Try it!
1) Find two poems you’ve written that are of a similar length.
2) Alternate your poems by writing one line of one and then one line of the other. If it doesn’t seem to be working, try it using the opposite one first.
3) Change what you need to change to make sense. Sometimes that’s just capital letters and punctuation, but sometimes you might need to add or delete a word.
Here’s what came of Cindy melding two poems.
“I could have made dinner tonight, but instead
alone with the elements of craft,
I read a good book and cleaned under the bed.
I wonder why
I sorted my yarn and picked up the craft table
to grow this garden better.
I folded the laundry and now I’m not able
to cook any food.
Outside the window, there’s crackers and cheese
and fruit if you like.
I see my history.
I’ll have some please.”
Now it’s your turn!
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
Langston Hughes’ collection of Jazz poetry—did it come from exercises like these? I like to think so!
*Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 8 years ago. We take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem on my social @kellybennettwrites.
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Poetry Challenge #74-I Am From . . .
A few years back, we shared a prompt inspired by the I Am From Project, celebrating our unique voices through poetry (my summation of the project, not the official word.). The project’s goal was “to create a national river of voices, reminding America that diversity is our origin and our strength.” I Am From Project invited us—all of us—to share our stories and rejoice in the experiences—different and the same—that make us, U.S.
Poetry Challenge #74
The Stuff of Me
Write a poem describing where you are from, your ancestors, roots, family, and or your own personal journey.
Begin with the words:
Where I’m From . . .
“Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon
I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I’m from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments—
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree. ”
*Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 3200 days ago and counting . . . We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #72.5-Flip-Flop
Are you, by chance, wearing flip flops?
If you aren’t, you should be.
Why? Because the Wednesday after Memorial Day Weekend is officially National Flip-Flop day.
This glorious art is by Teri Virbickis. You can order prints!
Flip-flops are called “flip-flops” because of the sound they make when worn. They are also called “slip-slops” for the same reason, and also, my friend Shona explained, “because they look sloppy.”
Other names for this “inexpensive footwear consisting of a flat base, typically rubber, and a strap with three anchor points: between the big and second toes, then bifurcating to anchor on both sides of the foot” are slippers, thongs, pluggers and double-pluggers, jandals, plakkies, tsinelas, and chanclas.
Flip-flop is also means to change one's mind or opinions on something, or to be indecisive and wavering between different positions—in other words to wiggle-waggle over one’s opinion in the same manner a flip-flop does on one’s foot—especially when wet. (Which came first? You decide.)
Poetry Challenge #72.5
Flip-Flop
In keeping with the theme, rather than give one solid prompt, here are a few. Choose the one that suits your mood:
1. Put on a pair of flip-flops and let them take your poem wherever they want to go.
2. Write a poem that begins one way and ends another.
3. Write a poem from the point of view of a flip-flop
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
*Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 8 years ago! We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem at @kellybennettwrites
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Poetry Challenge #71-Listing Up!
Find this list and more on Growing in the Garden website.
Spring is in full swing. Which for me means the frantic rush between post-winter clean up and pre-summer weeding & planting. A glorious time of year, but hectic—and the rest of life doesn’t slow when the garden goes into hypergrow either.
To keep up, I make lists (and borrow lists like this one.)
Lists are good. Checking items off lists is better.
Lists can help keep our “boats,” in the sometimes rough and rocky ocean, from well…listing and possibly crashing or sinking in the process…
What’s more, lists are easy, which makes them a great way to begin:
Poetry Challenge #71
Listing Up!
You can write list poems over and over with different results every time.
Begin with any topic and list things it makes you think of as quickly as you can.
Next go through the list and pick out one or more things that stick out for you.
Try making a list from the thing you picked out.
What does that thing make you think of?
Why did you pick it?
Add detail.
Use your senses.
Play with rhythm or rhyme.
Here are a couple prompts you can use to start if you want:
I like…
I wish I liked…
I remember…
Help! My peonies have fallen and can’t get up…in other words, they are listing, too!
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
*Cindy Faughnan and I resolved to begin this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 8 years ago! We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #70-Noises On!
For the last poetry challenge we explored the Sound of Silence, this time, let’s crank up the volume by focusing on noise.
City Noises…
Country noises . . .
Kitchen noises: day or night the kitchen never really sleeps…
And my favorite critter noises…
Poetry Challenge #70
Noises On!
Visualize an event, a moment, an incident—either real or imagined. Now, close your eyes and listen to the sound of significant movements and/or actions happening in that moment. What sounds do you hear? Heart beats, water dripping, footsteps, maybe bells . . .
Write a poem using these sounds. Try establishing a rhythm by repeating the sound a few times in each line followed or preceded by what is making the sound. Some hugely successful songs use sounds in this way. For example, in The Trolley Song sung notably by Judy Garland in the movie Meet Me in St. Louis sounds are used to describe the first moment Ester meets John:
“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley
Ding, ding, ding went the bell
Zing, zing, zing went my heart strings
From the moment I saw him I fell
Chug, chug, chug went the motor
Bump, bump, bump went the brake
Thump, thump, thump went my heart strings
When he smiled I could feel the car shake”
