Panicked Poet: Needing Prompts

I learned a lot from reading biographies of several poets. Frost was a night-owl and tended to write into the night and this, of course, put him late on the day. It was not a great schedule for a poet who was, in the early years, also a farmer. But William Stafford, Ted Kooser, and Billy Collins all have said they get up early to write.

In that great work Early Morning by William Stafford’s son, Kim Stafford has the great poet talking about how his kids would get up early and interrupt his morning writing, so he would get up an hour earlier, and then another hour earlier, until he found that sweet-spot where the house was quiet, the kids were asleep and he could write.

I took this practice on myself, getting up at 5, or 4 am to write. The problem, for me, is that I don’t always know what to do at that hour. In fiction I just make it a practice to stop writing in the middle of a scene that I know where it is going. That way, when I go back to it, I know how to start. I just take up where I left off. But with poetry, sometimes, I need prompts.

Here are some prompts that I use, and you are welcome to use too, if you want to, or feel it might be helpful.

1) Start a notebook and fill it with prompt stuff: Stuff like a list of topics to write about:

• fear


• sleep


• death


• spring


• snow


• a spider


• paying bills, and on and on

2. Prime the pump: Either collect in your prompt notebook a list of phrases you come across as you read. When you need to prompt yourself, scan those phrases and pick one. Paraphrase the line in 5 or 6 different ways, and see if it leads you to a poem.

3) Take a color and color a poem: Jot down every memory you have that includes that color. See if it leads you to a poem.


4) Never, ever, no way: Start by making a list of stuff you could never, would never do. See if it leads to a poem


5) Start by making a list of stuff you could never, would never do: List, explain, read, delete, add to, and see if this starts to lead you to a poem.

6) Don’t start the morning with writing, start with walking, or standing, or sitting: Take the dog for a walk, or take yourself outside, and intentionally look, listen and feel. Then come back in and write down what you saw, heard, and felt. Do haikus or just very short poems that tell no story, or reveal some memory or opinion, they just capture the moment.

7) Write a rant: Take some issue that really chaps your hide and write a ranting tirade about it.

8) Write a funny rant: You can make this a separate activity, or you can let it spring from the serious rant poem. Take the ranting poem, make it rhyme, and make it so extreme it is silly.

9) Write an inventory poem: Inventory a drawer, or the contents of your pocket, or your purse, or three or four things you lost recently, or all the pieces of mail that arrived yesterday.. Maybe you could write some thoughts or memories about each of the items in your inventoried list.

10) Looking for your mind, a million miles away: I have often heard, and sometimes said, “My mind was a million miles away.” It is a phrase used to explain why we didn’t hear something or notice something that happened right in front of us. Well, go find that mind. Where is it. What is it thinking about? See if it leads to a poem.