Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 641
Every Wednesday, Robert Lee Brewer shares a prompt and an example poem to get things started on the Poetic Asides blog. This week, write a hurry poem.
Before we get started today, I just wanted to note that (like today), I'll be posting these Wednesday Poetry Prompts a little later in the day than normal to give a little space for Moriah Richard's February Flash Fiction Challenge this month, which begins today (and is super fun!). We'll get back to earlier posts in March and beyond.
For this week's prompt, write a hurry poem. The poem could about the need for someone else to hurry or how they're being hurried. But it could also be narrated by a person who feels the need to hurry or like they're being hurried. However, you can decide whether to hurry up and write...or take a more leisurely pace.
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
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Write a poem every single day of the year with Robert Lee Brewer's Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming. After sharing more than a thousand prompts and prompting thousands of poems for more than a decade, Brewer picked 365 of his favorite poetry prompts here.
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Here’s my attempt at a Hurry Poem:
“no hurry no worry,” by Robert Lee Brewer
i confess i feel the push and the pull
of progress each and every day but i
try to hold myself back as much as my
back will allow me. allow me to pull
this tight string holding the world together
until its stress severs the connection
to this nonstop pursuit of perfection
that gathers compound interest forever.
i'm not a sprocket nor a cog in some
factory or nonstop assembly line
of machines that make infinite machines
making machines. no. i'm not a machine.
i break without enough space and a line
about individual parts and their sum.
(Note about form: Today, I wrote a sonnet. But you can play around with several forms by checking out my list of poetic forms.)
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
