Free Association Poetry Prompts

An artist working under the name "segawa thirty-seven" puts a modern spin on iconic Japanese woodblock prints. Here the wind sweeps away papers in "Ijiri in Sugura Province" by Katsushika Hokusai (1830-5)

Read more about the gif artwork at Gif Magazine.

This week, we switched up the format!  It keeps writing practice fresh and the mind nimble. Instead of starting with mentor poems, we practiced writing with free association prompts, then looked at poems that could have been written after such a prompt.

First Writing Prompt

This writing exercise was first posed by poet Kenyatta Rogers in a virtual summer institute through the Poetry Foundation in Chicago this year. I liked the idea so much, wanted to try it here in PoetryBones.  

In this challenge, Rogers suggests taking a page of text (newspaper, textbook, magazine) and drawing a large "X" from top left corner down to the bottom right corner, and from top right down to bottom left corner.

Write down any of the words that the pencil lines cross through.  Write a poem, using all of those words.  Or write a poem using only 10 of the words.

​A variation I added was to use several words from one quadrant to be in conversation  with words from its opposing quadrant -- and see what happens.  With this same thought, use the words that rest just ON one of the lines (not underneath it) in dialogue with the words on the other line.  Try all sorts of free associations with the "Make an X" poem!

Second Writing Prompt

This one comes courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago's TAP program.  ​

Step One: At The Collections page of the Art Institute of Chicago, type JAR, BOWL, or BASKET in the search bar.  From the image bank, choose your own “gratitude jar.”  A gratitude jar is a mindfulness practice that has you writing something you're thankful for, or a positive experience from the day on a slip of paper and dropping it in the jar, and at some point you might read from the jar.  FOR NOW, the goal is to choose a vessel to hold such slips of paper!

Step Two: Write a poem about the jar.  Or write a poem about three positive experiences you had today.  Or somehow include both in your poem!  Write for 10 min. Ready?  Begin.

Mentor Poems

A Wicker Basket
ROBERT CREELEY

Comes the time when it’s later
and onto your table the headwaiter   
puts the bill, and very soon after
rings out the sound of lively laughter--

Picking up change, hands like a walrus,   
and a face like a barndoor’s,
and a head without any apparent size,   
nothing but two eyes--

So that’s you, man,
or me. I make it as I can,   
I pick up, I go
faster than they know--

Out the door, the street like a night,   
any night, and no one in sight,   
but then, well, there she is,
old friend Liz--

And she opens the door of her cadillac,   
I step in back,
and we’re gone.
She turns me on--

There are very huge stars, man, in the sky,
and from somewhere very far off someone hands me a slice of apple pie,
with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it,   
and I eat it--

Slowly. And while certainly
they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket   
of these cats not making it, I make it

in my wicker basket.
​

The Jar
A.F. MORITZ