Full Moon Writing Prompts & The Antonym Poem

Two still pics from the video poem "The Opposites Game." See below.

Introduction

Fair Warning: This week is a hodgepodge!  With a warmup, an antonym experiment, and a poem write challenge, writing practice will be a bit of an obstacle course today!  
Nature does not care that you are comfortable, only that you evolve. ~ Harville Hendrix

---

1.  Writing Warm-Up

From a list of adjectives for describing a beach, we randomly selected three for a unique writing warm-up!  Write for five minutes to each topic. Tell me about . . .

• a FARAWAY beach
• an ANCIENT or HIDDEN beach
• a TURBULENT beach

​

---

2.  "Moon" Writing Prompt 

According to The Old Farmer's Almanac this Friday (7-23-2021) is July's Full Moon.  It is called the Buck Moon because the antlers of male deer (bucks) are in full-growth mode at this time. Bucks shed and regrow their antlers each year, producing a larger and more impressive set as the years go by.

• Several other names for this month’s Moon reference ANIMALS: Feather Moulting Moon (Cree) and Salmon Moon, a Tlingit term indicating when fish returned to the area and were ready to be harvested.
• PLANTS are also featured in July’s Moon names: Berry Moon (Anishinaabe), Moon When the Chokecherries are Ripe (Dakota), Month of the Ripe Corn Moon (Cherokee), and Raspberry Moon (Algonquin, Ojibwe).
• WEATHER & SUMMER SEASON names: Thunder Moon (Western Abenaki) and Halfway Summer Moon (Anishinaabe) 

WRITING TOPICS:  

• Knowing Native names for the full moon are based on what is happening during that full moon month in different regions, write a poem about what kind of season it has been for you. How will you title this full moon?
  
• Write a poem that will manifest the kind of moon season you are about to have, or the one you want to have.
  

​

---

3. Antonym Poem

Ah, his poem.         
This short film. 
If you do nothing else this week, watch this film. 

If you're ready to think and write, take a line of text or a whole poem and write the opposite or antonym for each word.  Try this for a few lines, and see if a poem appears.  OR  Let the lines be the impetus for some other kind of poem. Don’t worry about being too perfect or too correct in conjuring the opposite words. Remember it is a writing challenge not a scientific study.  Use the same Dickinson poem in the video to get started.

Film by Anna Samo + Lisa LaBracio
A poem by Brendan Constantine
Poem performed by Brendan Constantine

The Opposites Game
BRENDAN CONSTANTINE
                              for Patricia Maisch

This day my students and I play the Opposites Game
with a line from Emily Dickinson. My life had stood
a loaded gun, it goes and I write it on the board,
pausing so they can call out the antonyms –

My                 Your
Life                Death
Had stood ?   Will sit
A                   Many
Loaded                     Empty
Gun ?

Gun.
For a moment, very much like the one between
lightning and it’s sound, the children just stare at me,
and then it comes, a flurry, a hail storm of answers –

Flower, says one. No, Book, says another. That's stupid,
cries a third, the opposite of a gun is a pillow. Or maybe
a hug, but not a book, no way is it a book. With this,
the others gather their thoughts

and suddenly it’s a shouting match. No one can agree,
for every student there’s a final answer. It's a song,
a prayer, I mean a promise, like a wedding ring, and
later a baby. Or what’s that person who delivers babies?

A midwife? Yes, a midwife. No, that’s wrong. You're so
wrong you’ll never be right again. It's a whisper, a star,
it's saying I love you into your hand and then touching
someone's ear. Are you crazy? Are you the president

of Stupid-land? You should be, When's the election?
It’s a teddy bear, a sword, a perfect, perfect peach.
Go back to the first one, it's a flower, a white rose.
When the bell rings, I reach for an eraser but a girl

snatches it from my hand. Nothing's decided, she says,
We’re not done here. I leave all the answers
on the board. The next day some of them have
stopped talking to each other, they’ve taken sides.

There's a Flower club. And a Kitten club. And two boys
calling themselves The Snowballs. The rest have stuck
with the original game, which was to try to write
something like poetry.

It's a diamond, it's a dance,
the opposite of a gun is a museum in France.
It's the moon, it's a mirror,
it's the sound of a bell and the hearer.

The arguing starts again, more shouting, and finally
a new club. For the first time I dare to push them.
Maybe all of you are right, I say.

Well, maybe. Maybe it's everything we said. Maybe it’s
everything we didn't say. It's words and the spaces for words.
They're looking at each other now. It's everything in this room
and outside this room and down the street and in the sky.

It's everyone on campus and at the mall, and all the people
waiting at the hospital. And at the post office. And, yeah,
it's a flower, too. All the flowers. The whole garden.
The opposite of a gun is wherever you point it.

Don’t write that on the board, they say. Just say poem.
Your death will sit through many empty poems.

Source: The American Journal of Poetry

Tell us a word for which you had the hardest time
​coming up with the antonym, an opposite.
​