Prompt: Take the phrase “The problem with (blank)” and replace the “(blank)” with a word or phrase. Make this the title of your poem and then write a poem to fit with or juxtapose against that title.
THE PROBLEM WITH ADAM SANDLER
Dick and fart jokes aren’t
nearly as funny on the fifth
telling, and the sadsack schmuck
with a heart of gold who gets
the girl anyway lost its appeal
years ago.
Well-deserved kudos for Jewish pride
don’t offset the absolutely unforgiveable,
inhumane and sadistic casting of
Rob Schneider in every movie.
Prompt: Write an outsider poem. You can be the outsider; someone else can be the outsider; or it can even be an animal or inanimate object that’s the outsider.
HEARTBURN
She wears it on her sleeve
because it does not fit
in her chest, too full
of life to be contained,
much too easy to break.
April is National Poetry Month, so it’s a perfect opportunity to live up to my URL and flashback to the late 90s when I worked at The Academy of American Poets and was terrorizing the NYC poetry slam scene!
I’ve attempted National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) twice, cranking out 15,000 words on the second try, but tomorrow, for the first time ever, I’ll be participating in the Poem-A-Day (PAD) Challenge!
The inimitable Robert Brewer — editor of Writer’s Market and Poet’s Market, and proprietor of the wonderful blog, Poetic Asides — will be posting a daily prompt and I, along with at least 150 others (and counting), are commiting to write a poem inspired by that prompt.
Every. Day.
Doesn’t mean any of them will be good, but every day in the month of April, before the clock strikes midnight, I’ll be posting a new poem here and over at Poetic Asides.
I went to the Frelinghuysen Arboretum a few weeks ago to check out Ken Druse give a presentation of his amazing new book, Planthropology: The Myths, Mysteries, and Miracles of My Garden Favorites, and took my wife’s fancy new camera with me to take pictures.
After the presentation, I wandered the snow-covered grounds of the Arboretum and took a few pictures before heading over to Greenwood Gardens for a rare tour of the grounds and took a ton more pictures. While far from the level of Druse’s work, I think I did pretty good for the first time, while also realizing I’m more of a tree, statuary and structural person than plants, though the time of year could have had something to do with that. Check them out on Flickr (plus a few below the cut).
Speaking of Druse, if you asked him what his favorite plant is, his answer would most likely be “whichever one I’m looking at. Every plant has an incredible story.”
In Planthropology, he proves his point, engagingly bringing plants of all kinds to vivid life with entertaining and enlightening stories that will intrigue gardeners and non-gardeners alike. It’s a visual feast that will make waiting for warmer weather to return more bearable, and it’s not just inspirational reading for avid gardeners, but also an ideal gift for helping family and friends get a better appreciation for your own passion, perhaps even inspiring them to get outside and join you.
My second stab at garden writing for Horticulture came out of this trip, too, along with a whole new appreciation for gardening and gardeners themselves.
The most basic advice usually given to writers looking to submit their work to magazines or literary journals is to know the market, aka read the guidelines and pick up a few issues before wasting your time and the editors’ by sending something that’s totally inappropriate for a publication.
With the increasing popularity of online-only publications, it might be time to suggest another piece of not-so-basic advice, and that’s the importance of knowing your MEDIUM.
There’s a number of differences between writing for print and writing for the web, no matter the format or genre, because the former is much more contextual than the latter.
In a print magazine, each page is designed, and the articles on them are laid out, with an intent to establish a steady flow from page to page, to carry the reader from cover to cover so they don’t miss anything, including the ads. An issue may have a specific theme, or have a number of different departments, each with their own themes, that can act as a subtle prop for the articles, stories or poems to lean on. While an online publication can mimic many of the page design elements of print, an article, poem or story has to be able to completely stand on its own, as it may be accessed in any number of ways that have nothing to do with the context of the site that published it. (aka Google, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.)
Online, a title is arguably even more important than usual, but especially for Spindle.
