Hello all! Welcome to Day 14 of NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month)! It’s amazing to me that we are here, two weeks into this thing.
Now, today’s writing prompt may bring to mind a game that many of us played as children, and that game is Mad Libs.
Do you remember those flip-books with pre-written sentences but with some words conspicuously left out? The game was to solicit the necessary part of speech, fill in the blanks and then read the bizarre result. This could be played solo (as the blanks were presented first on a opposite [flipped] side of the page, so that you couldn’t see what the “story” was about) but was great fun when played in a group. Indeed, part of the fun was trying to read back the story without bursting into side-splitting laughter.
Today’s prompt comes from Stuart Friebert, found in The Practice of Poetry (pp. 116-18). It’s called “Finish This!”
In the following poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, you’ll find some things missing: single words, part of a line, maybe even most of a stanza. Try your mightiest to replace what’s missing with good choices that fit the poem snugly, never mind whether or not they agree with the poem’s choices….
Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is _______________ , and puts away _________________ things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that _______________ , that is. _________________ relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an _________________ ,
And they gave one ______________ in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a ______________ ,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have _____________ at all.
And ____________ die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their ________________ fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
_______________ and brown, knowing all there is to know,
_______________ off into the living world.
You fetch a _________________ , but it's much too small, because she won't curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and ______________ her in the yard, and _______________ .
But you do not wake up a month from then, two months
A ______________ from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your _______________ in your mouth, and say Oh, _____________ ! Oh, ______________ !
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,
— ______________ and ______________ don't die.
And if you have said, "For heaven's sake, must you always be kissing a person?"
Or, "I do wish to gracious you'd stop ___________ on the window with your _________ !"
Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you're busy having fun,
Is plenty of time to say, "I'm ______________ , mother."
To be grown up is to sit at the _______________ with people who have died,
who neither ____________ nor ________________ ;
Who do not drink their ______________ , though they always said
______________ was such a _________________ .
Run down into the ______________ and bring up the last jar of _________________ ;
they are not tempted.
______________ them, ask them what was it they said ________________
That time, to the bishop, or to the _________________ , or to Mrs. Mason;
They are not taken in.
_________________ at them, get red in the face, _________________ ,
_________________ them up out of their _____________ by their stiff ______________ and shake them and yell at them;
They are not _________________ , they are not even ________________ ; they slide back into their ________________ .
Your tea is _______________ now.
You _______________ it standing up,
And _______________ the ________________ .
I’ll post the original in full tomorrow. You can peek now, but I encourage you to try the Mad Lib approach first, then compare the original to your new creation.
Freibert continues:
This is a useful exercise because, in my experience, once you’re “off the hook” of having to come up with a good idea for a poem, and in a sense have been given a framework, you can pay attention to details that will be useful to you later on in the composition of your own poems. For instance, exact word choice, phrasing, lineation, etc., can be practiced in this way and what’s learned can then be put to use when you find the next text on your own.
Happy writing!
➡ IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
- National Poetry Writing Month: an invitation | NaPoWriMo: a short exercise
- NaPoWriMo, Day 2: Telling a Secret | NaPoWriMo, Day 3: Still Life
- NaPoWriMo, Day 4: One out of many | NaPoWriMo, Day 5: Hanging together
- NaPoWriMo, Day 6: Home and introspection | NaPoWriMo, Day 7: Like this or that...
- NaPoWriMo, Day 8: No more short shrift | NaPoWriMo, Day 9: Poem as voicebox
- NaPoWriMo, Day 10: Caught between the horns
- NaPoWriMo, Day 11: Living in the spaces in-between
- NaPoWriMo, Day 12: What’s the occasion?
- NaPoWriMo, Day 13: They say it’s all about timing
By the way, the Easter weekend is upon us. If you still want to continue with the writing project, I’ll be posting throughout, though I will probably depend more on pre-established prompts like this. If you aren’t going to be around DKos, you can just think about how you celebrate—or don’t!—the Easter holiday, and try to fit those feelings into a poem. Generating a freewrite could be rewarding as well.
Or take a break! It is a holiday, after all. Enjoy!