Poetry Prompt: Write a Short Poem, Pack It With Punch

All right, folks, autumn is in full swing (FINALLY!) and I’m back to writing poems. Which means I’m also back to bugging y’all with prompts to get you writing, too. 🙂

Today’s prompt comes from a brief discussion I had over at deviantART about short poetry. I tend to prefer medium-length to long-form poetry, and I’m often suspicious of the bite-sized kind … even while I enjoy it. It just seems underdeveloped, sometimes. I suppose it’s just hard to do well, if you’re not a haiku master or Paulo Leminski.

I put forward that maybe short poetry works best when there’s a complete story contained in the lines. Kind of like that legendary six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Others had different ideas:

Personally I am a sucker for short poetry, even when all it does is evoke an emotion or an image without necessarily telling a story — when the two things combine though … I have a blast. (AlwaysRainCheck)

I personally love short poetry! It’s like a sketch, a quick thought, a feeling. They can turn out flat but they are also a chance to surprise someone, to convey truth. (Kassih)

So, I’ve changed my mind. Short poetry can pack some real punch!

But it’s not easy to achieve, and it takes practice. You have to play around a bit until you find something that works. Here are some short-poetry prompts (or rather, approaches) to get you experimenting …

Capture a Feeling

In this approach, try to capture an emotion or intuition in a very tight space. Think fireflies in a baby-food jar. You might choose one short stanza, or six lines, or twenty-five words … whatever you like.

The key thing is to focus on a single emotion and center everything around that. Use it to make decisions about form, imagery, sound, even punctuation.

To get started, you might just draw from your current emotional state. If that’s less than inspiring, you could sift through your memories from the last 24 hours (or from the last 7 days) to find an emotion that stands out.

Failing that, you could simply use a word-prompt, like “ennui” or “fright” or “suspicion.” You’ll find plenty of these online, but you might also try writing the names of various emotions on strips of paper and then drawing one out of a bag. (Consider that your little bag of inspiration from now on!)

Here’s one I did last autumn, while I was feeling a bit low (to say the least). Not my best, but I like it anyway.

***

The Sadness Burns Too Low Tonight

grant me
a glimpse from eternity
lighter than dust
denser than suns

***

Capture a Moment

This approach is similar to capturing a feeling, except that you’re focusing less on conveying the emotional state and more on conveying an experience. The emotion might be ambiguous, and you’ll probably ground the poem in more concrete details taken from life.

To start, I recommend doing a personal examen of the last 24 hours (or the last 7 days) and digging for some kind of significant moment … a realization, perhaps, or an observation. Maybe it was even a brief, peculiar encounter with a stranger.

What stands out in your memory? Why?

In my case, I wrote about a prayer experience I had while walking home from work at night …

***

Notre Dame de Paris

On this pockmarked road
under stars of crane-lights
and cameras I stand

in a mantle of dusklight,
warm in the core, a luminous
face above—pallid, tranquil as stone

yet alive—
a half-smile hinting
of realms above the dark veil.

***

Tell a Story

This approach is somewhat more challenging, because a good story has a defined structure. To fit that structure into such a tiny space, without overcrowding, is no easy task. (Now it’s like we’re catching dragonflies in baby-food jars.)

But the best way to get started is just to not worry about it. I mean that: don’t overthink it.

Let it grow organically. Start with a single question or moment of conflict — something that catches your attention — and then follow it to a resolution. Don’t worry about being concise, at this point. First find the story; then shave it down to a snippet.

I’m not sure how this one happened, but here’s one of mine from 2013 …

***

Supper on the Moon

The kid asked the grampa, What’s to eat
in the freezer?
The grampa asked the kid, What’s to eat
on the moon?

Nothin, said the kid.
Just so, said the grampa.

***

And that’s it.

Get writing, folks!

But before you go, let me know in the comments … how do you feel about short poetry? What makes it work, and when does it fall flat?