List Poetry: A Prompt for the Listless
Admit it–sometimes you’d find it easier to pull out your own tooth than write a decent line of poetry. If you haven’t experienced that day yet, you will, and when it comes, this prompt will be there to help get you back to your keyboard.
Even when you can’t write much else, you can make a list, and if you can make a list, you can write a list poem.
Stephen Dunn’s beautiful poem, “Loves,” fills twelve pages in the book where I first discovered it. It’s nothing more than a list of all the things he loves, but what a list. Dunn captivates the reader with his enthusiasm for all the tastes and textures of experience.
Here is part of a list poem from PHS grad, Chelsea Sarikas. She wrote this in response to a college essay prompt asking her what she wanted most out of life.
And here is a beautiful list poem from our own Mila Diaz.
And finally, take a look at Chelsea Maldonado wonderful poem, “What They Don’t Tell You at Eighteen.”
List poems, at their best, have a way of piling up desire or delight or discontent as they go on; at their best, they run away with the reader until they exhaust themselves.
Your assignment for tonight is to write a list poem that is at least a page long.
Possible topics:
- Things you love.
- Things you hate.
- Ways to make yourself feel better after a defeat.
- Things you want to do.
- Things you hope never to do.
- Experiences that will make you feel you really lived.
- Ways you would not like to die.
- Ways you would like to die.
- Things you adore about the opposite sex.
- Things you despise about the opposite sex.
- Things that cause you to know you are home.
- Things you would do if you were a super hero.
- Things you would do if you had a billion dollars.
- Things you would do to find great love.
- Things you have to remind yourself to keep from being a selfish jerk.
Or make up your own type of list. If you end up liking your list poem, post it on your Medium blog. Tweet our class a poem that is at least 20 lines long. We’ll start class tomorrow by looking at these.
For more inspiration about the creative power of lists, check out this article: http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/10/18/ray-bradbury-on-lists/
