Poetry Prompts
from Evelyn Berry
If you had to write a love letter to a past version of yourself, what would you write?
What summer memories were crucial to you as a child? Write about a time when you, over the summer, seemed to understand the world better.
Write a poem about friendship and community. This poem might be an ode to your best friend or a poem about a group of friends. What about these relationships is special to you? What do you do with this friend or friends to maintain your relationships as you grow older?
Write a poem about a mundane part of your day– whether it’s going to the bank, pumping gas, or going through a Taco Bell drive-through. How might this simple experience speak to something more significant?
Write a poem about a time you misunderstood someone or when someone misunderstood you. What were the consequences of this misunderstanding? What were the barriers, whether language or distance or communication styles, that prevented you from understanding one another
Write a poem about a time when you dreamed of a different life in a different place. How fantastical were those visions of another place? How might the realities of that place differ from the dream you created?
How might you use a poem to investigate a particular moment in time? Maybe you can use a newspaper archive to learn more about the past of your own city. How too might your writing about the past change with the hindset of writing from the future?
Write a poem that casts something in a different light. Make something beautiful into something disgusting. Render something ugly gorgeous.
Write a persona poem from the point-of-view of your favorite animated character, but try to put them into a new context or unfamiliar situation. How might Scooby Doo fare as an Instagram-famous dog? How might Buzz Lightyear react if placed into the same situation as Sandra Bullock’s character in the film Gravity?
Compose a poem with a broken poetic form. Write a sonnet, haiku, sestina, or whatever poetic form you like., but change one aspect of that form. In what way might the form’s break from tradition speak to the them of the poem itself? How might you, through this alteration of poetic tradition, marry the poetic concept to its form?
One of my favorite poetic tools is ekphrasis, the practice of writing in response to art. I think it’s especially fun to consider an artwork’s narrative from a different-point-of-view. In my poem “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas,” for example, I examine the painting “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas” by Caravaggio through a homoerotic lens, imagining the intimacy required for Thomas to slide his hand into Jesus’ wounds: “who has not been dazzled when slipping inside another’s body, feeling there something pulsing & alive?” I want you to write an ekphrastic poem in response to a painting, but I want you to reimagine the narrative of that artwork. How might you imagine the scene or story of the artwork as something else?
Some of the best love poems ever written have been composed to our favorite foods. In my poem “The Joy of a Biscuit,” I sing the praises of a biscuit “snatched from the fresh-baked, scratch-made batch, still flaky, soft, fluff-light” eaten during a shift from bussing tables at a tourist restaurant in Charleston. I want you to write an ode to food. Evoke the sense of scent, sight, touch, and of course, taste. But feel free to be creative with how you write about food. Consider the role specific dishes have played in your life or how specific dinners might have felt. A birthday cake devoured at age six might be described differently than the same cake eaten alone on one’s couch at the age of thirty.
Today, write a poem in response to the tarot. You can respond to the tarot’s intended meaning, its artwork, or just how the card makes you reflect on your life. You might draw that card at random or choose a card from the tarot that specifically speaks to you.
Write a poem that originates from a common phrase, idiom, or saying. How might you expand, transform, or invert the meaning of that phrase in your poem?
Write a poem about a childhood rumor that was greatly exaggerated. Were there ghosts in your friend’s house or a monster lurking in the woods? What stories did you tell about the secret lives of your teachers? How might you use this poem to interrogate those rumors?
Write a poem about a time of celebration, a moment in your life you felt incredibly alive. How might you capture the exuberance of that poem through senses, imagery, and sound?
Write a poem about a simple act of love or care. How do we love one another, whether we’re committed partners, friends, or members of the same community?
Write a poem about a first time, an experience or sensation. This might be the first time you lost a tooth, the first time you experienced snow, or the first time you lied to someone. How did that first time feel, and what did you learn about yourself?
Write about your resolutions, whether they be for the next month, next year, or the rest of your life. Do these resolutions make sense? What might you learn when you fulfill or fail to fulfill them?
Write a poem using an extended metaphor that draws on several related images throughout the poem. How might you introduce a metaphor in a poem, only to later complicate and perhaps further complicate it?
Write a poem that engages with realistic dialogue. How might the ways in which we speak to one another brighten and provide texture to a poem? If you’re having trouble imagining dialogue, visit your local Waffle House (or whatever lesser diner) and eavesdrop on the people around you. How might you incorporate that natural language into your work?
Write a poem of confused emotions. How might one use bright, colorful images to evoke sadness, and how might one use drab, somber language to instead convey levity or joy?
Write a poem that includes product placement. Brands have long become a part of our everyday lives, including the language we use. For example, we no longer use search engines. We google. We no longer do video chats. We Zoom. How might bringing those brand names, and the specters of capitalism, consumerism, and consumption change the linguistic quality of a poem? How might you lean into or push back against the rhythms of our everyday lives?
The final sentence of the poem “ritual for remembering that one night you were still alive” asks to “let me erase this evening until only gilt remains if it means conjuring you at all.” In this passage, the word gilt refers a noun meaning gold or something resembling gold, but in listening to the poem, one might instead hear the homonym “guilt,” which suggests an entirely different meaning. This confusion of the ear is done on purpose in this poem. Write a poem that includes at least one homonym, a word that, when heard or read aloud, might mean two different things, and therefore might change the meaning of the poetic line itself. How might tricking the reader’s ear add a layer of complexity and play to your work?
Write a poem that uses a new word of your own invention, created by combining existing words to evoke a fresh meaning.
I mix two memories from childhood from the same location in the poem “i’m seven when i dredge a cold body from the creek,” a poem in which I both fish in a creek where, “years later, a train crashes and leaks chlorine gas.”Write a poem that features two memories set in the same locale. How does that space link those memories? How do they contrast and where might they converge? How does the earlier memory inform the later memory, and how might the later memory re-contextualize the earlier one?
Write a poem in which you reinterpret a popular myth or story. You might use a Greco-Roman myth like I’ve done in my own poem, or it might instead be a myth from another culture, even a story from more recent American history. Consider how you might provide new context and perspective on an ancient or well-known story. Write a poem with a game at its center. This game might be from childhood, like hide and seek, tag, or Red Rover. Or it might be a board game like Sorry! or Battleship or Settlers of Catan. What does this game teach you about life and what lessons do you bring to the game?
The poem “reckless” uses alliteration and near-rhyme to create an inherent rhythm and music in its lines. Consider, for example, the lines “toilet-flushed guppie become anglerfish lurelight lusting in the oceandeep dark.” Write a poem that uses sound creatively: think, alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme, near rhyme, and more. If you need help, begin by making a list of five thematically-related words and then for each word, naming five words with a relationship to the sound of each original words. These might share vowel or consonant sounds and, when combined in a poetic line, might offer a kind of music.
The poem “Queer Ecology” tries to recenter the rural South as a space of queer possibility. In the poem, I demand, “Crown me Queen of the Chitlin Strut!” referencing a local food festival in Salley, South Carolina. Poems can help connect us with the places where we’re from. Through language, we can discover and redefine home.Write a poem about where you’re from. This might be your hometown, your neighborhood, or even your family. Maybe you think of where you’re from in a more abstract way. In this poem, you’re going to tell us why the place you call home feels like home.
Verbs often engine a poem. Momentum a poem. Perpetual motion a poem to the breathless finish. Verbs provide us a sense of movement, how the poet traverses from the beginning to end of a thought or dream or scene. Today, let us invent new verbs. Write down at least ten nouns— let these be strong, strange, solid nouns. Use these nouns as verbs in a poem. See how the poem tumbles forward.
How might the poet write of stillness? What occurs if progress is stalled? We have, in the past few weeks, become more and more accustomed to stillness. Write a poem about a moment or period of intense stillness. Write this poem without using any verbs.
Be the camera. Often, poems are written from a subjective point-of-view. We view the world through the lens of our own experiences. But poems too might be snapshots, shutter-quick captures of our lives. Try to write a poem as if it were a photograph. Attempt to be as objective as possible. Frame a scene or moment by describing it without editorialization? Can you evoke emotion without telling the reader how to feel? If you’re having trouble conjuring a scene, use a real photograph.
How does the poet communicate feeling in language? Is it not the poet’s duty also to capture the inferiority of life? It is often perceived as gauche to write openly of emotion, but today let us fling away those preconceptions. Let us get emotional. Write a poem with an abstract title— Fear, Isolation, Joy, Melancholy, Greed. How might we write about those emotions, in a non-corny way? Metaphor? Image? Narrative? Do not use the actual word or its synonyms in the poem, instead make us feel rather than tell us how we might feel.
Learn a new word & use a poem to provide a definition of that word, with the word as the poem’s title. Do not give us only the dictionary definition of the word. Tell us, in the most poetic sense possible, what that word means. The poem should reveal not just the word’s meaning but also its connotations and history. Some words to consider: sonder, ebullient, langour, opulence, axiom, dulcet, hiraeth, limerence, syzygy, vellichor.
Read the poem “The Moment I Watched a Pelican Devour” by Paige Lewis. Notice how Lewis reorients the narrative of the women who were tasked to paint radium onto watch dials. This is a little known story in history, but a powerful one, as we see in the end. Do a little research. Is there a historical story that the world should know? Let us write about that historic moment from a new context. Write from your own point-of-view of through the persona of an historical figure— how will you tell these necessary and often forgotten stories to the world?
We often write odes to objects, places, & people that bring us joy. But what disgusts you? What makes your skin crawl? What makes you want to puke? Let us write an anti-ode. Write from a place of detest, maybe even hatred. What do you loathe enough to write a poem against it?
Write a poem from the point-of-view of an insect. Yes, it may be instead a bug if your favorite critter has more or less than six legs. But think small— the ant, the cockroach, the dung beetle, the grasshopper, the ladybug, the pillbug, the locust. What might a creature so small notice that humans usually do not? What concerns, being so small, might the insect have during their daily survival? What does the world look like from so small a vantage point? What might an insect have to teach us humans?
Find a tree. Any tree will do, but it might be better if the tree speaks to you in some way. A tree with which you feel some kind of connection. It is okay if the tree is not a famous tree (an Angel Oak or Redwood). Just a tree will do. Make sure you know the name and type of tree this is. If you do not know, don’t fret. Someone will know. Ask people until someone can tell you. Turn to the Internet if you must. It is important, I think, to know the tree’s name. Go to the tree. Tell it your own name. Sit down in front of the tree, if you can. Then sit in silence for one hour. No, seriously. One hour. You may meditate if you wish. You may hum. You may bring a book and sit against the tree’s trunk. You may doodle in a notebook. But if possible, do not write about the tree during this hour. Just observe. Notice its bark, its branches, the way the sunlight casts through its leaves. That particular shade of yellow-green. Let this hour be one of observation, of being with. After the hour is over, write a poem to the tree. Maybe it is a love letter, maybe an eulogy. Whatever the tree tells you, speak this back to the world.
This prompt might take some time, so make sure you have some space for quiet & reflection. This prompt will work better if you read each part separately & perform each prompted action.
I want you to first choose a poem that speaks to you. What have read recently that really stays with you? Perhaps you found the poem online or in a collection or anthology. If you cannot think of an appropriate poem, pick up the closest book of poems. Read until you find a poem that speaks to you. This prompt will be easier if you pick a poem of medium length. 14-30 lines, perhaps.
Spend some time with this poem. Read it quietly. Read it out loud. Read the poem at least three times. Spend time thinking about the poem— what the poet says, what she doesn’t say, how the sound moves through your body when you speak.
Copy the poem onto a sheet of paper, word for word. Do not alter the poem at all. Pay attention to the moments when the line breaks or rhythm offend your sensibilities— take note of how you may have written the poem differently. But do not actually change anything. Place the sheet of paper face down.
Put the poem away. Close the browser. Close the book. Go into another room, if you must.
Write the poem again, this time from memory. Resist the temptation to look back at the poem. It is okay if you make mistakes. Just do the best you can. Take as long as you need to write the best approximation of that poem as possible.
When you finish, compare to the original poem. You will have hopefully made some mistakes. This new poem is your poem, a fresher poem that has been imbued with sound and spirit of the first poem. Take note of your own inventions, where your sensibilities diverged from those of the original poet. Take out those mistakes and copy them down onto a third sheet of paper.
Use these fragments, your fragments, to write a poem on a similar theme as or responding to the original poem.
Let us risk something in our poems. Let us do something difficult. Are you prepared to go to a difficult place today? It is okay to say no. It is okay to not write this poem, but if you want to be a little daring, if you want to push yourself, let us take this journey together. Often, poems can reveal truths we might not otherwise we capable of saying aloud. Today, let us write about shame. Write down the thing you’re ashamed of, you know what I’m talking about. Yes, that. And no, no, you don’t have to share with anyone. Unless you really want to share. You must only tell the page. Only yourself.
Write a lyric poem. A lyric poem is often short (less than sixty lines) & focuses on a singular subject with a singular voice. The rhythm, sound, & general musicality of the lyric poem is often simple, less ornate or complex as some other poems steeped in form. What I think distinguishes the lyric poem is its capability for precision & concision: think of the poem as a container, inside of which we have crammed the world. What happens when you open that box? Does a jack-in-the-box spring forth, its coiled menace a surprise? Are there demons within or darkness, like the box that Pandora opened? Terrance Hayes calls the sonnet, after all, ’part / prison, part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame… part music box, part meat / Grinder.”
You must write this poem by hand. At the very least on a typewriter, if you own one. Much might be said of the literary community, how other writers influence and support and critique and assist us. But writing is often a work of solitude. Often the work of writing, the hard and sometimes painful work, is done alone. Today, write a poem in a darkened room. The poem can be about whatever you wish. But write it in the dark. Write the poem alone. When you emerge from that dark place, consider what you have learned.
John Cage is perhaps best known for his work 4’33”, during which the piano player sits at her bench for four minute and thirty three seconds playing nothing. Many believe this is a commentary on silence, a favorite subject for Cage, that the song he is writing is that of silence. But I don’t think so. I think the song is the reaction to silence, how we are often uncomfortable with silence. During a performance of 4’33”, we often do not actually hear silence. The audience is crucial to the experience of the song, because the audience creates the sonic qualities of the song. Shuffle of feet. Someone coughs into their fist. A man clears his throat. The watch on his wrist ticks, ticks, ticks. Our heartbeats thump, growing faster as the anticipation for music grows. Maybe someone asks, “What the hell is going on here?” That— that visceral and human reaction— is what is wrought from the song 4’33”. Once we stop spilling our human noise into the world, there’s so much music to hear. Today, sit in silence for four minutes and thirty three seconds. Write into that silence. Listen hard & create a poem out of what you hear.
Let us consider again our friend John Cage. Cage was particularly interested in something called the aleatoric method— the use of randomness to create art. One way he managed this was to cut up sheet music and rearrange it randomly. Today, type and print some of the poems you’ve written over the past few days. Three or four should do. Then use scissors to cut out each line until you have small strips of paper. Place those strips in a plastic bag or hat or in a pile on the table. Make sure to mix up the pile as best you can. Reach into the bag and take out a slip of paper. Write down the line. Then the next slip— write down the line. And so on until you have a ten-line poem. Does it not make sense? Good, let us today indulge in nonsense. Let us look for connections in unrelated statements.
Write this poem in your bedroom or wherever you feel most safe. Reacquaint yourself with the room. Write down a list of objects you see in your room. Be specific. Do not write “book.” Tell us the title of the book. Tell the brand of lotion you use on your hands in the mornings. Describe how your clothes have crumpled on the floor, or whether they’re hung neatly in the closet. Is there food left here? Has it begun to smell? Take a whiff. Tell us where you’ve hidden your vibratory. Tell us what socks you’ve lost & where you suspect they might be, if only you find the time and strength to move some furniture around. What story does this space tell? Write a poem about who you are by describing what objects you keep around you in daily life.
Is there a poet you despise? It is okay if you do. You can admit it. I won’t tell, don’t worry. Everyone has some such poet in mind, someone whose fame and fortune seem to far surpass their skill. Who is that poet for you? For me, it is Billy Collins. For you, maybe it’s me. Is it me? If it’s me, you have to tell me— no, no, I’m getting distracted. I want you to write a parody poem. Spend some time with this poet’s work. See what they do, how they do it, and then write a poem mocking that style. Try to pass that poem off as something they may have written. Have you learned anything from this poet you hate? If no, that’s fine too. It might be better to sometimes have a negative opinion than no sense of taste at all.
It is important, in uncertain times, to imagine ourselves in the future. Write a poem starring you in ten years. How old will you be? What will you be doing? Where will you live? Will your life be any different than it is now? Surely, yes? Let us be gentle with ourselves today & imagine ourselves into a future that is good, bright, a future in which we and everyone we love is still alive? We can do such feats in our imagination, do what is not possible in real life. How will you look back upon your life now? With fondness and nostalgia? With regret? How did you come to live this better, more fulfilling life?
Poems, like thought, often emerge in patterns. This, the purpose of the form. Today, let us take advantage of the form. I am going to ask you to write a sestina. I know, I know— how cruel! But do not worry, this prompt will only get more difficult. I am certain you did not intend to write a sestina today, but let us do it together. Then, we will break the pattern. Like this.
If you’re already familiar with the sestina, write the first draft of this poem as a sestina. Follow the rules strictly. This is not meant to be an easy task. Of course, if you’re having trouble, let me help you to write one.
A sestina is a poem with seven stanzas, the first six of which each contain six lines. The final stanza is a triplet. The words at the end of each line are the same words throughout, though rearranged in a sequence. For example, the word used at the end of the first line of the first stanza is used as the last word of the second line of the second stanza. I will include a photograph here that will better explain what I mean. The final triplet must contain all six words used as the end-words.
Infographic.
It helps, I find, to discover the six words before you begin writing and put them into place according to the chart above. It helps too to choose words that might have double meanings, that are versatile and powerful. For example, you might use the word “match” which is both a verb and noun, whose noun forms have two different meanings. You might use the word “balance” or “bandage” or “face” or “Fall” or “surprise.” You might use the word “die” that might also be “dye” or “died.”
Write the sestina. This is only the first draft. What a sestina can accomplish is to force you to make narrative and logical choices you may have not otherwise made. By placing ourselves inside of the form, we restrain ourselves and through that restraint find new expression. We must be more creative with the way we use language.
Make a list, then, of the six words you used in the sestina. Make a list of at least five near rhymes for each word. If you used the word “detour,” use the word “deter” or “tumor” or “postwar.”
Write another poem using the same conceit, but instead of using the same word at the end of each line, use a near rhyme. Do not simply write the same poem again. Use the same rules to write an entirely new poem.
Once you finish this second draft, think of which lines you struggled to write. Are these poems narratively unnecessary? Did you include them only to fit the parameters of the sestina? Take them out of the poem. Here, let us abandon form. The form, instead, leads us to the substance, not the other way around.
How might we rethink our own words. Find a poem from this month, one of which you’re fond. Take the final line of that poem and use it as the first line of a new poem. Try to use this as a response to the previous poem. If the poem was about silence, write instead about the power of noise. If the poem was about hatred, write about love. Feel free to turn statements into questions, questions into declarative sentences. Revisit the entire poem & compare both poems. Notice their relationship & what has changed over just a few days since the writing of that other poem.
The world has become more & more like a dream. What once we held as truth or fact has quicksand-slipped into myth, a kind of quasi-reality. This must have been how the Dadaists felt when painting their new forms, when turning to the abstract association of colors and strangeness to reflect the world around them. Today, let us write in the vein of the Surrealist poets. What identifies a poem as Surreal? Often, Surrealists practiced something called automatic writing— in which writers write without considering their work, without planning ahead. I want you to try this. Begin writing— no, it doesn’t need to make sense. One line does not need to necessarily make logic with the line that follows. Indulge yourself this little nonsense until you’ve got at least ten lines. Try to keep writing. Go on and on, pushing yourself to new associations. Perhaps there is something in your subconscious that your hands, when considered and poised, cannot yet know.
Let us return again to our Surrealist works. Surrealism often also evoked juxtaposition to encourage readers to make new connections. On its own, a gorilla is not necessarily a surreal subject. A gorilla with a sword in space? Okay, we’re getting somewhere. A talking toilet who lives in a cave & recites philosophical texts? Why not?! Today, I want you to try to make a list of objects, subjects, & ideas. At least ten, but as many of you can. Which two words written down hold the most tension, make the least sense together? Is it Tom Sawyer Toaster? Is it hungry clock? Juxtapose those elements in a poem and allow the tension to move you. It might be best to use an associate technique. When you think of clock, what do you think of? Time. When you think of time? Thyme-flavored baked chicken. When you think of the chicken? The road & how to cross it. Let each line or idea lead you to the next idea, until the logic of the poem unravels. Write a poem as a mirror of the surreal nature of our state. Don’t be afraid to get weird.
The Romantic Poet John Keats coined the phrase “negative capability.” It is the ability of a person to find peace or resolution not in answers but questions, to become comfortable with the mystery of the universe rather than attempting to assert philosophical absolutes. About what are you uncertain? Write a poem in the series of several questions. Do not try to answer them, but rather try to find the most important and accurate questions.
It is assumed, when we read a poem, that we trust the poet. We trust their vision, their perception, their narrative. But what happens when a poet has an unreliable narrator. Sometimes, in a poem, what is perceived is later reconfigured and reconsidered. A flicker of a lighter in the dark might instead turn out to the a far-away conflagration in the forest. Or as in the poem “The Dragon” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, what appears to be a dragon is instead a garden snake held aloft by two orbs of very organized bees (or is it?) Begin today’s poem with a particular image, but then change that image. Make us reconsider what we have written and be uncertain of what is real. How might different ways might we perceive the same supposedly static image?
A significant portion of contemporary poems are written in the first-person. Even if these poems are not consciously written in the confessional tradition, they have an air of confession. But what will happen if we remove the “I” from a poem. One interesting exercise is to take a poem in which “I” is the speaker and replace “I” with you. What happens when you implicate the reader? Does it bring the reader closer to the poem or does it push the poet further from the subject? Both. Sometimes, using “you” in a poem is a way of distancing ourselves from what we’re writing about, because it can feel terrifying to admit what we’re admitting. Often, our poems are braver than we are. Knowing this, let us experiment today with the pronoun “we.” “We” indicates that there are multiple speakers or that a single speaker is speaking on behalf of several people. Consider who the “we” of your life includes. Your family? Your friends? An identity group? “We” might be your classmates or coworkers. It might be a subset of society that enjoys pineapple on pizza. What is interesting about “we” is that it implicates not just “I” or “you” but others? Write a poem from the POV of “we,” a group of your own making, whatever you consider a cohesive unit. What tensions arise when making “we” statements? What untruths arise? What universal ideas emerge when we consider the “we” versions of ourselves?
The poem can be a form of personal archive, how a poem can capture and concretize a moment in our lives. Even if that moment is untrue. But poetry too can offer an archival look at actual history. I know, we’ve already written about history, but today I want to look at a more intimate history. I would like you to, if possible, interview a member* of your family. Ask them to tell you a story— it is good to begin with a prompt. Here are some suggestions:
Tell me about the last time you thought you would die.
Tell me the first time you fell in love.
Tell me about where you grew up, what the people were like there.
Tell me your favorite memory from when you were a young adult.
*You do not have to ask an older member of your family, though you may. Maybe you can talk to your children. Or your spouse’s cousins. Someone you might not usually talk to.
Try, as best as you can, to record this narrative into a poem. The poem should have a narrative structure (beginning, middle, and end) & use poetic language. It helps, I find, to write specific poetic lines to mark the detail of a moment. If, for example, the story takes place at a county fair, take some time bringing us into that setting and atmosphere— let us smell the cotton candy, feel the lurch of the rollercoaster, etc. Same if the story takes place in the hospital. Tell us how it smells, what sounds you hear. What show is playing on television?
What you might find is that you fabricate some of the details to make a more full story. This is okay. All stories are eventually untrue when we try to tell them truthfully.
Consider this line by Virgil in Ecologue IX “Time robs us of all, even of memory: oft as a boy I recall that with song I would lay the long summer days to rest. Now I have forgotten all my songs.” Let us discover those songs again.
Poets often misunderestimate (to quote George Bush) the power of the line as a unit of measure in a poem. A line is like a breath, like a single punch in a boxing match. I find one of the most interesting ways to explore that power is to limit it. Today write a poem without lines— in other words, a prose poem.
Let’s talk again about the magic of lines. Today I want to talk about the importance of enjambment. This is a term that refers to how a line is broken or how a line ends. Syntax in a poem, as well as lineation, offers us an opportunity to impact a poem’s meaning. Often, a poem will end a sentence at the end of a line (end-stopped lines). An “enjambed” line continues the sentence from one line to the next, either in the form of a couplet or stanza. This gives us an opportunity to change the meaning of a sentence through the space (the breath) it takes to move from one line to the next. We see this really often in hip hop. Here’s an example from Jonathan Brown’s poem “Angel Fish,” which uses a linguistic Volta: “I’m teaching them to read/ by stacking Time/ magazines against the back/ of the glass.” There’s a line break between Time and magazines, so that we understand first the speaker is stacking Time (as in the abstraction of Time), only in the next line to recontextualize that word as the title for a magazine. Write a poem combining these methods. Use an enjambed line and change the meaning of the line, from one line to the next. “Quick might become “quicksand.” Brain becomes “brainstorm.” “For/get” becomes “forget.” You get the idea. What we understand in one line becomes re-imagined in the next line.