Running late on the Poetry Push today. Sorry!

Here’s today Poetry Push for List Poems. It’s a great way to warm-up your poetic muscles for the day. This is just a warm-up, so don’t spend a lot of time on it, five to ten minutes to create a list poem inspired by the Poetry Push card below. If you want to read more about list poems, check out the original post.

What does this prompt make you think of? Brainstorm a list first. What’s puzzling to you right now? What are the pieces you need to complete something? Or maybe go off in a completely different way. This is just a warm-up, so don’t spend a lot of time on it, five to ten minutes to create a list poem inspired by the Poetry Push card above. For some examples from previous weeks, click on the poetry push tag at the bottom of this post.

Make sure to add your name to the poem when you post it.

Here’s today Poetry Push for List Poems. It’s a great way to warm-up your poetic muscles for the day. If you want to read more about list poems, check out the original post.

What does this prompt make you think of? Brainstorm a list first. What’s puzzling to you right now? What are the pieces you need to complete something? Or maybe go off in a completely different way. This is just a warm-up, so don’t spend a lot of time on it, five to ten minutes to create a list poem inspired by the Poetry Push card above. For some examples from previous weeks, click on the poetry push tag at the bottom of this post.

Make sure to add your name to the poem when you post it.

Have fun!

Here’s today Poetry Push for List Poems. It’s a great way to warm-up your poetic muscles for the day. If you want to read more about list poems, check out the original post.

What does this prompt make you think of? Brainstorm a list first. What’s puzzling to you right now? What are the pieces you need to complete something? Or maybe go off in a completely different way. This is just a warm-up, so don’t spend a lot of time on it, five to ten minutes to create a list poem inspired by the Poetry Push card above. For some examples from previous weeks, click on the poetry push tag at the bottom of this post.

Make sure to add your name to the poem when you post it.

Have fun!

Here’s today Poetry Push for List Poems. It’s a great way to warm-up your poetic muscles for the day. This is just a warm-up, so don’t spend a lot of time on it, five to ten minutes to create a list poem inspired by the Poetry Push card below. If you want to read more about list poems, check out the original post.

Please leave your list poem in the comments and make sure to leave your name.

Have fun!

Here’s today Poetry Push for List Poems. It’s a great way to warm-up your poetic muscles for the day. This is just a warm-up, so don’t spend a lot of time on it, five to ten minutes to create a list poem inspired by the Poetry Push card below. If you want to read more about list poems, check out the original post.

Please leave your list poem in the comments and make sure to leave your name.

Have fun!

This Tuesday I started a new poetry prompt series that will appear each Tuesday on my blog. The idea is to create list poems from the prompts I post. Here are this week’s poems.

GIVE BACK
I want to GIVE BACK all the times my father told me I would never amount to anything.
I want to GIVE BACK all the tears I shed when my Mother told me I could not play the games that my brother and sisters played.
I want to GIVE BACK all the times in the playground when the kids laughed at me because I was different from them.
I want to GIVE BACK all the hurt I felt when I could not go places and do the things other kids did because they were impossible for me even though they looked fun.
I want to GIVE BACK all the loneliness I felt in my heart because nobody ever really took the time to understand me and so left me out of most things.
All of these collectively made me who I am today
So I want these people to GIVE BACK all the confidence and the self esteem, they stole from me.
I can then go on with my life and be the person I can be, the person I should be.
If only people GIVE BACK.

- Anne Mckenna

Give Me Back…

Knees that don’t creak
Ankles less weak
Arms that don’t flag
Stomach sans sag

But please let me keep…

Football I played
Nights of charades
Daughters I bore*
Every last Skor

* And by bore I mean gave birth too, not make them drowsy with ennui:>)

–Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

Give Back

Give In
Give Out
Give Off
Give Up
Give Away

Give It
Give It Up
Give Me Five

Give to a Good Cause
Give at The Office
Give Some More
Give Til It Hurts
What Gives?

Give The Order, The Finger, Your First Born
Give Blood
Give a Toast
Give Consent
Give Your Hand

Give up the Ghost
Give Your All, Your Word, Your Right Arm
Give Thanks
Give a Damn

Kellye Crocker

Give Back?
silver mirror
black chair
silver comb
black hair

see it curl
down my spine
below my waist–
it’s all mine!

silver shears
shoulder shove
quick snip for
locks of love

–Emily Jiang

I no longer have her
in my life
give back
the one
you took away.

Janet

Give back
Shreds of tinsel
Ticket stubs
Seashells
Dried flowers
Strands of Easter grass
Bicentennial quarters
Chunks of fool’s gold

All the bits
I scattered through your house
& thought I didn’t need.

–Jennifer R. Hubbard

You took
my self-esteem
my laughter
my pride in how I dress
my ability to trust
and to see the good in most people

You took
my dog, my cat
my good credit rating and almost,
my car

You took
my trust
my friends
my music

You gave back
a broken heart
a shattered dream
and finally, freedom.

— Susan Taylor Brown, all rights reserved

Dori Reads has the Poetry Friday round-up for us all today. Pour a cup of your favorite beverage and poke around at some of the great poetry that’s being shared today.

Poetry Push – List Poems

Today starts a new weekly feature on my blog, a little Poetry Push to help you warm-up your poetic muscles for the day. This also gives me the chance to share one of my favorite poetry lessons that I use when I teach – LIST POEMS!

It started when I was teaching poetry to teens in detention facilities. I learned early on that it was good for me to have a few extra poetry lessons in my pocket for days when things didn’t go quite the way I wanted them to. So I cut some phrases out of magazines, taped them to some index cards, and handed them out as poetry prompts for list poems. The kids soon learned that we would warm-up every session with a quick list poem. Sometimes we did them individually and sometimes we did them as a group on the board. It was a great warm-up for the class and once the students got to know how to do them, I could just pass out a card and they could go to work. This came in handy for kids coming in late or one of those days when I needed something to fill the last 10 minutes of the class.

The only trouble with the index cards was that the kids like to bend them and tear them so I made some larger cards that I decorated and then laminated and they are much more durable. (And for all you people who like to recylce, instead of index cards, I used those magazine subscription cards that fall out of magazines. I painted one side and glued construction paper on the other side. Then I glued the magazine phrase on the construction paper, drew some doodles, and laminated them.You can see more pictures here.)

Every Tuesday I’ll post one of my cards which I hope you will use as a prompt to create a list poem in the comments, just like  does with her 15 Words or Less Poems on Thursdays.  Please sign your name with your poem so I can point to them all in the round-up for Poetry Friday.

And hey, if you are not a poet or don’t want to play with poetry, you could consider this a simple creative writing prompt. Give yourself 10 minutes and see where it takes you.

List poems are so much fun to write and even the most reluctant poet can usually manage to get some words down on the page. I usually tell the students to start by brainstorming a list of everything thing they can around the given topic. From there they try to expand with more poetic language, metaphors, and try to evoke a feeling from the reader.

List poems itemize things or events. They can be short or long, rhymed or not.

Falling Down the Page by Georgia Heard is a great book of list poems. Some online examples can be found here. A longer one is Fear by Dorianne Laux.

Ready to play? Here’s today’s List Poem Poetry Push.

Have fun. Start with a list that comes to mind when you read the prompt and see where it takes you. I’m looking forward to reading your responses.

Here’s mine:

You took
my self-esteem
my laughter
my pride in how I dress
my ability to trust
and to see the good in most people

You took
my dog, my cat
my good credit rating and almost,
my car

You took
my trust
my friends
my music

You gave back
a broken heart
a shattered dream
and finally, freedom.

Susan Taylor Brown, all rights reserved
Edited at 2011-02-01 09:59 pm (local)