National Poetry Month: April 12, 2015

NaPoWriMo Day 12 Prompt: It comes to us from Dr. Cynthia A. Cochran of Illinois College:

Here is a great prompt for anyone who likes to write descriptive prose but shudders at writing poetry–and it really works:

Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form.  Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.

Cut the lines where you see fit and, VOILA! A poem!

Utica Street

white clapboard house

green shutters

upstairs downstairs kind

fence gate overlooked alley

backyard bursting

apple tree purple Concord grapes

garden patch tomatoes

green beans corn

humid air laden

wasps bees hovering

fruit sticky split by summer rain

cherry tree my cherry tree

so old most grew

far from reach bird nibbled

pink spring blossoms

then sweet tartness

rosy hearts picked sun warm

over chain link fence

rows of other yards

rows of houses marching

front porches shaded

by white-blossomed bridal bush

swing sets squatted

in patchy grass rough-mown

dogs barked we romped

slid down slides

legs pumping

we flew through air