Totally Optional Prompt: Weather

What's the weather like in your neck of the woods? Here in the Northeast of the U.S., we've been having rain almost every day and temps only in the 60s and 70s. (Of course, I missed a week of it because we were in Florida where it was unusually hot!)

What's the weather of your relationships? Hot and sultry? Cold and snowy? Sunny and temperate?

What's the weather of your soul?

No matter which way you use this prompt (or not!), come back on Wednesday evening at 7 pm EDT to leave a link to your poem.

Request for Poems: Horoscope

So, what did you come up with this week? Did you do the horoscope thing or something else entirely?

Whatever you wrote, we like to see it. Just leave the link to your poem in the comments. I posted the following process last week but will add it again this week for those who might not have seen it.

Some URLs don't come out as links so here's how to do it. (Don't feel bad; it took me months to figure this out! Finally, Gautami took pity on me and showed me how. Thanks, again, G!)
All you have to do is substitute <> for ( and ). You can copy your poem's URL by going to your archives and clicking on that particular post, then go up to the address line at the top of your screen, click on it to highlight it, then right click to copy it.

(a href="paste the URL to your poem here")Title of your poem(/a)

Totally Optional Prompt: Horoscope

Check out your horoscope and write a poem in response to it.
or
You could read yours and your significant other's then begin your poem with one and end with the other one.
or
You could collaborate with a poet friend incorporating both your horoscopes into the poem.
or
You could do whatever you'd like because it is totally optional!

Come on back Wednesday evening to leave a link in the comments.

Request for Poems: Abecedarian

Hope everybody had fun trying to incorporate the ABCs into poems.


Just use the comments again for your links to your poems.


I'll be going on vacation for a week beginning tomorow and will not have my computer with me but have pre-posted a new prompt for Saturday night and the request for next Wednesday. Hope everything works fine! I'll catch up with everyone then.



Some URLs don't come out as links so here's how to do it. (Don't feel bad; it took me months to figure this out! Finally, Gautami took pity on me and showed me how. Thanks, again, G!)
All you have to do is substitute <> for ( and ). You can copy your poem's URL by going to your archives and clicking on that particular post, then go up to the address line at the top of your screen, click on it to highlight it, then right click to copy it.

(a href="paste the URL to your poem here")Title of your poem(/a)

Linky update

Well, it appears that free versions of Mr. Linky are "temporarily" disabled. You can read the details at Mr. Linky's blog.

I don't have any intention of shelling out $$, or asking anyone else to, at this point. So, unless and until they start supporting the freeware Linky again, TOP participants can leave their links in the comments.

Totally Optional Prompt: Abecedarian

I love anything to do with the alphabet.

Last week I asked my poetry-writing students to write an abecedarian. They had fun and their poems were surprisingly good.

I looked online for examples but really couldn't find ones I liked. I'm not even sure where I first saw this form but I liked it at the time and always wanted to try one.

I'm not even sure I have this definition right but here's what I told my kids and it seemed to work well:

An abecedarian is a poem in which you concentrate on one letter of the alphabet at the beginning of your poem then let the words morph into the next letter and then the next. etc. You don't have to begin with A; you can start anywhere you want in the alphabet and go from there. You could even go backwards. Your words don't have to be at the beginning of lines and the letters don't have to begin the words, either. The words can just contain those letters.

Hopefully this makes sense and you have fun playing with the letters.

One more thing: the kids were kind of stumped for a way to begin because there wasn't a specific topic so I told them to write about the last strong emotion they had. And off they went.

So, off you go, too! Write an abecedarian about some strong emotion or anything else! It is totally optional, of course.

Wish I knew how to fix Mr. Linky. I'll write the link in but...who knows! Anyway, come on back starting Wednesday evening and leave your link in the comments if he isn't with us.

Request for Poems: Yard Sale

What kind of poetic treasures did you find at yard sales this week?

I hope Mr. Linky is back but if he isn't, please leave your links in the comments. I do miss him, though! I noticed that he's working on other prompt sites but have no idea how to get him to work on this one. I'll type the link in and hope for the best, anyway.




P.S. Well, I just double-checked the link and I can't see that I typed it in wrong so, I guess, it still isn't working. Darn! Sorry!

Totally Optional Prompt: Yard Sale

On my way down to camp yesterday I can't tell you how many "Yard Sale" signs I saw. It stuck in my head, for some reason. So, that's our prompt this week. Write about yard sales.

With any luck, we'll have Mr. Linky back on Wednesday but if not, just leave your links in the comments on Wednesday evening when we request poems.

Request for Poems: Uninvited Guests

So, what do you do with them?

Leave a link in the Mr. Linky (if he's joining us this week!) or in the comments to let us know how you deal with uninvited guests.