The Totally Optional Prompt is Romance

This week's challenge, a special challenge for me, is to write a romantic poem. I've never been mistaken for a romantic and have no idea what makes a poem romantic, so I need a little help. When I write something how can I tell if it's romantic, what will it look like? What makes a story into a romantic story? What does romantic mean anyways?

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Remarks on the prompt, your latest poetry discovery, or this 'poetry exchange' blog can be made as comments to this posting. Late Wednesday night, between one rerun and another, I'll post a Request For Poems, where you can leave a link to your poem inspired by the prompt, or any other poem you want to share.

Request For Poems to the Editor

It's time to show your cards, and read what the other poets brought to the table. The Linky widget included with this posting is a fine way to leave a link to your poem inspired by the 'Poem to the Editor' prompt, or any other poem you want to share. Comments are available if Linky doesn't work for you, or you want to add encouraging remarks.

Saturday night I'll put up the next Totally Optional Prompt. And, thanks for your support.

The Totally Optional Prompt is 'Poem to the Editor'

It's nice that we poets read each other's stuff but it's even better to get published to a new audience, and that's why a 'Poem to the Editor' is important to me.

The challenge is to write a letter to the editor. To get the letter published the title should make the subject clear, it should express an opinion, have a novel approach to the issue, and have a clever or humorous twist at the end.

This time I'm going to write about attending the Washington Democratic Caucus. Since the candidates haven't already been selected it's the first time in decades our caucus has meant anything, it's like being in Iowa or New Hampshire, the 'always first' states. If the poem's any good I'm going to send mine in to National Public Radio or Washington Week (PBS), along with the blog URL of course.

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Remarks on the prompt, your latest poetry discovery, or this 'poetry exchange' blog can be made as comments to this posting. Late Wednesday night, between one rerun and another, I'll post a Request For Poems, where you can leave a link to your poem inspired by the prompt, or any other poem you want to share.

Request For Mystery Thriller Poems

It's time to show your cards, and read what the other poets brought to the table. The Linky widget included with this posting is a fine way to leave a link to your poem inspired by the 'Mystery Thriller' prompt, or any other poem you want to share. Comments are available if Linky doesn't work for you, or you want to add encouraging remarks.

Saturday night I'll put up the next Totally Optional Prompt. And, thanks for your support.

The Totally Optional Prompt is 'Mystery Thriller'

This week's challenge is to write a mystery, which is not the same as a puzzle or a riddle. As near as I can tell there needs to be potential threat or peril, suspense that it could happen, and then something else happens. There might be a shocking crime, a dreadful criminal, a breathtaking getaway, or a lost opportunity. You might also have some useful suggestions on how to write a mystery thriller.

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Remarks on the prompt, your latest poetry discovery, or this 'poetry exchange' blog can be made as comments to this posting. Late Wednesday night, between one rerun and another, I'll post a Request For Poems, where you can leave a link to your poem inspired by the prompt, or any other poem you want to share.

Request for Poems: Why You're Alive

TOPers, why are we here?

Over to Mike for the month of February! Unless someone else would like to host.

Totally Optional Prompt: Why You're Alive

This week's prompt is a quote suggested by paisley:

"When you were called upon to speak, you were supposed to say why you think you're alive, why you were born, and why you're still around: What are your reasons? Everyone needs to come up with his or her own personal answer."

From a novel called Diary of a Heretic, by Kathleen Maher.

For an extra twist... try responding to this prompt without using the word "I" (me, my, mine). And remember, both the prompt and the twist are
Totally Optional
!

Request for Poems: Sonnet

TOPers, what'd we come up with this week?

Of course you know I wrote a sonnet: I find them addictive.

Totally Optional Prompt: Sonnet

Perhaps you associate sonnets with Shakespeare, or with love poetry. Perhaps you think they're obsolete, or difficult, or pointless. All of those things might be true, or they might not; it's all in how you look at it.

Take a look at some contemporary sonnets:

Susan Palnick: Room 9

David Gwilym Anthony: Water Bearer

Margaret Menamin: Blue Collar Sonnets (pdf)

You can also find lots of good sonnets at Sonnet Central and Contemporary Sonnet.

If you need to review the form, there are good explanations with examples here.

As always, remember the prompt is
Totally Optional
!

Request for Poems: The Magician

Check out the sidebar: sbpoet has added her collections to the TOP participant collections list!

Anyone else with a collection to advertise? (Sue? Rachel? Dale?)

Also remember: if you have an idea for a prompt-- or better yet, if you'd like to host TOP for a month-- leave us a comment.

Now a confession: I had no idea whatsoever where I was going to go with this prompt... it just came to me. I can't wait to see where everyone else went with it!

Totally Optional Prompt: The Magician

"The Magician" from the Rider-Waite Tarot.

He represents the potential of a new adventure, chosen or thrust upon one. A journey undertaken in daylight, in the Enlightenment Tradition. He brings things out of the darkness into the light. He explores the world in order to master it. He is solar consciousness.

He embodies the lesson of “as above, so below.” The lesson that mastery in one realm may bring mastery in another. He also warns of the danger of applying lessons from one realm to another.

He transcends duality. He’s learned the fundamental elements of the universe, represented by emblems of the four suits of the tarot already broken apart and lying on the table before him.

--interpretation excerpted from Wikipedia

Request for Poems: In the Ear

So, TOPers: what have we heard? Hopefully it wasn't in one ear and out the other.

Totally Optional Prompt: In the Ear

Most poetry (most writing in general) is visually oriented. The flash of color as a bird crosses your line of sight: maybe the sound of its song as an afterthought. The brilliance of a rainbow or a rose. Sounds tend to be neglected.

Yet we're surrounded by a vast and rich universe of sound at all times. These four poems are attempts to open the door inside the ear and let in some sounds.

Alicante Lullaby - Sylvia Plath
Reapers - Jean Toomer
What the Ear Said - Oliver de la Paz
A White Turtle under a Waterfall - Wang Wei

What do you hear?

Request for Poems, Poem to the Editor

Well, TOPers, what'd we have to say to our local papers this week? If you actually sent a letter, let us know in the comments. (I didn't, mine was just too silly.)