Poetry Challenge #150-BRRRING-A-DING-DING
Pennsylvania 6-5000, the telephone number, immortalized in a Glenn Miller Orchestra song, will, to this day, connect you to the front desk of The Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. All you have to do is add on the modern area code.
Let’s break it down: Hotel Pennsylvania is located nearest the Pennsylvania telephone exchange, or PE, named for Penn Station in New York City. So, to reach the hotel in the 1930s, people would dial PE6-5000 or 736-5000, swapping in numbers for letters. Tack on the modern 212 area code and you’ve got a modern, 10-digit phone number. Not so different from what it was in the 1930s.
Poetry Challenge #150
BRRING-A-DING DING!
What’s the first phone number you remember learning? How old were you?
Mine is easy: 747-7747. I was in second grade. To make it easier still, we live at 707 Moraga lane. I think the 707 was a coincidence, but who knows? Back in the days of one-per-house attached phones with curly cords, there well may have been a correlation between house numbers and phone numbers.
Imagine you are calling that first number. Or someone who would have back then, is calling you on that number. Write a Conversation Poem between you and that someone else. And…
Make the number of words in each line the same as that phone number. My poem for example will be 7 lines long. First line 7 words, 2nd line 4, 3rd line 7 and so on. Any zeros are Wild! Writer’s choice! And…
Alternate lines of dialogue as you would in a conversation.
BRRRING! “Hello! Is this the party to whom I am speaking?”
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing
Don’t Think Too Much About it; Just do it!
Pennsylvania 6-5-OH-OH-OH Playlist:
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge MORE THAN 1563 days ago! (without a miss!!!) We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #149-Tastes Like Sunshine
“Each of us spends an average of fifteen full days a year doing nothing but eating,”—Bill Haduch, Food Rules
According to scientists, the link between food and memory began as a human survival tactic known as conditioned taste aversion. Our bodies are programmed to forever remember foods that made us sick, along with when and where we ate them, so we will be sure to avoid eating them in the future. Along with remembering bad food experiences, we are also programmed to remember delicious food experiences.
Poetry Challenge #149
Tastes Like Sunshine
What is the most delicious thing you ever remember eating? Where were you when you ate it? What were you doing before? (Or what did you do after?) Who were you with?
Write a poem about it.
Extra points for using a simile to compare the taste of that food with some non-food thing. A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two things often using the words "like", "as", or "than.”
The title of your poem will be the place you were when that food memory was created. in that memory. Fill in the blank:
Tastes Like ________________.
“One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste”— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing
Don’t Think Too Much About it; Just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge MORE THAN 1550 days ago! (without a miss!!!) We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #148-Give Something Away.
Today, July 15th, is National Give Something Away Day. What will you give away? Clothes or toys or books that you’ve outgrown? Cookies or a hat that you made?
When it comes to words, the best writers seem to agree:
“The details are the life of it, I insist, say everything on your mind, don’t hold back, don’t analyze or anything as you go along, say it out.” -Jack Kerouac
You could give away some time—either volunteer for something or spend some time with someone.
You could give away a compliment or a smile.
So many choices for Give Something Away Day!
Poetry Challenge #148
Give It Away!
Think of what you might give away and write a poem about it. What is it? Where will it find a new home? What will it mean for that person? How will the receiver feel about it? How will the given away object feel about being given away? Will you miss it?
Write your poem in couplets—two lines that rhyme.
Set your timer for 7 minutes
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it!
Don’t forget to give something away today—Maybe this poem!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge MORE THAN 1525 days ago! (without a miss!!!) We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #147-Moody Blues
Lock Down has meant more tube time for me (and maybe you?) I’ve been watching Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, which brought to mind Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan, pub 2006). In the show, Zoey hears others singing their emotions—often accompanied by flash mobs; Nick (in the book) creates playlists reflecting his emotions. Which has me thinking about our personal playlists, which brings me to the subject of poetry, specifically our own poems.
Poetry Challenge #147
Moody Blues
As Zoey, Nick (and Norah) illustrate, mood matters*. Depending on our moods, we listen to different music, move differently, talk differently—sometimes (often) subconsciously. How often have others pegged our moods just by looking at us?
For today’s prompt, let’s revisit our past poetry efforts with an eye, and ear, to mood. Flip back through the poems you’ve created over the past weeks, month, or this time last year. As you reread, ask yourself what is the mood of this poem? Is it happy or sad? Is it scary or curious, loud, quiet, silly?
With mood in mind revise your poem. Pull out the thesaurus and change words. Make scary poems, spookier; smoochy poem, more lovey, jolly poems happier—happier sounds, happier, snappier nouns and verbs—and sounds. There are 44 recognized sounds (phonemes) in the English language—use them!
Set your timer for 7 minutes
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it!
Get in the MOOOOOOOOD Dude!
Moody Blues Playlist:
*Back in the old days we’d set Moody Blues’ Night in White Satin to replay. Over and over and over we’d let it roll over us. Admittedly, we did this with many songs, and by the end we know all the words. But in the case of Nights in White Satin, it was all about moooooood dude!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge MORE THAN 1500 days ago! (without a miss!!!) We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #146-Happy Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day!
Summer and ice cream go together. What kind of ice cream is your favorite? Vanilla? Chocolate? Razzle Dazzle? Tutti-Frutti? Moose Tracks? Peanut Butter and Jelly?
What do you choose if you go to an ice cream stand? If you made up a new flavor, what kind would it be? No combination is off limits…at least not until it’s taste tested.
What’ll it be: mashed potato ice cream, beer ice cream, olive oil ice cream, buffalo wing ice cream, goat cheese ice cream or candied bacon ice cream? Yum!
Poetry Challenge #146
It’s Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day!
An ode is a short poem praising something. In celebration of National Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day (yes, it’s a real thing, celebrated every July 1st)
Write an ode to your favorite ice cream or to a flavor you wish existed.
Make us taste it, feel it, want it! Make our mouths water!
Set your timer for 7 minutes
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it!
I’ll take two scoops!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge MORE THAN 1525 days ago! (without a miss!!!) We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #145-Too Darn HOT
Some days it’s just too darn HOT! So hot you stick to every chair. So hot you can’t move. So hot it feels like you’re melting.
Writers use figurative language to convey feeling. They compare things in new and unusual ways. Similes are comparisons using “like” or “as”. Metaphors are comparisons that don’t have to use “like” or “as”. Hyperbole is exaggeration.
Poetry Challenge #145
IT’S TOO DARN HOT!
Try writing a poem describing how hot it is without using the word “hot”.
Use figurative language to show what hot feels like, smells like, tastes like, sounds like.
To help you get started, think of ways to finish this sentence—and then leave out the prompt.
You know it’s hot when…
Set your timer for 7 minutes
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it!
In case it’s not quite toasty enough where you are, here’s a song:
Too Darn Hot by Cole Porter, sung by Anthony Strong:
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge MORE THAN 1525 days ago! (without a miss!!!) We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #144-Global Garbage Collector Day
Boy howdy, where would we be without those garbage trucks to roll down the street gobbling up trash! Buried under piles heaps mounds of smelly yuck is where. Pee-yew!
It’s not easy or safe being a garbage collector. In fact, it’s one of the “Deadliest jobs in America”—and that was before CoVid struck.
An “average” garbage day in NYC
One fella, John D. Arwood, (Pres. of Arwood Waste), knowing what a smelly world this could be, designated June 17th as Global Garbage Collector Day, in honor of the hard-working, under-appreciated trash collectors who keep our communities clean. Let’s join in the celebration!
Poetry Challenge #144
Hip-Hip-Hooray! It’s Global Garbage Collector Day
Write a garbage poem—it can be about a garbage truck, garbage collector or kinds of garbage. Toss in as many words that include the letter g as you can. And, at least one onomatopoeia.
Can you make your poem sound like a garbage truck roaring down the street?
Set your timer for 7 minutes
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it!
For extra fun, read Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman & David Clemesha, illustrated by Dan Yacarrinao. Here’s a link to the Trashy Town Read-aloud.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge MORE THAN 1500 days ago! (without a miss!!!) We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link below and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
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Poetry Challenge #143-Click My Bic
There’s a saying that “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Before ballpoint pens, people used fountain pens—pens that needed to be dipped or refilled with ink and whose sharp points worked only on paper. If you wanted to write on any other surface (wood, coarse wrapping paper, leather) you were out of luck.
The first patent for the ballpoint pen was issued in 1888 to John J. Loud, a leather tanner who often needed to write on the leather. This pen had a metal ball for the point (where it got its name!) that couldn’t fall out or in but rolled on the surface. It worked well on leather but was pretty messy on paper. Many years passed before the Biro brothers found a solution for a new sharper point.
June 10, 1943, recognized as National Ballpoint Pen Day is actually the date Laszlo Brio applied for a fresh patent for their ballpoint pen design. What made it fly was the British Government bought the licensing rights for the war effort as they needed a pen that would not leak at higher altitudes. It wasn’t until many leaky pen efforts later, in 1954, when Parker Parker Pens introduced “the Jotter,” that ballpoint pens became popular.
Poetry Challenge #143
All I Do Is Click My Bic!
In honor of Ballpoint Pen Day and inventions, write a poem about your favorite pen (and if possible, use your favorite pen to “pen it!”)
Is your favorite pen a ballpoint? Or some other kind? What does it feel like? What does it look like? What color does it write? What’s the best thing it has ever written?
Set your timer for 7 minutes
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge MORE THAN 1500 days ago! (without a miss!!!) We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.