Poetry Challenge #251-Roll of the Dice
Know who coined the idiom “The die is cast”?
If you answered Shakespeare, thinking it one of the many idioms and phrases William Shakespeare coined for his plays, think again. It was Julius Caesar, and no not in the Shakespeare play either. The real Julius Caesar.
Technically, according to my go-to, Writing Explained.org, Roman historian, Suetonius, said, what Caesar said was Alea iacta est, the Latin phrase meaning “die is cast.” The year was 49 B.C and Caesar had just entered Italy with his army, thus starting a civil war.
Since then, the saying “the die is cast,” has come to mean that the dice—literal six-sided gaming cubes—had been thrown and whatever numbers had come up were the numbers that would be played. For Caesar it meant that it was too late to stop the war from beginning. He had already disobeyed orders, and he must win the war if he wanted to keep his life. On that cheery note, let’s toss some dice!
Poetry Challenge #251
Roll The Dice!
Topics for poems are all around us, but sometimes we don’t know how to start.
This is a simple exercise you can use as many times as necessary to create a structure for a poem.
Roll a pair of dice. The lower number indicates how many words should be on each line. The higher number indicates how many lines in the poem.
(If you don’t have dice, you can use the A-6 cards in a deck of cards. Or use a number generator on the computer. Or make slips of paper with the numbers 1-6 on them and draw numbers from a hat…)
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Warm up the dice with Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s song “Roll the Dice”! It’s a winner!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. 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 and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #250 Crunchy Toffee
Butter Crunch, English Toffee, crumbled Heath Bars . . . just thinking about it makes my teeth tingle. If like me, you love almond butter crunch anything, any time, any way, this is your lucky day! National Almond Butter Crunch Day (June 19th)!
So nice of the powers that be to declare gorging on crumbled almonds, toffee bits and chocolate mandatory!
See’s Toffee-ettes® are my fav! Hint-Hint!
Poetry Challenge #250
Butter Crunch
Almond Butter Crunch. It sounds good. It tastes good. If you repeat the words, they have a distinct rhythm—especially if you repeat the last word several times.
CRUNCH crunch Crunch Crunch
CRUNCH crunch Crunch
CRU uNCH . . .
Write a sound rhythm poem using the words “almond butter crunch”. You can add other ingredients: maybe other kinds of ice cream or ingredients for a sundae.
Use repetition to get the beat you want.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
And because you know you want to, treat yourself to some Almond Butter Crunch. This Almond Popcorn Crunch recipe by Queenkungfu is only half the calories—after all it is popcorn!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. 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 and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #249-Go For the Os
Fries or Rings? I go for onion rings every time. If like me, you go for the Os, then this is your lucky day! Happy National Onion Ring Day (June 22nd)!
Folks go round and round and round about who came up with the delish idea to batter-dip and deep fry rings of onion.
According to Spirit of the Holiday website:
Texas-based restaurant chain Kirby’s Pig Stand claims it played a big part in onion rings’ craze. Give me an O! Oh yum!
Ohhhh No Mooooooo! Kirby’s Pig Stand is long gone.
Give me an O! Oh yum, I want some!
Want Crunch? Watch and Listen!
Poetry Challenge #249
Go For the Os!
Write a circular poem.
Because the best onion rings are crunchy, use words with lots of hard C & K sounds so they really crunch.
Because the best onion rings—whether we like it or not—are fatty, add extra descriptive words to make your poem extra fatty. For, as everyone knows, when it comes to onion rings—and some poems too—flavor wise, fat’s where it’s at!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just CRUNCH! OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. 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 and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #248-Say Cheese!
I’ve got a Nikon Camera/I’d love to take a photograph…
If you remember that song, then you probably recall cameras as something other than an app on your smartphone. You might even, like me, have one tucked into a drawer somewhere… Nikon, Cannon, Polaroid, Camera Obscura!
Well dang, pull out your old box camera—or your big lens—and give it a good dusting for today is National Photography Day. That’s right, every June 15 the North American Nature Photography Association, otherwise known as NANPA, along with millions of photographers go snap happy!
Poetry Challenge #248
Say Cheese!
Find a photo from at least ten years ago (more is better). Study the photo.
If there are people in it, who are they?
What are they doing?
What might they be thinking?
Where is the photo taken? Are there buildings? Trees? Plants? Who was the photographer? Who wasn’t in the picture?
Write a free verse poem telling the story of this photograph.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Still baffled? The song is Kodacrome by Paul Simon. Here’s a snappy version sung by the Muppets!
Click to the Muppets singing Kodachrome
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. 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 and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #247-Upsie-Daisy
Forget your troubles, come on, get happy…*
National Upsy Daisy Day (June 8)** is “set aside to encourage you to face the day positively and to get up gloriously, gratefully and gleefully each morning.”
Upsidaisy
Ups-a-daisy
Upsie-daisy
Upsy-daisy
Oops-a-daisy
Oopsy-daisy
Hoops-a-daisy
However you spell it, the term “upsy-daisy” dates back to the mid 1800s. (Maybe some nursemaid sometime said it to a child named “Daisy” while lifting her after a fall, and it stuck.) It just sounds happy. Try it “Upsie-Daisy!”
“You’ll find the life is more worthwhile if you just smile.”
Poetry Challenge #247
Upside Down and Right Side UP
In honor of Upsie-Daisy Day write a five-line poem beginning and ending with the same line.
And, in honor of the day, try to include the word “daisy” in your poem.
When your finished read your poem from the top down and then from the bottom up. Which view do you prefer?
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
If you need a boost, watch the Upsy Daisy Day video featuring “Bring You a Daisy a Day” song by Hank Snow.
*Judy Garland sang in Summer Stock (1950, Saul Chaplin), Forget your troubles, come on, get happy….
**Stephanie West Allen created National Upsy Daisy Day in 2003. Her desire in creating the celebration was to “make humor, laughter, and a positive attitude part of the Upsy Daisy Day way.”
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. 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 and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #246-Live Your Color!
Let’s talk nails: Chipped or groomed? Hands, feet or both? Painted or not painted? 4. Sassy or nasty?
If you fessed up to number 4. Then get with the program. Why? It’s National Nail Polish Day!
“Madge” soaked her client’s hands in green Palmolive dish soap, so when playing “beauty salon” we did, too.
Poetry Challenge #245
Live Your Color!
Nail Polish comes in so many colors. Take a look at some of their names:
She’s a Rocket
All Oar Nothing
Bloom Service
Tapped Out
You Crack Me Up
Peggy Sunburn
Artist Garden
Semi-Charmed
Sorry I’m Late
Cosmic Glitter
Just for Kicks
Find nail polish color names that inspire you, or use some of the above names to write a poem. Can you make your poem tell a story? How many colors can you use?
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
As they say at Essie, “LIVE YOUR COLOR!”
The Origin Story: National Nail Polish Day was created by the brand Essie ostensibly to celebrate the nail-care season. But really to boost flagging sales. Essie polish has been around for 40 years as a favorite (so they say) of nail pros because they create “surprising shades.” The first National Nail Polish Day was celebrated in 2017 with the hashtag #EssieLove
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. 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 and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #245-Tap Happy
When I was a kid, my friend Valerie sat in her room for hours playing one song over and over and over again on her record player. Replaying the song was easy because the record only had one song per side (and Valerie only owned one “real” record). We replayed it until we knew every word by heart, and then replayed it to sing along. The song, Mr. Bojangles, written by Jerry Jeff Walker, about a homeless guy in jail, with a dog who died, who’d let go a laugh, shake back his clothes all around and dance for coins, was the saddest song we’d ever heard. Can’t recall ever flipping that 45 to the B-side. Why would we? Mr. Bojangles, dance…
And that’s what National Tap Dancing Day (May 25) is all about. Tap, which has its basis in African and Celtic dance was developed by slaves in the early 1800s. After the Civil War, tap dancing was popularized after the civil War by traveling minstrel shows and vaudeville, where performers like Bill Robinson, the original “Mr. Bojangles,” made everyone want to tap dance.
“Ginger Rogers did everything he [Fred Astaire] did, but she did it backwards and in heels.”
Poetry Challenge #245
Tap Happy
Tap dancing is all about the beats, the sounds. In celebration of National Tap Dance Day (May 25th) let’s see if we can’t use the beats in words to tap out a poem. Choose a poem to revise. A free verse poem might be a stretch—or a fun challenge. For purposes of this prompt, a poem with an established rhythm might be easiest.
Read the poem to yourself. Now, read it again, but this time, tap out the rhythm of the poem by tapping out the syllables with your feet, a pencil or clap your hand. Tap softly for unstressed syllables, harder for stressed syllables. Listen to the beats of the rhythm you’ve created.
Interestingly even in Free Verse we will subconsciously write rhythmically. Iambic meter, for instance, that repeated soft-hard/stressed-unstressed beats as in “I am. I am. I am…” Shakespeare favored, is close to how we speak naturally, which makes it easier to remember (they say.) Coincidentally, it’s iambic meter is also the rhythm of the heart. Buh-bump.
As you read, are you tapping soft-hard? Hard-soft hard-soft? Hard-hard-soft? Or some other combination entirely. Whatever it is, set that rhythm in your mind and see if you can’t rework a section of your poem with an ear to making it more rhythmic.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it! Keep the Beat!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. 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 and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #244-It's All Relatives
Call your brother! Text your cousin! Email Auntie Poopsie in Pookipsie… or pile into The Rattletrap Car and pay them a visit. Why? It’s National Visit Your Relatives Day!
National Visit Your Relatives Day (May 18th) encourages family members to stay connected. Our hectic lives make it easy to get so caught up in the busyness of today’s fast-paced lifestyle. It’s easy to fall out of contact with relatives. The observance reminds us to stop for a moment, take some much-needed time and visit those relatives we care about and have not seen or spoken to for a while.
“Gas up the old Ford, get out the road map
They got a head start about half a day ”
Poetry Challenge #244
It’s All Relatives
Write a poem about a gathering with relatives. It might be your actually relative—including crazy Aunt Pookie—or an imaginary gathering. Where would it be? What would y’all do? Say? Eat?
Add voice to the poem by writing it in the vernacular of the location. For example, if the gather is set on the Space Lab, sprinkle in space words or Martian speak.
For inspiration here are a few fabulous “Relative Gathering” books and Bonnie Raitt’s sassy tune: Papa Come Quick!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. 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 and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .