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Rivers and Lakes: Great Lakes Poetry Prompt

By Heather Eure 11 Comments

Rivers and Lakes Poetry PromptThe Laurentian Great Lakes (more popularly known as the Great Lakes) were formed around 14, 000 years ago at the end of the last glacial period. Retreating ice sheets carved downreaching basins into the land and eventually they filled with meltwater. These interconnected lakes adjoin the Atlantic Ocean through the Saint Lawrence River.

The lakes named Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth. They contain 21 percent of the world’s surface fresh water by volume. Because of their sea-like characteristics which consist of rolling waves, sustained winds, fierce currents, great depths, and distant horizons, the Great Lakes have also been called inland seas. Alice Wellington Rollins, once wrote in Lippincott’s Magazine:

“To me, the Great Lakes will always mean Lake Superior. It is something unique in the geography of the world, and you have the consciousness of your actual height above the level of the sea as you rarely have on any elevated land that is not actually a mountain. There is something singularly impressive in the mere silence and vastness of our great northern solitudes.”

Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world by area, and Lake Michigan is the biggest lake that is in one country entirely. The lakes have been a significant highway for transportation, migration, trade, and are home to a large number of aquatic species.

Try It

Consider the magnificence of the Great Lakes. They can offer the joys of a relaxing summer getaway and they can bring treachery due to their impressive, ship-sinking storms. Write a poem about the beauty and majesty of the Great Lakes or the awe-inspiring and imposing storms born from them.

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Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a poem from Rosanne we enjoyed:

Fashioned Choices

The sleeveless dress leaves no place for a heart
There’s nothing there. No place to pin a part
so essential to red blood’s flow
let alone the seat of emotion’s glow.
The omission is barely smart.

While it gives the arm a fresh start
to face the summer air, to chart
its breezes, to thrill to the way it blows.
The sleeveless dress leaves no place for a heart.

And so a choice must be made beyond art.
Vulnerable metaphor will depart
when feelings rest on trends that go
with the changing seasons, the heat, the snow.
The sleeveless dress leaves no place for a heart.

—by Rosanne Osborne

Photo by Arden. Creative Commons via Flickr.

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How to Write a Poem 283 high How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.

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Heather Eure
Heather Eure
Heather Eure has served as the Poetry Editor for the late Burnside Collective and Special Projects Editor for us at Tweetspeak Poetry. Her poems have appeared at Every Day Poems. Her wit has appeared just about everywhere she's ever showed up, and if you're lucky you were there to hear it.
Heather Eure
Latest posts by Heather Eure (see all)
  • Poetry Prompt: Misunderstood Lion - March 19, 2018
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Filed Under: Blog, poetry prompt, poetry teaching resources, Rivers and Lakes, writer's group resources, writing prompts

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Comments

  1. Rick Maxson says

    July 4, 2016 at 10:52 am

    Vanishing Point

    Met you at Sandusky,
    near the wooden coaster

    I used to ride—you safe
    along the ground, and I
    round the tracks above you.

    I knew you from school,
    but there you seemed smaller,
    much older than my eleven years,

    and I loved your name.

    One morning, in the minutes
    before the sun would see us,

    I moved across your body,
    quietly, and drifted with you,
    felt you lifting me as the light
    spread over us and I saw
    the ribbons you made from it,
    until my sight vanished in your blue.

    Erie, my first sea, my shores
    are now many, my home
    a faded memory.

    Only you will remain,

    boundless and bright,
    with your courses of light.

    Reply
    • Heather Eure says

      July 7, 2016 at 8:41 pm

      Gorgeous imagery, Rick. I really like this.

      Reply
      • Rick Maxson says

        July 8, 2016 at 4:16 am

        Heather you get 2 thanks! 🙂

        Reply
  2. Donna says

    July 5, 2016 at 10:55 am

    As a child, I spent every summer on the shores of Lake Ontario! I am currently at my parents’ home in upstate NY, where the lakebed once was long long ago. This poem …. I really want to write this poem. I’ll be back. 🙂 It’s hard on my phone.

    Rick…. Wow, yours is beautiful.

    Reply
    • Heather Eure says

      July 7, 2016 at 8:40 pm

      I hope you’ll write a poem with us, Donna! Your childhood summers sound dreamy.

      Reply
    • Rick Maxson says

      July 8, 2016 at 4:14 am

      Thanks, Heather

      Reply
    • Rick Maxson says

      July 8, 2016 at 4:15 am

      Sometimes I do not know where I am. Thanks, Donna!

      Reply
  3. Sandra Heska King says

    July 5, 2016 at 3:28 pm

    Lake Superior and Lake Michigan… they have my heart.

    Reply
    • Katie says

      September 12, 2016 at 10:50 pm

      When I married and relocated in 1980 I found myself 2 blocks from the shore of Lake Erie on the near-west side of Cleveland.
      Talk about culture shock for this former southerner!
      After having grown up on the east coast (SE NC) the lake shore of Erie was surprisingly similar but still quite different (horizon of water and sky, but no beach towns or fishing piers. Beautiful sunsets, though.

      Reply
  4. Rosanne Osborne says

    July 8, 2016 at 3:25 pm

    Noreen Takes on Lake Michigan

    Let’s walk on the beech, she says,
    this midlife initiate to the empty nest.

    Let’s search for meaning
    in something bigger than ourselves.

    Let’s pen our pace in new paths
    to the familiar and beyond.

    Let’s place a boot on the surface
    of private moons and public stars.

    Let’s put the wind of that city
    behind us, step through factory waste.

    Let’s stride toward the clean dunes,
    camels through pine needle eyes.

    Let’s reverse time as slack muscles
    remember child-time pliancy, bounce.

    Let’s circle this lake, the 1000-mile
    strand of memory and mentality.

    Let’s circumnavigate the margin of error,
    the struggle between lake and land.

    Reply
    • Katie says

      September 12, 2016 at 10:43 pm

      Enjoyed reading this – and am drawn back by it again and again to puzzle it out.
      Usually re-reading a poem several times helps me get more of/from it.
      Thanks for sharing.

      Reply

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