Tweetspeak Poetry

Bears & Beasts: Animate Poetry Prompt

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bears & beasts poetry promptAnimate is a poetry prompt that focuses on speaking as if we are a particular object or thing. This time, we’re speaking as bears & beasts.

Prompt Guidelines and Options

1. Speak in the first person.

2. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives.

3. Consider where you—a bear or a beast—are located, or where you came from, or where you are going. Or, speak as if you have a special desire or concern: maybe you are hungry, missing something, afraid of a sight or sound, in love with another beast that is like you or not like you (a bear falling in love with a honey bee!). Be creative. Any type of situation is fair game.

4. Consider doing a little research about the bear or the beast you will speak as: folklore, history, associated words, music, art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, science, constellations, and so on. Look for unusual details, so you can speak convincingly and intriguingly about yourself.

That’s it! We look forward to hearing you speak poetically, from the viewpoint of bears & beasts.

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Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here is a reverse cinquain from Maureen we enjoyed:

Fall’s Leaves

Weary,
they slip to ground, their once-green skins —
now worn mottled coats — shed
in autumn’s own
dust-up.

—by Maureen Doallas

Photo by Lauren Elyse Lynskey. Creative Commons via Flickr.

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How to Write a Poem 283 highHow 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
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Comments

  1. Katie says

    I couldn’t seem to get anywhere with the animate approach – so tried a sort of catalog format:

    Bears & Beasts

    Bears, you say –
    Like, lions and tigers and . . .

    Beasts, you say –
    Like, lions and tigers and. . .

    Bears, you say –
    Like beasts and bears and . . .

    Beasts, you say –
    Like bears and beasts and . . .

    Oh, my – are you talking about
    Wild animals?!

    Oh, my – you DON’T SAY!

    (maybe I should save my attempts for daylight hours when I’m not so punchy;)LOL

    Reply

  2. Rick Maxson says

    Catfish

    My stillness unnerved them,
    devouring sixty inches of their minds:
    this was the mighty Muskingum,
    its cataract, falling no further
    than half a mile upstream.

    A small hope, shared by many:
    after the flood of ’50―they’d find me
    moved. Yet, when a month of mud
    cleared, I seemed longer and fatter than before,
    near the dock where the cattails clatter.

    Some swore through time, red-faced,
    it was a keelhauled bow they saw,
    something sunk and bogged down,
    sucked-in so much the river that plucked
    off seven bridges like steel flowers let it be.

    Their swears evolved to dares for feats
    and fears of wrestling with such a beast.
    Wives were taxed for recipes of blood
    and dough and meats, yet through years
    of snarls and snells, they never saw me eat.

    One morning I was gone, so fell their lore.
    The mooring dried and shriveled,
    wobbled on its legs, and stories,
    shifted to the past like chum, to tell
    of my return, and languid lingered:

    their thoughts beyond the cast, not one for me:
    how the river unseen sifted through my
    solitary heart and why, one night,
    as with elusive poems and dreams,
    I raised my dorsal mast and drifted on.

    Reply

    • L.L. Barkat says

      I think what I like best here is the subtle internal rhyme of “swore,” “morning,” “lore,” “mooring,” and “stories,” which combine to give a kind of “oar” to the poem, driving it forward with that final internal rhyme “dorsal.” 🙂

      Reply

      • Rick Maxson says

        Thank you, LL. I hadn’t thought of the internal rhyme alluding to an “oar.” I appreciate that observation. It adds to the poem. One of the amazing qualities of poetry is what the reader brings to each piece. I intended the internal rhymes, those you noted and others, to move the poem along, as well as a vehicle for the reader to hear a word and reference back to its rhyme, similar to the way tales depend on those memories of particulars, true or imagined to be true.

        My grandma Thirtyacre and her husband Fred Thirtyacre, a German immigrant, retired to McConnelsville, Ohio on the Muskingum River, not far from where it converged with the Ohio River. Off the dock next door was a catfish that people swore had ben there as far back as anyone could remember. It was 5’ long and never moved, never took a bait of any kind, dough balls, liver mash, chicken necks, Catfish Charlie’s bait, worms, crawfish etc. One morning, when I was 10 years old, I went down to take my Grandma’s boat out and there was a commotion at the next door dock. The catfish was gone, never to be seen again. There were a few who claimed they hooked it. Some said it pull their fishing gear in the water and ate it. There was a story of one man who noodled it and lost an arm. Some said it was a spirit that only appeared there in a cycle and would return, when the river was right for it. I’ve never cared if any of it was true. The fish was, because I saw it many times.

        So it was easy to pretend I was that fish, and I liked that fish are not usually considered beasts, but big ones are.

        Reply

        • L.L. Barkat says

          Love all this background! 🙂 Mythic.

          I never seem to intentionally do internal rhymes, but they are always there in my poetry (and my Sonia’s poetry). I love that you go about it intentionally, towards a certain purpose. I should write more poems again, and try it. 🙂

          Reply

        • Donna Falcone says

          I really appreciated this backstory and when I went back into the river after that beast, I saw it all more clearly… thank you. I love that line about when the mud cleared I seemed longer and fatter than before…. oh what a fish story!

          Reply

  3. Kaiya Rose says

    Free

    The moon is full, stars sparkle, shine
    Reflected in the turn of time
    Night brings the light in flaming boats
    As howls escape our throats.

    Our songs pierce through the quiet dark
    Our minds surrender to our hearts
    A wolf, a wind, one in the same
    And like the winds, we are not tame.

    We’re wild. We’re free. We’re meant to be
    Under the sky among the trees
    Dancing in the sighing breeze
    With a bed of maple leaves
    To rest our heads on when we tire
    Revive us, calm our inner fire
    Because we have what we desire
    As wolves we are free.

    Fun fact: I actually wrote part of the third stanza in fifth grade for a writing project.

    Reply

  5. Katie says

    Hi again all:)
    Kaiya’s mention of peacocks in one of her comments reminded me of a poem I wrote earlier this autumn:

    The Prince of Andalusia

    You spectacular bird
    peafowl, peacock
    makes no difference
    where you flock

    preening yourself
    for all to see
    right under our noses
    pretty as you please

    you strut and stride
    ‘cross the yard
    with all that pride
    for nothin’s too hard

    when you’re plucky
    and sprite
    you always feel lucky
    though never in flight

    forward and backward
    dancing, you go
    backward and forward
    surely and slow.

    Reply

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