Poetry Project #1
Option 1: Doomed Republics
Write a free verse poem about some significant, puzzling, terrifying, or otherwise intriguing event, person, or place in your childhood.. Rely almost exclusively on concrete language and images, letting the details speak for themselves. Do not editorialize about your subject or explain it; simply describe or reenact it as accurately and as vividly as you can, using your senses.
Be sure especially to avoid sentimentality: writing which evokes predictable, obvious, and pre-digested emotion; writing which is trite, cheesey, or cute; writing in which emotion is "unearned" or "in excess of its object." Write a poem instead which discovers NEW feelings and surprises your reader (and yourself).
Option 2: The Luminous Object
At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing—a sunset or an old shoe—in absolute and simple amazement.
(Ray Carver, "On Writing.")
Write a free verse poem about an object. Describe it with as much specific, intense, concrete detail as possible, using all of your senses. Keep reflection and explanations to a minimum. Simply make the object vivid and present through language, respecting its thingness. Help your reader (and yourself) see this thing as never before. (Poems with a true surrealist bent will receive a Surrealist Award.)
It might be interesting (but isn't mandatory) to imagine your chosen object from some very unusual perspective—that of an animal, for instance, or someone from another country or planet. (An English 322 student once wrote about a rifle, for example, from the perspective of a deer, calling it "a branch that barks." )
Another tip: pick an object which intrigues you or puzzles you or even bugs you in some way. DO NOT pick something whose meanings to you are obvious.
Option 3: The Love Poem
Write a poem addressed to a person, place, or thing that you love. Detail. Detail. Detail.
Option 4: The Hate Poem
Write a poem addressed to a person, place, or thing that you hate. Detail. Detail. Detail.