I apologize for both the title & the subhed. My notebooks and digital files are full of interesting starts - an image, an assertion, an observation - that just . . . didn’t go anywhere. I call them poem nubs in my own head, and I have been unable to create a more clever name for them. Then I found this image of my favorite magnolia tree and got stuck on blooming. It’s hokey, I know. But why be a poet if you can’t lean into some springtime flower imagery once in a while?
Prompt #5: A Poem Nub
Find a poem nub in your notebooks or digital files. You’re looking for something - a line, a stanza, an image - that feels interesting to you, but that isn’t really developed yet.
Pick two or three of the cards from your poetry deck (I described this in the very first post, here) and try to add those to the draft.
If you need more, add three to five proper nouns whose sound you love, or that feel otherwise resonant to you, and let those sounds or the images they conjure up lead you to new lines. (I’d add Kittatinny, Monongahela, McKean County, and Kish Valley.)
A formal suggestion: if you’re a poet whose work often stops just shy of the page in Word, push yourself to go longer. Can you hit the two-page mark? More?
Sharing your work helps sustain momentum. I’ll leave the comments open, so you can share a poem title, a snippet of a line, or something else about your writing life.
I just want to say thank you so much for these wonderful exercises and insights. I've never done a poem-a-day kind of thing-- never could get myself to do it-- but your exercises in my inbox each day make me go ahead and try it, and the way you frame them is meaningful and low-pressure. Much gratitude!