“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these”
Emily Dickinson
I’ve been working on a list poem which as the name suggests is a poem that uses a list format to get the emotion across. I first discovered this form in Leslea Newman’s book,Writing from the Heart: Inspiration and Exercises for Women Who Want to Write.
Today, brainstorm about an emotion or a subject for fifteen minutes, then take your list and work it into a poem. Or alternatively take a list you’ve already written and write a poem from it. It can be as simple as a grocery list or as complicated as the fifteen things I want to do before I turn 40.
I ran across the 180 Project for high school students.In 2001, as Poet Lauerate Billy Collins suggested that high school students read a poem out loud every day I thought it was an interesting list of poems to discover and introduce to students. The first one is by Billy Collins and I think this poem sums up what I thought about poetry in high school.Now get back to work!
Lovingly,
The Writing Nag