Tag: poetry

On Writing, Writing Prompts

Writing Prompt 74

Jamie Aughenbaugh

I’m back after two weeks on medical leave and some much needed healing. Hope that time has been good to you.

Here’s this week’s writing prompt, from one of my all-time favorite authors, Edgar Allan Poe:

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
On Writing, Writing Prompts

Writing Prompt 37

Jamie Aughenbaugh

Take an existing myth, fairy tale, or fable and rewrite it with a different perspective or a new twist. Modernize it, drop it into a new setting, change the genders of the main characters, switch up the ending—do what feels right to you. Some examples of published works embracing this idea are Salman Rushdie’s novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and Carol Ann Duffy’s book of poetry The World’s Wife, which has many excellent examples of such retellings.

On Writing, Writing Prompts

Writing Prompt 9

Jamie Aughenbaugh

This week’s writing prompt is to read a poem and allow it to inspire your own writing. Below is an excerpt from a poem by one of my favorite poets. Feel free to use it if you like.

[S]tanding alone
on the balcony, the night so cold I could taste the stars
on the tip of my tongue [...] I made a prayer [...]
words for the lost, the captive beautiful, 
the wives, those less fortunate than we.
The moon was a hand-mirror breathed on by a Queen.
My breath was a chiffon scarf for an elegant ghost.

— Carol Ann Duffy, from "Mrs. Beast"