“The poem is an opportunity to turn from memoiristic transcription of information towards a kind of ultimate artifact, charged and changed by the imagination,” says Ocean Vuong about his approach to storytelling in this interview by Kadish Morris for the Guardian. Vuong offers his poem “American Legend” as an example in which the speaker drives his father to put down their dog and crashes the car, which becomes “a kind of parable for American failure.” In actuality, Vuong does not drive but uses the story to consider relationships between fathers and sons. Inspired by this concept of imaginative writing, write a poem that deliberately alters an event in your life. How can your expansion of this event make for a deeper parable?
Writing Prompts & Exercises
The Time Is Now
The Time Is Now offers three new and original writing prompts each week to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. We also curate a list of essential books on writing—both the newly published and the classics—that we recommend for guidance and inspiration. Whether you’re struggling with writer’s block, looking for a fresh topic, or just starting to write, our archive of writing prompts has what you need. Need a starter pack? Check out our Writing Prompts for Beginners.
Tuesdays: Poetry prompts
Wednesdays: Fiction prompts
Thursdays: Creative nonfiction prompts
Get immediate access to more than 2,000 writing prompts with the tool below:
In January Gill O’Neil’s poem “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” published in the Fall 2022 issue of Rattle, the poet writes about watching the late Tina Turner sing her iconic song in a music video on MTV. “And when Tina sings I’ve been taking on / a new direction directly to the camera, / defiant, her lips glazed a tumultuous red, / she takes her hand and adjusts her / honey brown bangs out of her eyes,” writes O’Neil. This “sweeping gesture” makes a lasting impression on O’Neil as she connects the song’s message to her own experiences with love, recalling the struggles in her parents’ marriage and her own. Consider the lasting impact music has had on your life and title a poem with lyrics from your favorite song. Use these words as a jumping-off point to the memories that come with it.
In Monica Youn’s essay “Generative Revision: Beyond the Zero-Sum Game,” published in the Spring 2023 issue of the Sewanee Review, the poet argues for a revision practice that offers “expansions, alternatives, subversions, and offspring that enrich the original work” rather than replacing or subtracting parts of a first draft. In this generative revision practice, a detail can be expanded in a different version or new poem altogether as Youn explains with two poems by C. D. Wright, “What No One Could Have Told Them” and “Detail from What No One Could Have Told Them.” Youn writes how in the latter poem Wright is “expanding the scope slightly, offering a bit more context, a glimpse of the setting.” Inspired by this technique, write a new poem that focuses on a single detail from an older poem of yours. How can you expand the scope?
First published in the October 1999 issue of Poetry magazine, Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Seven Deadly Sins” is a series of seven poems, each one named after the deadly sins of medieval Christian theology. Each poem is a distinct lyric portrait with its own sentiment, style, and approach to the topic. In “Sloth,” Komunyakaa writes with an open-ended musicality: “In this / Upside-down haven, you’re reincarnated / As a fallen angel trying to go home.” In “Gluttony,” the poet sets the scene concretely in the first stanza: “In a country of splendor & high / Ritual, in a fat land of zeros, / Sits a man with string & bone / For stylus, hunched over his easel.” Inspired by this series, write a poem dedicated to one of the seven deadly sins: pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. What approach will you take?
“This where all the roadside memorials are, / pink wreaths and dirty teddy bears. // This where a man walked when he wanted to fly,” writes Tyree Daye in his poem “Ode to Small Towns,” which appears in his collection Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Daye uses the repetition of “this where” to fold in various threads of distinct stories, making it feel as if the poem was written while driving through a series of towns and telling the tales as they surfaced. Inspired by Daye’s poem, write an ode to the small towns you’ve encountered while on the road. What kinds of stories do you picture when you pass through?
In the iconic poem “My Mother Would Be a Falconress,” Robert Duncan uses the metaphor of a falcon and a falconer to characterize the relationship between a son and his overbearing mother. As the falcon, the speaker of the poem is sent by his mother “as far as her will goes.” Throughout the poem, Duncan provides detailed imagery associated with falconry—such as the hood placed on birds of prey, often sewn round with bells—to give the complex metaphor a realistic weight. Think of a metaphor that captures the relationship between a mother and her child. Write a poem that uses this metaphor to characterize this relationship, whether nurturing, overbearing, or otherwise.
In her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, The Wild Iris, Louise Glück gives voice to a multitude of flowers: violets, snowdrops, trillium, lamium, scilla, and more. Glück uses floral imagery and personification, as well as the relationship between garden and gardener, to explore themes of resurrection, existence, loss, and suffering. In the poem “Lamium,” she writes: “This is how you live when you have a cold heart. / As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock, / under the great maple trees.” This week, inspired by this season’s super blooms, write a poem in the voice of your favorite flower.
In “Blooming How She Must: A Profile of Camille T. Dungy,” published in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, Renée H. Shea writes about how the poet “scrutinizes the tradition of the loner, the solitary individual, in nature writing and as part of the artistic life in general” in her new book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023). Write a poem that reflects on your relationship to being alone. Do you find the idea of a solitary life as an artist inviting or does it feel restricting?
“The American experiment will end in 2030 she said / looking into the cards, / the charts, the stars, the mathematics of it,” writes Jorie Graham in “Time Frame,” a poem in her latest collection, To 2040, out today from Copper Canyon Press. The book’s title suggests both a dedication and an urgent address, casting the poems therein as reflections on the age of the Anthropocene and calls to action to protect the earth’s natural wonders. Write a poem that illustrates and reflects on your vision of the future, whether hopeful or woeful. Use the open-endedness of this prompt to fold in as many aspects of the future as possible, including your personal journey and what you foresee for the natural world.
“I love to take an object made all but invisible by its mundanity—an egg-shaped container of pantyhose, a lawn chair turned on its side—and break it open to expose the full dimensions of the human vulnerability it carries,” writes Danielle Blau in her Craft Capsule essay “Somewhere Somebody Is Doing Something Right Now,” in which she explores how she creates characters for her poems. Write a poem that attempts to expose the full dimensions of an object and how it offers a reflection of a person, whether yourself or another character. What is the significance of this object and how does it exemplify human vulnerability?
“What I adore is not horses, with their modern / domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore / is a bug that lives only one day,” writes Natalie Shapero in her poem “Not Horses,” published in the November 2013 issue of Poetry magazine. Shapero redirects the reader from horses to the short lifespan of a bug within the first few lines of the poem and in doing so creates a humorous tension between the title and the body of the poem that adds character to the unique speaker. This week write a poem that moves quickly from one subject to the next. Consider how your mind shifts from one thought to another and carry that tone forward into the poem.
In Ada Limón’s poem “Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds,” which appears in her collection Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), the speaker moves through the memories of exes and accidents, including how a friend is obsessed with plane crashes: “He memorizes the wrecked metal details, / the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke. / Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes: / The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa. / How people go on, and how people don’t.” Write a poem about a specific detail or unexpected obsession of a loved one. How does this trait color the memories you have with that person?
In Charif Shanahan’s poem “Colonialism,” which appears in his second collection, Trace Evidence, out this week from Tin House Books, the poet captures a tense and tender moment of childhood rebellion in which the young speaker runs across a bustling four-lane street in Casablanca as his mother rushes after him, spanks him, and says: “Why / Would you do that to me?” Another poem from the book depicts a child in a department store fleeing and hiding from his mother as she searches and calls out for him. The poet’s rebellious, authoritative voice electrifies scenes from childhood while exploring themes of mixed-race identity, queerness, and belonging. Can you recall a childhood memory that, in hindsight, is tied to your identity? Write a poem that captures this scene in which you see a latent part of yourself on display. Try to draw a line, as Shanahan does, connecting your past self to your present self.
“Fish / fowl / flood / Water lily mud / My life // in the leaves and on water,” writes Lorine Niedecker in “Paean to Place,” a long lyric poem that meditates on the region of southern Wisconsin where she was born and lived most of her life. Written in short sections, the poem goes in and out of memories and pastoral descriptions of marshlike landscapes, altogether serving as a testament to the impact a place can have on one’s poetic sensibilities. This week write a pastoral ode to the landscape you grew up in. Whether an urban sprawl or a rural town, try to use the poem’s form and idiosyncratic language to paint a portrait of your experience in this formative place.
Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Ovid wrote a series of letters in elegiac couplets during his exile from Rome called the Tristia. The poems capture Ovid’s final days in Rome, as well as his journey overseas to Tomis on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea, and are addressed to various figures including his wife, loyal and disloyal friends, and he even composes his epitaph. “I who lie here, sweet Ovid, poet of tender passions, / fell victim to my own sharp wit,” writes Ovid, translated by Peter Green in The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters (University of California Press, 2005). Inspired by this epic elegy, write a poem from the perspective of someone in exile. What does your speaker long for, and how does exile force them to voice unspoken concerns?
In “When I See Stars in the Night Sky,” Joy Priest writes an ode to the late iconic singer Whitney Houston, tethering her memory to the stars in the sky. “It’s 1988 Her head / Thrown back against a black backdrop She is the only thing / glowing So distant from us in the universe,” writes Priest. The poem then moves into the personal connection the speaker has with the singer. “I love myself / because of her,” writes Priest. Inspired by this poem, write an ode to your favorite musician placing them, as Priest does, in a specific moment in time.
“I don’t call it sleep anymore. / I’ll risk losing something new instead,” writes Natalie Diaz in her poem “From the Desire Field,” which appears in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020). The poem speaks from the mind of someone unable to fall asleep who attempts to find a sense of relief through their insomnia. “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden,” she writes. Emotions then begin to move away from the tension of not being able to sleep into sensuality and passion. This week write a poem that revolves around what it feels like to experience insomnia. What do you do when you can’t fall asleep?
Oftentimes it’s the underrated things in life that make the perfect inspiration for a poem. In “For the Poet Who Told Me Rats Aren’t Noble Enough Creatures for a Poem,” Elizabeth Acevedo rises to the title’s challenge by honoring the “inelegant, simple,” and tenacious animal that is often hunted down. In “St. Roach,” Muriel Rukeyser writes to the humble cockroach and captures the moment in which the speaker reaches out and touches one. This week write a poem inspired by an animal that might be considered vermin and reflect on why you might fear or avoid this creature.
If you had the chance to send a poem into space, what would you say? Last week, the Library of Congress announced a collaboration with NASA to send a poem written by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón into space. The poem will be dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and engraved on the spacecraft which will travel 1.8 billion miles to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa to gather detailed measurements and determine if the moon has conditions suitable for life. In honor of this momentous occasion, write a poem dedicated to a celestial body of your choice. Explore the galactic neighborhood with NASA’s interactive map of our solar system.
In Rachel Mannheimer’s debut book, Earth Room (Changes Press, 2022), the book-length narrative takes the reader to places such as Los Angeles, Berlin, the Hudson Valley, and Mars. Some of the settings are used in a straightforward and narrative way, but others act as a sort of emotional backdrop against which intimate relationships and observations on sculpture, performance art, and land art can be examined. Inspired by Mannheimer’s original use of place, write a poem titled after a city. Try to challenge yourself by exploring the emotional and psychological undertones you associate with that place.
In a recent installment of our Agents & Editors Recommend series, Kristina Marie Darling, editor in chief of Tupelo Press, suggests taking risks with form in order to stand out from other poetry manuscripts. “Do something interesting with the space of the page,” writes Darling. “Be creative with how language is laid out on the page. Take risks with typography. Use white space as a unit of composition.” This week approach the page like a canvas. Let the visual element of your poem help tell the story and expand your language.
Award-winning and former U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic, who died last week at the age of eighty-four, was best known for his surrealist and often devastatingly funny poems. His poem “The Voice at 3 A.M.” reads in its entirety: “Who put canned laughter / Into my crucifixion scene?” In “Eyes Fastened With Pins,” Simic depicts a scene in which death is looking for “Someone with a bad cough, / But the address is somehow wrong, / Even death can’t figure it out.” Inspired by Simic, write a poem that mixes dark humor with a serious subject matter. How does integrating humor help balance and enliven the voice in your poem?
In David Kirby’s poem “The Hours,” published in the latest issue of the Bennington Review, the poet reflects on a subject that feels more significant at the start of a new year: the presence of time. “I’m going to rely on you hours to lead me, / to open one door after another and beckon / me through. Look it’s time to make lunch. / Look, it’s time to go back to work. Look, / it’s time to rub cat Patsy’s belly again,” he writes. This week, write a poem that ruminates on the presence of time in your life. How does your perception of the passing minutes change from season to season?
In his poem “The Wellfleet Whale,” Stanley Kunitz elegizes the majestic presence of a finback whale beached and dying on the shores of Cape Cod. The narrator of the poem, which is written in five sections, speaks to the whale in second person and recounts the last moments of its life. “You have your language, too, / an eerie medley of clicks / and hoots and trills, / location-notes and love calls,” writes Kunitz in the first lines. The rare sight is then celebrated through the awe of the spectators: “We cheered at the sign of your greatness / when the black barrel of your head / erupted, ramming the water, and you flowered for us / in the jet of your spouting.” This week write a poem that celebrates an animal of your choice. Whether through elegy or ode, which animal speaks to your senses?
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet James Merrill’s “Christmas Tree” is a wonderful example of a concrete poem, in which graphic patterns of words, letters, and symbols create a visual impact. Written in the shape of a Christmas tree and from its point of view, the poem captures the brief life of an iconic holiday decoration. “To be / Brought down at last / From the cold sighing mountain / Where I and the others / Had been fed, looked after, kept still, / Meant, I knew—of course I knew— / That there was nothing more to do,” writes Merrill. Taking inspiration from Merrill, write a poem from the perspective of a short-lived and celebrated object. If ambitious, try to incorporate a graphic element for more impact.