Day Four

Happy Wednesday, everyone, and happy fourth day of Na/GloPoWriMo!

Our featured participant today is Napowrimodreamingpath, where the list poem for Day 3 is an abecedarian confection of band names, followed by a second poem inspired by those names!

Today, we bring you a new craft resource, in the form of an essay by Julie Marie Wade on description in poetry. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I write up a first draft, and it is full of trees, and flowers, and skies – but there is no further specificity. What kind of trees? What kind of flowers? Are there clouds in the sky? Even if a poem has a lot of great ideas in it, a reader may find it hard to pay attention if the poems isn’t grounded in details about the real world.

And now for our (optional) daily prompt. Our craft resource today focuses on the use of concrete nouns and specific details, using the idea of “putting a dog in it.” Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like “beauty” or “justice,” but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns. Adjectives are fine too! For example, you could have a poem about sadness that describes that emotion as “a rowboat tethered with fishing line to a willow that leans over a pond. Rainwater collects in the bottom, and mosquito eggs.” Concrete details like those can draw the reader in and let them imagine the real world where your abstract ideal or feeling happens. Happy writing!