{"id":4612,"date":"2011-11-04T14:23:18","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T18:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=4612"},"modified":"2011-11-04T14:26:01","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T18:26:01","slug":"friday-prompt-structure-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/04\/friday-prompt-structure-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Prompt: STRUCTURE & SURPRISE"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Structure and Surprise, ed. Michael Theune (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2007)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This week’s prompt is less of a prompt and more of an invitation to check out this book on poetic structure published by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative<\/a>. \u00a0Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns <\/em>is\u00a0a collection of essays by noteworthy poets like D.A. Powell and Prageeta Sharma, which discusses the use of “the turn” in poetry writing; that is, the energetic leap or shift that occurs as the mind works through form to create dynamic patterns of thought. \u00a0In his introduction to the essays, Michael\u00a0Theune says:<\/p>\n

Poetic structure is, simply, the pattern of a poem’s turning. \u00a0As such, poetic structure identifies a vital feature of poems: the best poems very often include convincing, surprising turns… [I]n a lecture called “Levels and Opposites: Structure in Poetry,” Randall Jarrell claims that “a successful poem starts from one position and ends at a very different one, often a contradictory or opposite one; yet there has been no break in the unity of the poem.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the structures discussed in Structure & Surprise <\/em>is the retrospective-prospective structure<\/a>, a two-part structure that begins with a retrospective discussion of the past and then moves toward a future orientation that shows, as the essay’s author, Mark Yakich, puts it, how “inconstant and dizzying” time really is. \u00a0While you’re welcome to browse the list of structures on the book’s extraordinarily helpful\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0to find one that might work better for whichever writing\/revision process you’re currently in, I’d recommend trying this particular approach for starters.<\/p>\n

Prompt: write a two-part poem that uses the retrospective-prospective structure to narrate a past event or memory. \u00a0Midway through the poem, shift to the present tense to “acknowledge some kind of change” (p. 72) that allows the speaker to either look prospectively into the future, or reconsider the past through a different lens.<\/strong><\/p>\n

* \u00a0* \u00a0*<\/p>\n

For a list of additional structures<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0supplemental materials<\/a>, check out the Structure & Surprise\u00a0<\/em>website<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n

For more writing\u00a0prompts on structure, take a look at Iris’\u00a0Ordering, Reordering, Reversing<\/a>\u00a0or last October’s prompt,\u00a0Complicating Narrative Structure<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s prompt is less of a prompt and more of an invitation to check out this book on poetic structure published by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. \u00a0Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns is\u00a0a collection of essays by noteworthy poets like D.A. Powell and Prageeta Sharma, which discusses the use of “the turn” in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[13],"tags":[716,713,714,715,62],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4612"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4618,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions\/4618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}