I’m currently finishing up a lengthy blog post all about writing a poem a day: the formal challenges that exist out there, mindset, important considerations, etc… As part of that post, I suggest that you might want to create your own poem-a-day challenge for yourself. After all, many of these challenges are just collections of exercises. And so, below I offer some suggested books that I know are chock full of great prompts and writing ideas. Of course, you don’t have to be writing a poem a day to enjoy them, so I figured maybe they deserved their own post.
I’d love to hear suggestions for other titles in the comments – this is more of a “personal favorites” list than a comprehensive round-up.
Enjoy!
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg – This book, a series of short chapters that are 1-2 pages on average, is an excellent guide to starting a daily writing practice. It’s great for beginners, but after having my copy for about 30 years I find it’s still worth going back to (the cover just came off as I’m finishing leading a reading group dedicated to it). The advice on the mindset needed to become a prolific writer is rich and wise, and Goldberg offers guidance for dealing with many of the mental blocks that will come up. There are ideas for exercises throughout the book that could get you started on a poem, including 24 separate prompts in her writing topics chapter alone.
The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux – I think of this one as being like a classic undergraduate poetry writing class in book form, providing a good introduction to the elements of craft. There are dozens of exercises throughout.
Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge – I think of this simple, joyful book as a lesser-known cousin to Writing Down the Bones (the vintage photograph of the leaping woman perfectly conveys its tone), and it’s an excellent alternative if Goldberg’s “keep your hand moving” freewriting approach doesn’t work well for you. It will leave you feeling excited to play around with words and discover the poems you might have inside you. Like Writing Down the Bones, it’s organized into many bite-sized chapters, and there are both explicitly presented exercises, and ideas for exercises throughout.
A Poet’s Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie – One might say this rigorous book is the opposite of Poemcrazy, at least in tone. It’s intended for poets who want a thorough exploration of form, and though there’s a robust glossary, this would be a very hard book to engage with without a preexisting knowledge of poetic meter and poetic terms. There’s a section at the end with 14 very specific, detailed exercises (that give you both your subject and your form), as well as at least a couple more exercises throughout. It’s not for everyone, but for serious poets looking to develop formally, it may be just the thing.
Oulipo Compendium edited by Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie – This is an encyclopedic compilation of people, works, and techniques associated with the experimental French group Oulipo, which is dedicated to creating new and unusual writing constraints (rules for composing a particular piece). I hesitate to recommend this one, as this book is out-of-print yet there’s still enough demand to make used copies scarce and expensive. At the time I’m writing this, one copy is available for about $40, significantly below the more typical price of around $100. However, despite the price tag, the Oulipo oeuvre is such a resource for unusual ideas for prompts, and I know of no other resource in English that contains such a thorough and clear collection of the constraints (though in my How to Write a Poem Every Day course I share some of them). If you love ridiculous wordplay and don’t mind if what you write doesn’t make traditional sense (or if you do want to make sense, but want a different sort of challenge than what Kinzie offers), I heartily recommend that you learn more about Oulipo.
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