Seven Steps to Writing a Poem

Posted on 2020/01/07 by Bartholomew Barker

glass-of-wine-140220_1280.jpg

Seven Steps to Writing a Poem

Wait one hour after the sun sets.

Light two candles, left and right.

If your three muses are hanging around
send them home. They’ve done their job,
now they’re just a distraction.

Four mood, put on some music—
instrumental, no lyrics,
at least not in any tongue
you recognize.

Pour yourself a nice glass
of five wine, preferably red.
Contemplate each flame
reflected and refracted.

Think about six,
pour another glass.

Seven— Get to work.

 

(Inspired by / stolen from Dorianne Laux‘s Ten Tips for Poets: A Prose Poem from The Practicing Poet— Writing Beyond the Basics edited by Diane Lockward.)

About Bartholomew Barker

Bartholomew Barker is one of the organizers of Living Poetry, a collection of poets and poetry lovers in the Triangle region of North Carolina. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he makes money as a computer programmer to fund his poetry habit.
This entry was posted in Poetry and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

14 Responses to Seven Steps to Writing a Poem

  1. Cassa Bassa says:
    2020/01/07 at 16:47

    Lol i will give that a go

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  2. Lisa Tomey says:
    2020/01/07 at 17:40

    8 – push ups from the rug
    Fun poem!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. In mind and out says:
    2020/01/07 at 19:53

    A wonderful recipe!!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  5. The Cheesesellers Wife says:
    2020/01/09 at 06:46

    Trouble is, I’d get stuck on choosing the music. And then I dance (badly) to any music….

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  6. -Eugenia says:
    2020/01/27 at 17:37

    I love this! I pouring that glass of red wine right now.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s