5 Exercises

1. Write a natural prayer. You may use any definition of natural, any form of prayer, whether that be overtly religious or spiritual without any religious attachments.

2. Look for a sign to be the starting place -and the title - of a poem or story. Examples: roadside sign, store sign, advertisement in a newspaper, magazine or on TV, etc.

3. "Peace" by C.K. Williams looks at a kind of peace, but the word holds different meanings for each of us at different times. In times of war, the absence of war is likely to be the first definition to come to mind. When "we fight for hours", as in his poem, I would guess that tranquility, quiet and harmony in our relations would better fit the bill. We also use the word at times to ask for silence or calm or as a greeting or farewell. What does the word mean to you right now in your life? Is it a place, state of mind, something you long for or have found? Do your thoughts turn political? Use this abstract noun as your starting point and, following Williams' lead, avoid the obvious definitions.

4. Look specifically at how we let someone go from this world. What is it that we say or do that allows us to let go?

5. Tercets are any three lines of poetry, whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or unrhymed, metered or unmetered. The form has Italian roots. Dante's The Divine Comedy is a common example. It uses three line stanzas with every first and third line ending with a rhyme. (This is known as "enclosed" as the rhyming lines enclose an unrhymed line - the scheme being aba. Get really classical and use iambic pentameter and you have a sicilian tercet. Fancier still - interlock enclosed tercets by having the middle line rhyming with the first and third lines of the following stanza so that the pattern is aba bcb cdc ded ...)