Winter Stroll
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Winter Stroll
This prompt is inspired by Kim Addonizio’s “New Year’s Day,” which you can read here. I love how Addonizio’s poem explores the landscape of winter, the sounds and textures of the speaker’s walk and how the past emerges. I, too, love the skepticism that enters the poem. What does it mean to create meaning out of the past? How do we remain rooted to the present?
Prompt
Take a stroll, if you can, even if it’s just from the door to the road and back. Notice everything you can around you, and maybe even take a notebook with you so that you can write down details: cars, trees, garbage, people, animals. Aim to notice colors.
Draft a poem where you try to transform one of the things you see into a comparison with something in your life (through a simile or metaphor). Develop this in the poem, and then question the image as you near the poem’s end. Try to repeat the phrase “I don’t think” twice.
Try your poem in couplets (two-line stanzas, or groupings) or in tercets (three-line stanzas, or groupings).
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