TODAY’S PROMPT: PHONE NUMBER
POEM
• This exercise can be a lot of fun. Pick a phone number that has significance
for you and write it down. Use the number for your title. Your poem will have as
many lines as your phone number has numbers. Each line will have the
number of syllables as the number it corresponds with.
For example, if you use 426-3213, the first line will have four syllables, the
second line will have two, the third will have six, and so on.
The contents of the poem should relate to the phone number you chose.
Phone Number Poem
“454-8306”
My second home.
There is always food!
Relaxation!
Two black labs come up to greet you.
Family.
A garden full of vegetables to eat.
Go for a swim outback.
- by Tracey M.
FORMAL POETRY: THE VILLANELLE
• The highly structured villanelle is a nineteen-line
poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains.
The form is made up of five tercets followed by a
quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening
tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of
the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the
refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines.
Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters
for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1
b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.
SOME VILLANELLES
• “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan
Thomas
• “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop
• “El Mercado” by Ms. Rolfe