Next Line, Please

Prompts to Inspire Poets and Writers

Angela Ball, David Lehman

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781501715150
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

In this book, David Lehman, the longtime series editor of the Best American Poetry, offers a masterclass in writing in form and collaborative composition. An inspired compilation of his weekly column on the American Scholar website, Next Line, Please makes the case for poetry open to all. Next Line, Please gathers in one place the popular column's plethora of exercises and prompts that Lehman designed to unlock the imaginations of poets and creative writers. He offers his generous and playful mentorship on forms such as the sonnet, haiku, tanka, sestina, limerick, and the cento and shares strategies for how to build one line from the last. This groundbreaking book shows how pop-up crowds of poets can inspire one another, making art, with what poet and guest editor Angela Ball refers to as "spontaneous feats of language."

How can poetry thrive in the digital age? Next Line, Please shows the way. Lehman writes, "There is something magical about poetry, and though we think of the poet as working alone, working in the dark, it is all the better when a community of like-minded individuals emerges, sharing their joy in the written word."

Index

abababcc pattern, 127, 130

abab pattern, 8

abba pattern, 8, 11, 173

“A Coat” (Yeats), 135

acrostic poems, 44, 113-16

Addonizio, Kim, 162

Alcala, Carlos, 59

Aleichem, Sholem: “A Yom Kippur Scandal,” 55; “Station Baranovich,” 56

Alexie, Sherman, 83

Aliperti, Pia, 12

Allen, Woody, 234

alliteration, 12, 27, 40, 43, 44, 54, 170, 180, 182, 258

Altmann, Howard, 90, 262

The American Scholar, xi, 1, 33, 44, 67, 155

Ammons, A. R., 88, 94, 95

anagram(s): in acrostic poem, 115; in Auden-centric poem, 111; in crowdsourced cento, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198; in name poems, 219, 221-22

anaphora, 106

Anderson, Brian, class of, 2, 11, 12, 19, 37, 261

Andrews, Nin, 61-62, 262

Ansen, Alan, 83

aphorism(s), poems inspired by, 72, 241, 252-57

apology, poems of, 3, 4n, 238-41

Arlen, Harold, 199, 200

Ashbery, John: cento by, 92; “The Painter,” 63, 83; “Popeye,” 46; references to, 46; on sestina, 64; unidentified pronouns used by, 192

Auden, W. H.: “Gare du Midi,” 108; “Horae Canonicae,” 85; “Musée des Beaux Arts,” 224, 225; “The Novelist,” crowd-sourced sonnet using endings from, 190, 191; poems inspired by, 108-12, 225; sestinas by, 83; and sonnet form, 8; typology of writers, 59

Augustine, St., 238

“A Yom Kippur Scandal” (Aleichem), 55

Baker, Chet, 75

Ball, Angela, 262, 263, 264; cento lines/ stanzas by, 97, 99, 194, 197, 198, 200, 201, 256; Chekhov-inspired poem by, 149-50; cocktail-inspired poem by, 232; Dickinson-inspired poem by, 205; Eliot-inspired couplet by, 217; fake apology poem by, 241; “Helen,” 227; “Kahiki Polynesian Supper Club,” 259, 260; Kneeling Between Parked Cars, 159; “Learning to Sew,” 159-60; Lec-inspired poem by, 253; life-affirming poem by, 233; name of, poem about, 221; newspaper excerpt-inspired poem by, 223-24; poems de...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line One
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Two
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Three
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Four
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Five
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Six
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Seven
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Lines Eight and Nine
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Ten
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Eleven
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Twelve
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Thirteen
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: Line Fourteen
• Help Us Write a Sonnet: The Title
• The August Haiku
• This Week’s Haiku, Next Week’s Tanka
• The Tanka in Toto
• The Couplet
• The Winning Couplet Grows (into a Sonnet Ghazal)
• The Shortest Story Ever Told
• Tara’s Theme
• Finish What Dickinson Started
• Of Ciphers—in the Brain
• The Last Shall Be First
• The Sense of an Ending
• Rhyme Sandwich
• Hot Toddy
• When Two Strangers Meet
• Airport Buoyancy
• Let’s Write a Sestina
• Winning Stanza Refuses to Cave
• Chemosabe
• “Her Winsome Style”
• Sestina: Stanza Four
• Stanza Five: “Six Options”
• Stanza Six: Mary’s Tip
• Envoi: Melodious Song
• The Sestina Is Complete with “Compline”
• The Two-Line Poem
• Wind and Ice
• Let’s Assemble a Cento
• Our Crowd-Sourced Cento, Stanza One: Ten Blind Nights
• Cento, Stanza Two: The Experience of Repetition
• “Nobody Heard Him”
• Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down . . .
• Similes Are Like Detours—or Shortcuts
• Like Dancing down the Aisle
• “In my end is my beginning”
• “Homage to Auden”
• Poems and Secret Messages
• “Conscience versus Consequence”
• Becoming an Obstructionist
• Unfinished Business
• Product Placement
• Making Groceries
• The Trip Begins
• Antipodal Star
• Appaloosa Sky
• Legato Dreams
• Beautiful Land
• Humbling Back
• Snake-Eye
• A Hand of Frightening Lies
• Philosophy of Clothes
• Clothwebs and Cobwebs
• Three-Piece Cento with Extra Pants
• Let’s Do It Again
• Uniformity
• Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?
• Midnight Champagne
• Darkness Visible
• Caged but Free . . .
• The Key That Confirms the Lock
• Are the Words of the Prophets Written on Prison Walls?
• From Bouquet to Wreath
• Terms of Interment
• Bliss Is Momentary in the Mind
• The Rules of Engagement
• Looking Ahead
• A Plot Twist—or Two
• The Unmasking
• Erase and Change
• The Mood of Doom, Where Guns Are Snug
• A Break with Tradition
• Ruby Tuesday
• Blues in the Night
• Papa Joins Mama
• Heaven, Hope, or a Ghostly Sight
• Galloping Ghosts
• Spring Forward
• This Week’s Haiku to Become Next Week’s Tanka
• Let the Renga Reign
• “April Is the Cruelest Month, [Because]”
• T. S. Eliot: Still Undefeated
• Behind the Curtain
• The Pen Name Is Mightier Than the Word
• Walt Whitman’s Manly Diet
• A Familiar Public Place
• The Judgment of Paris
• Prompting a Poem, Dreaming of a Drink
• You Must Get Drunk
• Reasons to Live
• Young Lycidas
• The Fake Apology
• I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You
• Under the Dark Marquee
• Leaves of Presence
• No Entry
• The Chill
• Honor Role of Weekly Winners
• Index