Gavin Bennett's Blog: Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 376

I guess today’s prompt is pretty predictable between today being the winter solstice (in the northern hemisphere) and last week’s best winter poems post.

For today’s prompt, write a winter poem. For folks in the northern hemisphere, this should be easy enough to do. And for poets south of the equator, remember that Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” was composed on a summer morning.

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Re-create Your Poetry!

Revision doesn’t have to be a chore–something that should be done after the excitement of composing the first draft. Rather, it’s an extension of the creation process!

In the 48-minute tutorial video Re-creating Poetry: How to Revise Poems, poets will be inspired with several ways to re-create their poems with the help of seven revision filters that they can turn to again and again.

Click to continue.

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Here’s my attempt at a Winter poem:

“winter reflection”

on the longest nights of the year,
we work our best to feel some cheer
manufactured by food or drink,
whether eggnog or frothy beer.

in the city or snowy wood,
we know there’s reason to feel good
& so we try our very best
to feel merry the way we should.

but hark! the city sirens cry
like brilliant stars across the sky
as one by one some fail to feel
any reason to even try.

these nights are lovely, long and dark,
but leave the world both cold and stark,
& we must work to make a spark,
& we must work to make a spark.

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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). And yes, he took liberties with Frost’s poem in the one he just wrote–and it felt good to do so.

Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.

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