Poetry & wordplay21 categories
Break this form on purpose, in one place
A formal poem feels too neat and you want a deliberate fracture.
This poem follows a form. I want to break it, once, so the break means something. 1. Describe the form the poem currently keeps, including anything it is already doing slightly irregularly. 2. Identify the moment in the poem's argument where a reader's expectation should be disrupted: the turn, the lie, the refusal, the thing the speaker cannot say. 3. Propose four different fractures at or near that moment: a dropped rhyme, a short or long line, a missing stanza break, a metrical collapse, an unfinished sentence. 4. For each, say what the reader will feel and whether they will read it as intentional or as a mistake. Recommend one. Show the poem with that break applied. Do not scatter small irregularities throughout, one break only. Poem:
Making it yours
- Paste your own material where the prompt asks for it. Everything above that line is instruction, not content.
- Delete any rule that does not apply to you. A shorter prompt that fits beats a thorough one that does not.
- If the answer comes back vague, add a line saying what you do not want. Constraints work better than encouragement.
Finishing a poem. Cutting, ending, titling, and the last decisions before you call a draft done.
Related prompts
Cut this poem to half its lengthYou suspect the poem is buried inside a longer draft.Twenty titles for a finished poemThe poem is done and "Untitled" is not going to cut it.Stop the poem tying itself into a bowThe last two lines explain the poem instead of ending it.Ten titles for this poemThe poem is finished and Untitled will not do.Cut this poem in halfYou suspect a shorter poem is buried in the draft.Does this ending earn itself?The last few lines might be explaining the poem instead of ending it.
Keep this one
Phrasery saves prompts with a right-click and puts them back the same way. Add this to your own library in one click.
Add to your browser — free