Titles as Prompts

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m once again enrolled in an online poetry class, and last week’s lesson included material and assignments on titles. One assignment asked us to “Choose a title that already exists and then write a poem to match it.” We were given a bunch of existing titles to consider. We were also encouraged to look up the original poet’s version once we’d completed our own and see how the works compared.

So I thought I’d provide you with something of a twist. Here are the titles of some of my published poetry and prose. See if any of them spark any writing for you (I’d love to know if they do). I’m giving you titles only for works that can be located online, so please go ahead and look up the words that follow these titles if you’re so inclined. Enjoy!

“For Services Rendered”

“Floating”

“Rio, 1946”

“Stars and Stripes—Forever”

“Vigilance”

“In Praise of Polyglossia”

“Solar Damage”

“Mannheim”

“Diaspora”

“American Love Sonnet”