Literary Thursday: Your Assignment

This one I wrote towards the end of my sophomore year at Sacred Heart University. I was taking a poetry writing course taught by Professor Michael Sweeney. I thoroughly enjoyed the course, but I am not sure whether this was written during or after the class.

Your Assignment

Devise a poem in twenty lines or less
That challenges your reader
To write his own poem.

Please keep the topic vague,
In order to encourage a wide range of
Spontaneous creativity.

Make sure you set line length restrictions
Because the unschooled poet desperately needs a sense of structure and limits
Or he will include unnecessary information.

If he decides to write about ninjas,
That would be great.
Aardvarks are good too.

Be sure that your poem sounds like poetry.
If it isn’t poetic (if it sounds more like awkward prose),
You can’t expect your reader’s poem to be either.

Remember, the worst enemy of poetry is redundancy.
Repeat after me: “Redundancy will kill my poem,
Redundancy will kill my poem.” Don’t forget.

And be sure to keep it under twenty lines,
Because attention spans are much lower
Than… oh, is it snowing outside?