Narrative Poetry and Paint Chips

Hey there, poetry friends. Sorry for the missed prompt last week. A family issue was taking up all of my thoughts and energy and I just couldn’t get it done. But I’m back and I don’t plan to make a habit of missing Friday prompts. Which is a good thing, because the fact that I post these weekly has been shared by one of you—Susan at https://suestrifles.wordpress.com—who wrote about these prompts in a wonderful article for the Association of Christian Writers website. You can read that article here.

This week we are in the N section of the poetry dictionary and I’ve selected one of my favorite types of poetry: narrative poetry. I love to tell stories and that’s what this form of poetry calls the poet do.

NARRATIVE POETRY Poetry that tells a story. It is one of the three main genres of poetry (the others being dramatic poetry and lyric poetry).

Narrative poetry presents characters and leads them through a plot. Its oldest form is the epic, such as Homer’s The Illiad. Traditional ballads are also narrative. “The Demon Lover,” for example, tells the story of a woman who is seduced and taken away by a man who changes into a demon as soon as their ship reaches the high seas; he sinks the ship to the bottom. The rise of the prose novel diverted more and more of the narrative impulse away from poetry, but some late-twentieth-century poets, such as Louis Simpson, Andrew Hudgins, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, have brought storytelling back into verse.

the poetry dictionary, pg. 184

The Challenge

Your challenge is to write a narrative poem, to tell a story. It can be true, completely fictional, or a combination thereof. The format is up to you. Couplets, free verse, rhyming or not.

The paint chip words and phrases you have to work with are antique rose, surf’s up, mistletoe, mustard seed, skyscraper, easy peasy, and jack-o’-lantern.

I would like you to use at least four of these paint chips in your poem. For an extra twist, perhaps incorporate one or two of the colors themselves, using whatever name you would ascribe to them.

My Poem

Surf's Up

They told Judy she couldn't do it,
over and over the surfers taunted her.
Surf's up, but you'll drown if you try.

Except for Jack, nicknamed Jack-o'-lantern
because of his bronze tan and slate gray eyes.
He encouraged her, told her that with faith
as small as a mustard seed she could surf
with the best of them. It's easy peasy.

A wave rolled in as high as a skyscraper
and crashed on the shore. Judy's faith 
in her ability to surf was small as a grain of sand.

But Jack believed she could do it.
He promised to teach her and he was the best.
Maybe that, and sun shining in the cerulean sky, were enough.

Let's go to the a different beach,
away from these naysayers.

She picked up her antique rose surfboard
and followed Jack to his VW Van. 
Her heart skipped a beat to think
that maybe, just maybe, he really liked her.

Remembering that day, sitting in the waiting room
of her counselor's office, tears welled in her eyes.
Perhaps it would have been better if she'd tried to surf alone
and drown, like the other surfers warned.

Judy's new counselor, a sweet middle-aged Christian woman,
called her back for their first session together.
Hi, I'm Melinda. Tell me why you're here.
She had no idea where to begin. 
But the warmth of Melinda's smile assured her
there was hope. There is always hope.

Okay, that took a dark turn before I knew where it was going. Yikes! But I couldn’t leave it there. I despise a story with a sad ending. There is always hope. Always.

Your Turn

Okay, now it’s your turn. Write your narrative poem in the comments if you like. Or you can post it on your blog and drop a link in the comments. It would be awesome if you shared this prompt with your other poet friends, like Susan did. The more the merrier. I love reading what you all come up with based on a dictionary entry and a few paint chips.