I don’t recall where I read it, but some blogger or publication or Substack posted a poetry prompt: write about a color without ever mentioning the name of it. It’s both easier and harder than it looks. To make it more difficult, try writing a poem about a color with mentioning the color or an associated feeling or emotion.
An exercise like that does make you immediately aware of the importance color can have in poetry and even in everyday conversation. We feel blue. We see red. We’re in the pink. That potato salad made me feel green. His mood was black.
Poet, editor, and publisher Diana Lockward says she’s long had an attraction to poems that use color. Over the years, she kept a folder of poems that did exactly that. And then, she had an idea – an anthology of poems that make strategic use of color. She put out a call for submissions.
And poets responded. At least 117 of them did, and likely more, each by a different poet. And The Color Wheel: Poems was born. And the result is, well, more diverse and colorful than you might expect.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Thursday Readings
“The Ballad of the Dead Ladies,” poem by Dante Gabirel Rossetti – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
“The Cottage on the Ridge” and “The Garden Hermit’s Confession” – poems at Martin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets.
“And if I Did, What Then?”, poem by George Gascoigne – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
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