Make A List

It is true. Your grocery list can be a poem. Anything you write can be a poem.

List poems are both the simplest poetry form and the most challenging because writing lists asks the question when does an assembly of words become a poem. I don’t honestly know the answer to that question, but I have never felt that my grocery lists were poetry. And if my to-do lists were a genre it is more likely to be horror. However, today I sat down to write a poem (because LexPoMo) and I ended up writing a list poem (see For Camp). Sometimes this type of poems are called inventory poems.

Some lists are very simple lists (as mine is) but sometimes they offer a bit more. See Shel Silverstein’s Sick for example. I love this idea because it offers so many types of list poems that you could write (just think of all the excuses you dream up to escape loathesome situations). Dorothy Parker also wrote a wonderful Inventory poem which could be adapted to suit your current situation.

This form can also be adapted to study processes or make simple observations such as Christopher Smart’s For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry. Surely this is a form we could all attempt!

A list poem organizes an inventory of people, places, things, or ideas in a particular way for a specific effect. It does not need to include rhythm or rhyme, but as you play with your words and ideas either may emerge. I will leave you with one final inspiration about a list poem from Anne Waldman, Things That Go Away & Come Back Again.

Give your own list or inventory poem a try and remember to share it using the #JustWrite hashtag.