2026 National Poetry Month, Day 26 Constraint-Poetry
Talk The Poetry Collective
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1DebiCates
Choices. Even before you start:
NPM 2026, Day 26 Constraint-Poetry
Sometimes poets just need a boost, a game, some contsraint to help get beyond the blank page (or selecting the just right pencil). Here are some types of constraints. In fact, you could say all the well known forms are constraints (sonnet, villanelle, ode, etc). These are a few of other types.
Anagrammatic
A form that either each line or each verse is an anagram of all other lines or verses in the poem.
Cento
A cento is a poetical work wholly composed of verses or passages taken from other authors. The tradition goes back to the early 3rd or 4th century AD with the Greeks and Romans.
Cut-up technique
Literally cutting existing lines of text, could be a newspaper, for example, and pasting into a poem. Similar to black-out technique, where a text page is blacked out, except selected words to create an original poem.
Ekphrastic
A poem that describes a work of visual art, or an object like a vase or urn!
Found poetry
Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them, a literary equivalent of a collage.
Google Cento
Begin with a specific search term in Google, then compose lines of poetry from only text in results of the search.
Vocabularyclept
A vocabularyclept poem is a poem which is formed by taking the words of an existing poem and rearranging them into a new work of literature.
If none of that appeals to you, if you are still stuck, here is a single yellow pencil on eBay you can buy for $2,000, from Colorado. That might get the creative fires burning.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/313218857858
NPM 2026, Day 26 Constraint-Poetry
Sometimes poets just need a boost, a game, some contsraint to help get beyond the blank page (or selecting the just right pencil). Here are some types of constraints. In fact, you could say all the well known forms are constraints (sonnet, villanelle, ode, etc). These are a few of other types.
Anagrammatic
A form that either each line or each verse is an anagram of all other lines or verses in the poem.
Cento
A cento is a poetical work wholly composed of verses or passages taken from other authors. The tradition goes back to the early 3rd or 4th century AD with the Greeks and Romans.
Cut-up technique
Literally cutting existing lines of text, could be a newspaper, for example, and pasting into a poem. Similar to black-out technique, where a text page is blacked out, except selected words to create an original poem.
Ekphrastic
A poem that describes a work of visual art, or an object like a vase or urn!
Found poetry
Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them, a literary equivalent of a collage.
Google Cento
Begin with a specific search term in Google, then compose lines of poetry from only text in results of the search.
Vocabularyclept
A vocabularyclept poem is a poem which is formed by taking the words of an existing poem and rearranging them into a new work of literature.
If none of that appeals to you, if you are still stuck, here is a single yellow pencil on eBay you can buy for $2,000, from Colorado. That might get the creative fires burning.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/313218857858
2hamlet61
I did an experiment!
I chose a form the ekphrastic and wrote one just now!
Forgive me if it is not refined, but I wanted to participate in the moment. I actually saw it in El Prado in Madrid.
--Matt
Guernica
Spain
Prado
Picasso
Wall length war
In full color black and white
Bulls and death
And screaming faces
Echoes of violence
Violently expressed
Watered down by Hemingway
Safely put on canvas
Kneeling in its presence
Safer than having been there
27 April 2026
I chose a form the ekphrastic and wrote one just now!
Forgive me if it is not refined, but I wanted to participate in the moment. I actually saw it in El Prado in Madrid.
--Matt
Guernica
Spain
Prado
Picasso
Wall length war
In full color black and white
Bulls and death
And screaming faces
Echoes of violence
Violently expressed
Watered down by Hemingway
Safely put on canvas
Kneeling in its presence
Safer than having been there
27 April 2026
3DebiCates
>2 hamlet61: I bet that was something, Matt. I've only seen photos of it. To stand--or kneel--in front of it would be a 1000X experience.
4DebiCates
I tried two from above.
Google Centos
I googled "tarot daily card." Took passages from the cards on the first four sites. The cards were (in order) Four of Swords, Justice, reversed Eight of Wands, The Hermit.
This is a time of deep rest,
begin to address your own unjust actions
things are moving too slowly
from the demands of the world.
Meh. I'm sure some other search could result in something much better, although there might be a spooky message there for me now that I think of it.
Ekphrastic
This one pleased me much more. Love for this artist went a long way toward the passion I found I wanted to express.
"Dreams of a new country" 4' X 6' painting by Lahib Jaddo, Lubbock, Texas 1992
Staring fearlessly, she awakes on a desert floor
dressed in a shroud.
Dreams have overtaken her, for there are no such
rich purple flowers here.
Maybe in Iraq.
Maybe in Lebanon.
The carpet under her ripples, a flying one. No,
not Persian. Geometric. Native American,
a gray history of women's work.
She has landed in the Staked Plains,
so gently,
to us and alone.
She remains calm, so calm.
The painting is big, so big
those purple flowers go on and on
until they rise up as mountains.
ETA:
I just took the last 2 lines out. It was a tired sentiment. Better to leave the poem at the mountains seen in the painting, allow the reader to feel what they might feel, feelings are never tired.
Jaddo interview and biography: https://themarkaz.org/lahib-jaddo-an-iraqi-artist-in-the-diaspora/
Google Centos
I googled "tarot daily card." Took passages from the cards on the first four sites. The cards were (in order) Four of Swords, Justice, reversed Eight of Wands, The Hermit.
This is a time of deep rest,
begin to address your own unjust actions
things are moving too slowly
from the demands of the world.
Meh. I'm sure some other search could result in something much better, although there might be a spooky message there for me now that I think of it.
Ekphrastic
This one pleased me much more. Love for this artist went a long way toward the passion I found I wanted to express.
"Dreams of a new country" 4' X 6' painting by Lahib Jaddo, Lubbock, Texas 1992
Staring fearlessly, she awakes on a desert floor
dressed in a shroud.
Dreams have overtaken her, for there are no such
rich purple flowers here.
Maybe in Iraq.
Maybe in Lebanon.
The carpet under her ripples, a flying one. No,
not Persian. Geometric. Native American,
a gray history of women's work.
She has landed in the Staked Plains,
so gently,
to us and alone.
She remains calm, so calm.
The painting is big, so big
those purple flowers go on and on
until they rise up as mountains.
ETA:
I just took the last 2 lines out. It was a tired sentiment. Better to leave the poem at the mountains seen in the painting, allow the reader to feel what they might feel, feelings are never tired.
Jaddo interview and biography: https://themarkaz.org/lahib-jaddo-an-iraqi-artist-in-the-diaspora/
6DebiCates
>5 hamlet61: Ah, that makes a very interesting contrast, Matt. Jaddo is the mirror of Ophelia.
Jaddo has amazing resilience and boldness, the thing I admire in her. Her life, until she arrived in Texas, was one of fleeing violence. Twice from Iraq under two regimes, and once from Lebanon at the start of the civil war.
i can't help but wonder what she might have also faced in Texas, in a very conservative town. Though, she made a life: married, had children, is a professor at Texas Tech. Her later work has gotten sadder, less ambitious, more nostalgic it seems to me. I can understand that, making the best life you can but as a fish out of water (circling back to the Ophelia reference).
Jaddo has amazing resilience and boldness, the thing I admire in her. Her life, until she arrived in Texas, was one of fleeing violence. Twice from Iraq under two regimes, and once from Lebanon at the start of the civil war.
i can't help but wonder what she might have also faced in Texas, in a very conservative town. Though, she made a life: married, had children, is a professor at Texas Tech. Her later work has gotten sadder, less ambitious, more nostalgic it seems to me. I can understand that, making the best life you can but as a fish out of water (circling back to the Ophelia reference).
