Our daily resource is the YouTube channel of Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. Here, you can check out more than 100 videos of poetry readings, lectures, and discussions. There’s much to explore!

Finally, here’s our prompt for the day, once again taken from our archives and, as always, optional. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem in which the word choice follows the words/order of the alphabet. You could write a very strict abecedarian poem, in which there are twenty-six words in alphabetical order, or you could write one in which each line begins with a word that follows the order of the alphabet. This is a prompt that lends itself well to a certain playfulness. Need some examples? Try this poem by Jessica Greenbaum, this one by Howard Nemerov or this one by John Bosworth.

When I began writing?

A friend called and asked me, the other day, "We were besties in college, right?'
'But', she continued, 'how come I never knew about your writing?'
College days were fun; we giggled about nothing and everything,
dressed up in skirts and sat cross-legged, showing off our waxed legs.
Eager to gain admission into the Sorority club.
Fearful of being labeled as 'dull' or construed as 'unfashionable',
girls, like me, probably, didn't talk about what we truly enjoyed doing.
Heaven forbid, if we did, it might have been hell.
I don't remember much of those days.
Just that I looked forward to my walk from college at the end of the day-
Keen to be on my own;
Lingering for longer than required, watching-
Men and women rushing to catch the bus home;
Newspaper stands with the Mid-day paper dangling;
Office-goers stopping by, picking a copy for the latest gossip;
Policemen at traffic signals, hands waving, whistle blowing 
Quelling potential fights between drivers of two-wheelers,
Rickshaws and cycles, attempting to squeeze in between
Sedans, jeeps, buses and trucks.
There was a silence I felt amidst the noise around
Unfound even in an empty classroom;
Vital to my being;  giving wings to my imagination.
Writing must have been what I did then, in my head; walking as if I were in a
Xyst, not a crowded street.
'You or anyone else couldn't have known," I replied. 'And if you did, you'd call me 
Zany,' I thought, but did not say.

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