2022 Prompt a Poem Submissions | U-M LSA Institute for the Humanities

April 27 Prompt As we near the end of National Poetry Month, we have a revision exercise brought to us by the poet Jon Holland. Step 1: Find 4-6 of your unfinished poems that are centered around the same subject.Define “unfinished” however you wish. Sometimes I feel like “finished” means roughly the same thing as “published” but I often wonder if anything is ever really done. Alexander Pope and Walt Whitman focused themselves on overhauling and tinkering with revisions and republishing their larger works inThe DunciadandLeaves of Grassfor huge chunks of their careers, which suggests that “published” and “finished” aren’t synonymous at all. Obviously it was a different time and Google and first publisher rights were slightly different in the 18thand 19thcenturies. Robert Frost published“In White” in 1912 and a better version titled “Design” in 1936which has always fascinated me. Only you know when something’s finished, so go with your gut. You just want several poems based around the sa...