Poets & Writers
Published on Poets & Writers (https://www.pw.org)

Home > Not That, But This

Not That, But This [1]

Poetry [2]
4.4.23

“What I adore is not horses, with their modern / domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore / is a bug that lives only one day,” writes Natalie Shapero in her poem “Not Horses,” [3] published in the November 2013 issue of Poetry magazine. Shapero redirects the reader from horses to the short lifespan of a bug within the first few lines of the poem and in doing so creates a humorous tension between the title and the body of the poem that adds character to the unique speaker. This week write a poem that moves quickly from one subject to the next. Consider how your mind shifts from one thought to another and carry that tone forward into the poem.


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/not_that_but_this

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/not_that_but_this [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/poetry [3] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56576/not-horses