So kind of a dead month for the October poetry theme, huh? After rolling through various themes with a few submissions each, October featured a grand total of two submissions for the charity theme. Maybe I’ll just have to start spamming all of your message boards with poetry requests!

Or maybe the theme just wasn’t all that interesting, which is understandable, considering the last time we featured a non-sins/virtues theme was way back in June. (I agree, the charity theme was a bit lackluster, but do yourself a favor and go back and read through some of those previous sins/virtues poems from our writers. There were a lot of fascinating submissions.)

The good news is that the 14-theme series of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues is over. Now, we can all get back to writing about random, non-philosophical themes. In fact, why don’t we revert back to our old creative engine, Galumphing? Maybe that will flush the system with revived creative insight.

Let’s take a step back to the beginning of June, when I introduced a chart with three categories of nouns; a person, a place, and an object. For those who have never seen this or don’t remember, think of a 3-digit number in your head. Each digit corresponds to a column in the chart, left-to-right. Those three nouns are your theme. They must all be present in some way in your poem.

This month, I’m feeling a theme steeped in symbolic depth.

Theme: 6-1-0, a soldier, a lake, and glass

Structure: Free verse

I think this combination has a lot of potential, so I’m excited to see how your mind plays with it. Use the free verse structure to your advantage; let it carry your thoughts away to a place of intellectual freedom. As always, send submissions to redstringpapercuts@gmail.com.

Steve D