Posts Tagged ‘writing prompt’

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Poetry Challenge 36

December 28, 2009

This time of year, we gather with family, seeking the continuity that contact brings.  For some, this is a time to return to the nourishing environment we grew up with.  For others, a time to test how far we’ve come from the struggles of adolescence.  And every family has its stories–the comic, the tragic, the darkly mysterious.

So here’s  a variation on a challenge I often give my basic writing class as a journal prompt:

Write about a story that’s told in your family.  Who tells it?  When?  What else is going on in the room–or below the surface?  Start with a single detail of the moment of telling, then run with it from there.   Include food.

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Poetry Challenge 35

December 22, 2009

In honor of the turning of the year–past the solstice and heading for a new year and new decade, go back to something you wrote long ago and look at it again.  Find something you like about it and give it a fresh start–either rewriting from the seed of the old material,  or just dusting it off and reading it with new eyes, as my old friend Larry Laraby did with this poem:

The Light Waits (a winter solstice poem)

The inexorable movement of darkness
Slow accumulation of night
We gather the multitude of dark hours
And cast them to the sun
Light waits behind the closed
Doors of winter
Light that waits to dance
That waits to sing
The sun’s day
Solstice
In that immense moment
The earth stops its turning
And we celebrate
The retreating night.

(Thanks, Larry!)

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A Response from Glow:

“At dawn she went to the ridge to wait.”

For years, I have wondered
why she waited
and for what?
Did her wait turn fruitful?
Did she come, did the letter arrive, was the child born?
The news arrive? The medicine turn up? The mystery solved?

There is a drawing,
the title is the mystery phrase:
at dawn she went to the ridge to wait.
butch dyke in a woman’s cloak
a stout walking stick held before her
a tiny grassland village hunched on the ridge
folded into the valley below her.

For me the mystery is double.
I both wrote the title and drew the drawing.
I do not know what either mean.
Only that I, too, will eventually recognize
the ridge in the drawing
it will manifest into reality some dawn
I will grasp my sturdy walking stick
climb up the hill in the early twilight
and wait.

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Poetry Challenge 34

December 17, 2009

Busy days. Not much

time to write long poems. Darkest

days.  So write Haiku.

+

OK.  You can do

better than that one!  Write one

you like.  Post it here.

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Poetry Challenge 33

December 5, 2009

Though we complain about it, there’s a sweetness to the dark time.  It’s as if our adult outer shell, tired of battling with slick roads, doing chores in the dark, numb fingers, and the sluggishness of moving about with layers of down, fleece, wool and whatever else we can use to keep the cold away from our skin, retreats for while in quiet moments and the child within returns.  For me, it’s an excess of Nutcrackers–I see the ballet two or three times a season for the way it brings me into the family the dancers create–or chocolates, or pies.  Sometimes, it’s the moment I take each morning to run my hand under the manes of the horses, lean in to their thick coats and breathe in their rich smell.

So, what  small thing or things do you do to keep the inner self energized during the cold season?  What do you look forward to that’s not part of the revved-up Christmas industry, but comes from the things all around you?

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Poetry Challenge 32

November 8, 2009

Darker mornings now, the moon hovering above the hills like a scoop of snow waiting to tip and spill down on us.

Write about anticipation–what it’s like to wait, not knowing how the waited-for moment will turn out.  Write about what you do in the meantime.  What objects occupy your attention during the wait?  How do you move through the time?

Post your poem as a comment and I’ll post it here.

—————

Here’s one from biker poet Tim (AKA Mr Murphrey):

Stealing Pynchon

I picked him up from where he lay
because he needed me;
small and unassuming,
curled and packed so tightly
with paranoia.
I picked him up because he needed help
talking over people’s heads
from the desk where I found him
laying prone and alone.
Do I believe there are mysteries hidden
in symbols and allusions,
or patterns behind the rainbow of medications
that I imagine he takes, or is given,
in small dose cups?
I picked him up because I wanted to believe
that words weave just so,
and that there is more to everything
than nothing.
I put him back where I found him, bound,
and continued to rifle through
the desk, with leather gloves and flashlight,
because I didn’t understand a damned word
he was saying.

———

And one from Glow:

my nerves shiver
waiting for the nanosecond
when the coating of pure rosin
ridging the horsehair of the bow
twinges the golden E string
of the fiddle
a note pure as cantaloup dawn
sweet like spruce sap
piercing like twenty below
shimmers and hums
in the spaces among us
can there be a more perfect note
than an F on a golden E?
We must wait to see if there is more.

———————————————-

And this from Mikey, visiting New York, found in some graffiti on a wall.  He’s looking for the source.  Does anyone know?

Found poem on anticipation:

On the beaches of hesitation
Bleach the bones of millions
Who

Upon the dawn of victory
Sat and waited
And while waiting

Perished.

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Poetry Challenge 31

October 19, 2009

Honoring small things.

Glow, a frequent contributor to the poetry challenge, writes that her beloved kitty, Toklas, died yesterday.

So, write about something so small that we might overlook it, but that forms a kind of glue in daily life–the purr of a cat, the sound of a furnace in the background, the feel of a good writing pen, the taste of well-brewed coffee.  Write without sentimentality, but give the small thing its due, in honor of a yellow cat.

——————————————————–

Here’s Glow’s poem:

 

at home,
the river did not run wild
but flowed bounded
red dirt farms on one side
tame oak forests on the other
every day for fourteen years
I walked to the river
sat on the Rock and watched it pass
swam in summer with catfish
long as my arms
tempted lightning during storms
cried, raged, bathed, napped,
laughed, combed my hair,
made love, called kitties and goats and dogs,
giggled at puppies learning to swim,
did ritual, chatted with the neighbors,
listened to crickets, frogs, mockingbirds,
unseen rustlers in the brush,
hiked, found arrowheads,
picked mushrooms, built fires,
scratched chiggers, swatted bugs,
mapped the edges of the land,
but mostly just sat, watched, endured
daily tedium
released by the incessant brown water
just like hundreds of souls before me
who lived along the river
lulled by the flow of water
to carry on the duties of life and death

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Poetry Challenge 30

September 29, 2009

A Birthday Poem

It’s always a challenge to write an occasional poem without getting totally sappy.  So take the challenge–write about an event or occasion: birthday, wedding, farewell to travelers, etc.–without getting, well, mushy.  This works for me as an exercise in negative space–writing about what surrounds the occasion, such as details, objects, images, rather than about the occasion itself.

I’ll post my attempt at this tomorrow.  Send me yours.

(Happy Birthday, Ira)

————————————-

Here’s a poem in response to the prompt–for all September birthdays.  There seem to be a cluster of them. (By the way, I’m not sure what happens to the formatting of these poems when I place them in a post.  I’ll keep working on that! For now, I’ll try to trick the formatting with extra periods.)

.

The Way the Season Goes Sometimes:

.

a flock of yellow warblers

fills a willow just as a few commas

of yellow leaves appear;

then yellow in the birches,

on the hearts of zucchini leaves,

in the ring of petals of a late sunflower,

or an agate shaped tomato.

.

Then the sky: yellow to orange

to deep rose, the dusky smudge

of clouds on the horizon, above white

peaks, the jig-saw at the edge

of our sight.

.

We should have known. The season

teeters on brilliance; noon

gleams with light, the blue

stretch of sky, the tease–near

warmth–of September.

.

In our hurry, these days,

to stack wood, put away

the hose, eat all the lettuce

we can, something falls

from a pocket, or flutters

from a car door to the ground.

A few white flakes zig-zag

down. The things we drop

get buried in forgetful fluff

for months to come, wait

.

for our return,

shaking off the journey

through winter,

to emerge.

——————————————————-

And this from Claire:

30

A vegan sheet cake cooked with love
before I even knew you
braces, bowl cut, tie-dyed shirt
a photo that didn’t capture the beauty of the moment

the cook since married and gone
mother of two, distant and unknowable
those singing to you, now scattered across the country.
It is the last day of September and I’m in California
watching the fog push up against the hills
and reveling in the last days of summer.
But superimposed on the San Francisco sun is an eastern fall
and despite it all my mouth fills with the memory of melted wax on frosting.

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Poetry Challenge 29

September 13, 2009

Hidden Things

Yesterday, among the zucchini leaves, I found a large zuke, as long as my forearm, lying in the dirt under a yellowing leaf.  It had been there a while.  There were pale scallop-edged patches where voles had gnawed through the skin.  I had no idea it was there, and it felt like discovering a mysterious treasure.

So, write about something that has been hidden, but emerges–an object, a feeling, a person.

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Poetry Challenge 28

August 28, 2009

Today, walking to a meeting on campus, I heard a ruckus of cranes, but looked up and saw only blue sky.  I waited, and one V after another crested the hill.  I hollered, “Wrong way!  Go back!” as if that could stem the inevitable pull of dwindling light and creeping chill that is drawing them south.  As I walked by each building on campus, I saw small groups of people standing there, looking up, awed by the force of their collective calls, and each longing to reverse the day and leap back through time to spring.

So write about a sound you’ve heard that let you know something was about to change.  Or about a good-bye that was somehow mixed with a natural event,  such as the southern migration of sandhill cranes.

——————————

This is from Cast of Thousands by way of Glow:

the night she left me
August fireflies lay in the dew
too cold and heavy to fly,
scattered like sparks from a fire
in the damp grass.
they lay glowing,
pulsing with light,
piteously sending love signals
to each other
but none could fly.
i assume their tiny insect hearts swelled
their fiery fly emotions surged
hopelessly mired
in wet, chill desire.
i watched her headlights
fill the night, then vanish
as she turned the corner.
the dark rolled around me
while tiny desperate lights
blinked and blinked and blinked.

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Poetry Challenge 27

August 18, 2009

Bigger on the Inside than on the Outside

In the series Dr. Who, the Tardis, basically an old fashioned phone booth, contains all The Doctor needs for space travel, and is bigger on the inside than on the outside.  I’ve been thinking of this phenomenon with the death of a friend, Roy Bird, who was large on the outside, but whose heart, mind, and spirit were far larger–truly bigger on the inside!   And today, a friend, a talented teacher, expressed a sense of dread at the coming semester–something her students will never guess.  And think of all those seeds we planted in the spring–now huge zucchini or tomato plants–they must have been bigger on the inside.

So what else is bigger on the inside than on the outside?  What “stuff”–objects, gestures, sounds, smells, colors, textures, etc. indicate this?   Post your poem or reflections as a comment, and I’ll add it to this post.

——————-

Here’s a poem from Fiddlesticks the Defenestrator:

I loose the chickens from their coop,
They scamper hither and yon.
Strutting up and down the yard,
To welcome back the dawn.

A little boy comes running
Chasing chickens to and fro.
Youthful energy knows no bounds
Till children start to grow.

The energy inside this boy
Is more than one expects.
He’s everywhere at once
Much like flying winged insects.

His older sister sits nearby;
She’s six–a two-year gap.
She sits quite still as one small chick
Climbs up into her lap.

A heart that couldn’t ever seem
To fit in one small child
Guides the hand to stroke the head
Of the chicken, sitting, mild.

A boy and girl who couldn’t stand
Much over three feet tall,
With insides greater than one could see
If he’s paying attention at all.

—————————————-

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