The Line Break

It has been a rainy, flood, hurricane-filled time these past few weeks, so while your workshop leader is travelling to Youngstown LitFest this week and we won’t be having workshop this Friday (10/18), I will be leaving you with the warm recommendation to read Lorine Niedecker’s incredible poem “Paean to Place” which includes the lines:

O my floating life
Do not save love
      for things
            Throw things
to the flood

ruined
by the flood

And of course, a few writing prompt suggestions to start your own writing flowing:

• Write your own paean (a song of praise) to place, to where you grew up, to your history with water? maybe a specific memory of water?
• Write two columns: in one, a list of things you have lost. In the other: a list of things you have recovered or found or saved. Use the two lists to generate a new piece of writing, poem or prose.
• Write a piece that contains a vocative “O” as in “O my floating life” or “O Pioneers” or “O Brother Where Art Thou.”
• Write a piece where something is ruined. Or where you think something is ruined. What happens?
• Write your own flood story, or write about a time of past disaster. Write about what came after.

See you next week, writers!

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