The Line Break

Tag: poem

The Punctuation Series: The Colon
The colon introduces new material: ta da! It can also introduce a list, a quotation, a summary or explanation. It’s direct in tone, and draws attention to what follows it. I love its bluntness, it’s honesty. So often, students ask me—

“Will I get in trouble for using this punctuation mark? Can I overuse this mark?”

“You don’t get in trouble for using a period,” I tell them. Today I told a student that they are getting in trouble because they are using a comma when they should be using colons, semicolons and em-dashes. Your sentences are more complex than that—which is a good thing, I reminded them. Time to play with more advanced punctuation, because your sentences are growing up from simple sentences.

I worry that college comp courses seek to iron out what is interesting in a student’s writing—the expressive fragments, the musical repetitions, the comma splices that are doing interesting work (check out Alice Notley, who regularly uses comma splices, ha). Learn the rules of grammar and punctuation so you can PLAY, y’all. It’s like learning the rules of the road and physics so you can then race a car or a bike—let’s learn the basics so that we can get to the FUN STUFF. The fundamentals matter, absolutely: but so does advanced play.

The colon, that sign of “ongoingness,” is Ammons’s characteristic punctuation mark
William Doreski

Consider how A.R. Ammons plays with the colon, to open the grammatical and poetic doors of the sentence:

Still by A.R. Ammons
```
I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in 
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled through transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!
```
Writing prompt: Use a colon in a piece of writing (poem or paragraph) to open into a new grammatical vista: use it in a surprising way: show us something new!
October 3, 2025

A.R. Ammons, Colon, creative-writing, editing, education, Grammar, poem, poetry, Punctuation Marks, The Punctuation Series, writing, writing-prompts, writing-tips
Islands of Connection #NationalPoetryMonth
Islands by Muriel Rukeyser
```
O for God’s sake
they are connected
underneath

They look at each other
across the glittering sea
some keep a low profile

Some are cliffs
The bathers think
islands are separate like them
```
Poetry reminds me how connected we are—even in our loneliness, our quietness. Even as we read a poem by ourselves, we are connected by language to others (the writer, other readers). In Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Islands,” the islands in the “glittering sea,” although they look physically separate, viewed distantly (objectively?) from above, are “connected / underneath.” The last couplet of the poem, “The bathers think / islands are separate like them” reveals a flaw in human looking and attention and analogy: that the bathers apply the same logic they apply to themselves, a logic of separateness and individuality, to the islands. The emphasis of the poem, an emphasis which is not a proof, returns us to connection and the deep feeling of the opening lines: “O for God’s sake / they are connected /underneath.”

Writing prompt: write a piece (poem or paragraph that could begin a story, an essay) where a physical or environmental aspect offers a point of connection—a landbridge, a beach, a cup of something warm, a wind, a puddle of tadpoles at the park. Extra points for writing a three-stanza poem, like Rukeyser.
April 23, 2025

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What is it that makes poetry good poetry? #NationalPoetryMonth

I’ve been reading Denise Levertov’s The Poet in the World (which features this essay), a book that was once an influential text in terms of teaching poetry in college and MFA programs. The other night, sleepy, just drifting off, I was reading the conclusion of a talk Levertov delivered in 1970 entitled “Great Possessions,” and I found myself waking up, because what she says in the following paragraphs is so true, so pertinent to now, and I feel like so few academics are brave enough to say what Levertov says, and how she says it.

The TL;DR: poetry is not at all about our safety or our comfort—but about our authentic living, our surviving as communities, about the quality of our life together on this fragile earth.

Even briefer TL;DR: you want to write good poetry? You have to risk (your time, your money, probably what you think of as your reputation).

Writing prompt: after reading the below excerpt from Levertov’s talks (I promise you, it is worth it—WORTH. IT. FOR. YOUR. SOUL!) write a poem where you RISK, where you SAY what you would not SAY to ANYONE ELSE. You are not SHOWING this POEM to ANYONE. You are WRITING IT. You are SAYING THE THING, WHATEVER IT IS. You are RISKING. You can burn the poem after, (safely!) in your sink or backyard firepit or something. You can keep it in your journal. You can put it under your pillow and sleep on it and let it seep into you and make you braver. But you will have risked and articulated and accomplished some incredibly important selfwork for you and your poetry. You need to ride that language edge out—you need to dare. If your nerve deny you, wrote Emily Dickinson, go above your nerve. Bonus points if you add a living flower or shrub or plant in your poem—name it. It will be your witness plant.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Since I believe there is a most intimate relationship between the quality of a person’s life, its abundance or sterility, his integrity, and the quality of his poetry, it is not irrelevant to say that, judging by some—not a few—I have met on my travels, the people who write banal poetry and, to almost the same extent, those who in desperation make up a fake surrealism, usually seem to be the same academics who talk a liberal line concerning education and politics (and often, as teachers, are genial and popular) but who, when it comes to some crucial issue, such as a student protest, will not commit themselves far enough to endanger their own security. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Is their poetry banal because their lives are banal, or vice versa? I think it works both ways. If these people committed themselves, took risks, and did not let themselves be dominated by the pursuit of “security,” their daily lives would be so changed, so infused with new experiences and with the new energy that often comes with them, that inevitably their poetry would change too (though obviously this would not ensure better poems unless they were gifted in the first place). But on the other hand, if they could manage to put themselves in a new, more dynamic, less suppressive relationship to their own inner lives and to the language, then they might discover their outer lives moving in a revolutionary way. So the process is dual, and can be approached from either direction.

And for myself—not without anguish, not without fear, not without the daily effort of rousing myself out of the inertia and energy—apping nostalgia that would cling to old ways, to that dying bird-in-hand that’s falsely supposed to be worth two free ones chirping in the bushes—I believe our survival demands revolution, both cultural and political.

If we are to survive the disasters that threaten, and survive our own struggle to make it new—a struggle I believe we have no choice but to commit ourselves to—we need tremendous transfusions of imaginative energy. If it is indeed revolution we are moving toward, we need life, and abundantly we need poems of the spirit, to inform us of the essential, to help us live the revolution. And if instead it be the Last Days—then we need to taste the dearest, freshest drops before we die-why bother with anything less than that, the essential?

Wallace Stevens wrote, “The poet feels abundantly the poetry of everything.” We must not go down into the pit we have dug ourselves by our inhumanity without some taste, however bitter, of that abundance. But if there is still hope of continued life on earth, of a new life, the experience of that abundance which poetry can bring us is a revolutionary stimulus. It can awaken us, from our sloth, even yet.
Denise Levertov, “Great Possessions”

April 11, 2025

blogging, books, creative-writing, Denise Levertov, poem, poems, poetry, prompt, writing, writing-prompts
April is National Poetry Month!
What better way to celebrate poetry than simply by reading poetry? You don’t have to spend money–not on books, or fancy notebooks or pens, or lattes in adorable coffee shops–although those are all delightful things. The fact is that a library offers you stacks of free poetry to read, and also that, as Eugenio Montale said, all you need to write poetry is a piece of paper and a pencil. Poetry is indeed for the people, and no fancy degree can buy you poetry.

Here is a favorite poem of mine to read–a love poem by the incredible poet Donika Kelly, originally published in Pleiades Magazine. As a writing prompt: try your hand at a love poem (or any kind of poem!) in the voice of a mythical creature or figure.

Love Poem: Centaur
```
Nothing approaches a field like me. Hard
gallop, hard chest—hooves and mane and flicking
tail. My love: I apprehend each flower,
each winged body, saturated in a light
that burnishes. I would make a burnishing
of you, by which I mean a field in flower,
by which I mean, a breaching—my hands
making an arrow of themselves, rooting
the loosened dirt. I would make for you
the barest of sounds, wing against wing,
there, at the point of articulation. Love,
I pound the earth for you. I pound the earth.
```
And happy National Poetry Month!
April 4, 2025

creative-writing, poem, poems, poetry, prompt, writing, writing-prompts
Baby waking up

Why do we want to write poems? What is behind this crazy impulse? The wish to connect with others, on a deep level, about inward things.

The pressure of emotion, which many people prefer to ignore, but which, for you, is the very substance of your work, your clay.

There’s play involved in the writing of poetry. Baby waking up. We have to be like babies waking up–trying every sound, every pitch, every word, however nonsensical. Later, be a revising adult. Babies build it up and knock it down again.

There’s the need to make sense of life behind the impulse to write.

And finally, we celebrate the world by writing about it, we observe it more closely, with more love. We are more fully alive and aware because of our efforts.
Jane Kenyon, “Everything I Know About Writing Poetry”

We are at midterms, writing papers, taking tests, submitting journal prompts, turning in many assignments, feeling overwhelmed. So, my writing prompt for you this week is to sit down and take all the pressure off yourself to do something great or achieve something. Instead, let your mind play. Let it wander. Let it use sound like colorful blocks, like a toddler builds and knocks over, shrieking with delight at their own creations and destructions. Begin with something you’ve noticed lately. Maybe the bradford pear or sugar maple is budding. Maybe you watched the black capped chickadees eat in the sweetgum branches out the dentist office window. Maybe the sky was grey and depressing this morning, but you were listening to your favorite song, and the contrast was pleasant. Journal for a little while, and see if you have the beginning of a poem or a story or an essay. Remember that the way to the universal is through the local. Remember to be a baby, waking up.

March 7, 2025

blogging, creative-writing, Jane Kenyon, poem, poems, poetry, prompt, writers, writing, writing-prompts
Art as Protest

I’m not going to lie…Kendrick Lamar has art as protest on my mind. Art as subversion, as layered as a rose. Art as showing up, as voice-giving. Art as documentation of harm. Art as a shout, a stomp, a crip walk. And then I saw this image of a policeman at a protest, taken by mid-20th century photograph Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), and oh, I knew we should write about it:

Street Demonstration (General Strike), 1934

Description: A uniformed policeman standing in front of a dense crowd of men holding protest signs in English and Japanese nearly fills the height of this vertical black and white photograph. The policeman either has a ruddy complexion or his face might be in shadow. He stands with his body facing us but he turns his head to our left in profile. His hands are crossed over his chest and one thumb is hooked into his jacket between two of the eight brass buttons down the front. A seven-pointed star reflects light on his chest and his flat-topped hat has a short, shiny brim angled down over his eyes. The jacket comes to his knees and his pants are lined with gold or other light material down the side. His feet are widely planted, and he wears dark shoes. The men in the crowd behind appear to be light skinned. Many wear button-down, collared shirts with ties tucked into long coats. Many also wear fedora hats and look off to our left, the same direction as the policeman. One man to our right wearing a floppy cap and glasses looks out at us with his hands in his jacket pockets. Some of the legible English words on the protest signs read “UNION,” “AMERICAN PRESS SLANDER against the,” and “JA.”

There is another photograph of a policeman, with even more posture in it, can you believe it:

Policeman on street, San Francisco, California , 1934

Writing Prompt: Using the above photographs as your inspiration, write a poem or a story where you focus on power and its postures, its poses, its uniforms–even if you very gently fold this examination into, say, a schoolyard where children are playing during recess. Consider how power and gesture work, also how the lens of a camera works: what it looks at, who it looks at and considers, the angle of its gaze, whether it looks from above or below or at equal-height with its subject, or from behind, or before. Who is in the foreground? The background? What kind of sounds can you hear? What scents of the city can you smell, or in the scene in the story/poem you are writing? Let your imagination go.

February 12, 2025

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Meditations in an Emergency

It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

Frank O’Hara, “Meditations in an Emergency”

Everything seems to be in emergency lately–our pets need us during a thunderstorm, our children need us after difficult school days, our bodies react to the stress around us with headaches and pain, with illness. Maybe the emergency is a relationship in crisis, as it seems to be (at least partly, if not centrally) for the speaker in Frank O’Hara’s poem “Meditations in an Emergency”–and surely nothing is more relatable than the emergency of heartbreak and wanting to be loved, to be desired and wanted. Near the opening of the poem, O’Hara writes:

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Frank O’Hara, “Meditations in an Emergency”

Writing is one way we can release some of the tension and the anxiety from our bodies. The title of O’Hara’s poem (“Meditations…”) reminds us of the link between writing, thinking, and meditating–musing, pausing, wondering, making space for our minds to breathe.

What has felt to you like an emergency lately? Is it your sleep, or taking care of your own needs (nutrition, getting outside, exercise)? Your job, or your pile of assignments due? Not having time for friends? Or is it a larger concern, like the climate crisis, or the current governmental chaos and ineptitude, and the threat of ICE raids to our educational spaces? Of emergencies there are an abundance of choices.

Writing Prompt: Read O’Hara’s poem, and write your own “Meditations in an Emergency,” allowing yourself the space and time to wonder and wander, as O’Hara does. Do not hold yourself to a standard of perfection, but let yourself journal and muse. Remember that the word meditation comes from the Latin for to remedy (medēri), and that you are writing your way into healing by naming, first of all, what the emergency is.

February 7, 2025

American Poetry, blogging, creative-writing, Frank O’Hara, meditation, poem, poems, poetry, prompt, writing, writing prompt, writing-prompts
The Work of Attention

What is the work of attention? How do we train ourselves to attend to the world around us? Is attention simply looking? Listening? Smelling? Tasting? Stilling ourselves and feeling our breath, the ground under us, the points of connection between our bodies and the ground, the chair we sit on? Is attention slowing ourselves, pausing, observing? The act of attention, the habit of attention is the foundation of good writing–it is the meat, the drink, the daily bread. Writers are often people watchers, world watchers–we love to walk, to take notes. We love to look up at the pines, to watch the birds. Practice attention, practice listening. “Writers notice what they notice,” says Verlyn Klinkenborg.

“[…] keep a journal in which [you] write, very briefly, six things [you see] each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things.”
Linda Gregg, The Art of Finding

Your prompt this week is to start keeping a notebook of attention, where you write down six ordinary things you notice every day. That’s it. And here is a longer explanation of where the prompt originates, from the poet Linda Gregg:

I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world. They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes. To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things. This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them. At the beginning, they typically “see” things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all. Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become “old men with snow on their shoulders,” or the lake looks like a “giant eye.” The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness. And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck. But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeing—and the physical world pours in. Their journals fill up with lovely things like, “the mirror with nothing reflected in it.” This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not looking—just as she must write when she is not writing. To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing. The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human.

January 31, 2025

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To Repair (on Self Kindness)
There are so many ways we think to make ourselves better in the New Year: we think about making our diets better, our bodies; we start new journals, new books, new podcasts; maybe we start a new hobby, a class, a new job. It is the turn of the year, and though it is cold and the ground is buried and the bulbs wait for warmer weather, we turn towards the light and newness.

I find myself also thinking about the verb repair–so many things are in need of fixing, and in need of our repairing attention–ourselves included. So I turned back to the dictionary, our friend for definitions and meanings and history of language, to see where the verb repair comes from:

Middle English, from Anglo-French repairer to go back, return from Late Latin repatriare to go home again, from Latin re- + patria native country

Yes, I’m thrilled by these meanings, and what they bring to the meaning of repair, and what it means to repair even something small–to fix a child’s jammed coat zipper, to put a spare tire on the car, to apologize to a friend you hurt. And this brings us to a poem about karmic repair by Richard Brautigan, a poet of the 1960s counterculture, closely following the Beat poets (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Diane Di Prima, and gang):
```
Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4        by Richard Brautigan

1. Get enough food to eat,
        and eat it.
2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
        and sleep there.
3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
    until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
        and listen to it.
4.
```
Your writing prompt this week is to write your own Karma Repair Kit, as a numbered list (or a paragraph, if you’d rather). Perhaps leave one numbered section blank, and spend some time imagining what needs to really go there.

What do you need to repair, to go back, to go home again to yourself?
January 15, 2025

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We Manage Most When We Manage Small
It is a time of seasonal overwhelm–the light growing shorter and days chiller, the end of semester and final grades nearing, the holidays approaching–and we each balance and navigate our different caregiving responsibilities while trying to also, somehow, care for ourselves.

I think of the below, beautiful poem by the late poet Linda Gregg at times like these. Inspired by Gregg’s title, I would like to recommend that you try your hand at writing a small piece of writing this week, sometimes called micro, or flash, or simply a short form (or small poem). For a poem, keep it under ten lines, or several sentences if a prose poem. See what you can do inside a small space; see how you can manage most when you manage small; see how generous a space a small form can be.

And now for Linda Gregg:

We Manage Most When We Manage Small
```
What things are steadfast? Not the birds.
Not the bride and groom who hurry
in their brevity to reach one another.
The stars do not blow away as we do.
The heavenly things ignite and freeze.
But not as my hair falls before you.
Fragile and momentary, we continue.
Fearing madness in all things huge
and their requiring. Managing as thin light
on water. Managing only greetings
and farewells. We love a little, as the mice
huddle, as the goat leans against my hand.
As the lovers quickening, riding time.
Making safety in the moment. This touching
home goes far. This fishing in the air.
```
November 15, 2024

art, blogging, books, creative-writing, poem, poetry, prompt, writing, writing-prompts