Tag: poems

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

blogging, books, creative-writing, poem, poems, poetry, prompt, writing, writing-prompts
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
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
Have You Heard the Good News? Writing With Headlines…
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.”

William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”

Writing inspiration is all around us–the weather, our mood, something someone said to us on a train or at school, a line from a television show. Writers often find themselves responding to headlines in real-time, because, if you haven’t noticed, people are so, so interesting. Life is brimming with wildness, with beauty, with ODDITY. I remember when I was younger, and the “Human Interest” section of the newspaper was my favorite section, but the older you become you see that the whole newspaper is the human interest section. There’s nothing more delightful than something being interesting, after all, which is a central element of Cleopatra’s beauty and attraction in Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra, her “infinite variety” remarked upon with wonder.

So here, then, are some interesting headlines I’ve pulled for you to use as inspiration for your own poem or story or essay:
Hopefully you will have time to vote and time to rest and even time to write this week!
November 4, 2024

books, creative-writing, headline, poems, poetry, prompt, writing, writing-prompts
Writing Letters to Each Other
I am thinking about mailboxes. Penpals. Letter writing. Stamps. Stickers. Waiting for something good to come in the mail. I’m also thinking about writers who acknowledge the act of writing in their work. How good it is to hear from someone we like, love, miss. A text from a friend. A voice message.

Here is a poem that imagines a letter with a single word that somehow conveys the whole entire sense of summer and a relationship.

Prompt: If you could send a word to someone in an envelope to remind them the way the speaker in the poem wants to remind their reader of a whole summer, what would it be? Now write a poem titled that word that also includes that word.

Hummingbird by Raymond Carver
```
                  for Tess

Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird,”
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.
```
October 23, 2024

creative-writing, letter, penpal, poems, poet, poetry, prompt, Raymond Carver, writing, writing prompt, writing-prompts
No Workshop 10/18 and a Floating Prompt with Lorine Niedecker
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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October 14, 2024

books, creative-writing, poems, poetry, prompt, workshops, writing, writing-prompts, writing-workshop
Of Presidents and Figurative Language
Ordinary language slips so easily into figurative language–or language that is not literal, but something else, like metaphor. For example, if you write about a spider in your kitchen, it can easily represent something else in your life: an unpleasant present, a bother, a challenge you are facing. Or, perhaps the spider stands in as a friendly presence, a listening presence. Figurative language hovers always near our everyday language.

Then again we have W.S. Merwin’s poem “Presidents,” a poem that is not at all about literal presidents, despite its literal-sounding title. Instead, Merwin does something quite dramatic with Allegory, which is when abstract concepts become characters, like Truth climbing out of her well, or Victory has wings. In Merwin’s poem, we have a President of Shame, a President of Lies, the Kingdom of Grief, Silence the Messenger, and Silence the Climber.

The dictionary definition of Allegory is “the expression of truths or generalizations about human existence by means of symbolic fictional figures and their actions” (Merriam-Webster).

Read the following poem and then try your hand at this week’s writing prompt!

Presidents by W.S. Merwin
```
The president of shame has his own flag
the president of lies quotes the voice
of God
at last counted
the president of loyalty recommends
blindness to the blind
oh oh
applause like the heels of the hanged
he walks on eyes
until they break
then he rides
there is no president of grief
it is a kingdom
ancient absolute with no colors
its rule is never seen
prayers look for him
also empty flags like skins
silence the messenger runs through the vast lands
with a black mouth
open
silence the climber falls from the cliffs
with a black mouth like
a call
there is only one subject
but he is repeated
tirelessly
```
Writing Prompt:

Write your own allegory, beginning either with a “The president of ___” line as Merwin does, or choosing your own kingdom “the kingdom of ___” to write about, or completely inventing your own allegory.

An allegory can be about anything, which is the best part…
- The President of Worry [About My Midterm Math Grade/Essay Grade]
- The Kingdom of the Missing Pepsi Vending Machines
- The President of the Far Parking Lot
- The Kingdom of the Campus Library
- The President of Sadness
October 7, 2024

allegory, creative-writing, figurative language, literature, poems, poetry, prompt, writing, writing-prompts
The Art of Poetry or Ars Poeticas
Ars Poeticas are poems with an ancient history, going back to the Roman poet Horace, that explain “the art of poetry.” They can do so in many ways. In contemporary poetry, the tend to describe something while also confessing to describing poetry: what poetry does, what the experience of reading poetry is like, what the experience of writing poetry, or the work of writing poetry, or the existence of poetry is like. In some ways, ars poeticas are like watching a film documentary on documentary making. It’s all so meta.

The below ars poetica by Aracelis Girmay describes poems as material evidence of living–an ephemeral trace of our lives, our slow movement–by using the image of a little snail and its trail. Notice that the language is that of a blessing, “may”:

Ars Poetica Aracelis Girmay
```
May the poems be
the little snail’s trail.

Everywhere I go,
every inch: quiet record

of the foot’s silver prayer.
             I lived once.
             Thank you. 
             It was here.
```
Here is another small poem by Jane Kenyon, which I think of as an Anti-Ars Poetica, as it is about considering the process of not writing:

Not Writing
```
A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs

at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.
```
There is something about not being able to write that does feel like a wasp unable to enter its own house–that feels like you unable to enter your own house, that feels so ineffective. If writing feels like evidence that you have lived, as Girmay writes, then not writing can feel like disappearing, like fading, like uselessness. This is why so many of us journal, or have a daily writing practice, even if its just in our notes app or our daily planner, or on post-it notes on our fridge or desk–we need to check in with ourselves, to keep up an ordinary conversation of existence. Writing and self-expression are a basic human need–I might argue as basic as showering and eating and going for a walk, petting an animal.

Try your own hand at an Ars Poetica this week.

Everywhere I go,
every inch: quiet record

Thank you.
September 23, 2024

ars poetica, creative-writing, form, poem, poems, poetry, prompt, writing, writing-prompts