Writing Practice Blog

Writing Prompts: Food (#1)

7/2/2020

Food is a great prompt. We have a complicated relationship to it, it represents culture, there are 'rules' around food based on where you live -- ever try to put ketchup on a Chicago hotdog? And in some cases, we've lost knowledge of where our food comes from. That's why we'll address food a few different times at PoetryBones -- Here's #1.

First Mentor Poem

July
BY CRISTIN O’KEEFE APTOWICZ

The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed greedily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we’d dump hot espresso on it
just to watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we’d suck off our fingers,
the eggs we’d watch get beaten
’til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melted
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other’s plate, saying,
No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.

Copyright © 2013 by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. “July” originally appeared in The Year of No Mistakes (Write Bloody Publishing, 2013). Source: https://poets.org/poem/july

Poem Prompt #1

How good was it? Write a poem about feel-good food, about a special meal, about eating, about preparing or cooking. Compare the look (or taste or smell) of foods to other things.

Second Mentor Poem

My dad & sardines
BY TOI DERRICOTTE

my dad's going to give me a self
back.
i've made an altar called
The Altar for Healing the Father & Child,
& asked him what i could do
for him so he would
do nice for me. he said i should stop
saying bad things about him &, since
i've said just about everything bad
i can think of &, since . . . well,
no, i change my
mind, i can't promise
him that. but even healing is
negotiable, so, if he's in
heaven (or trying
to get in), it wouldn't hurt
to be in touch. the first thing i want is to be able to
enjoy the little things again—for example, to stop peeling
down the list of things i
have to do &
enjoy this poem, enjoy how, last night, scouring
the cupboards, i found a
can of sardines that
must be five
years old &, since i was home after a long
trip &, since it was 1 a.m. & i hadn't eaten
dinner &, since there was no other
protein in the house,
i cranked it open & remembered that
my dad loved
sardines—right before bed—with
onions & mustard. i can't get into
my dad's old heart, but i remember that look
on his face when he would
load mustard on a saltine cracker, lay a little
fish on top, & tip it with a juicy slice
of onion. then he'd look up from his soiled
fingers with one eyebrow
raised, a rakish
grin that said--all
for me!—as if he was
getting away
with murder.

Source: https://pen.org/selected-poems-from-the-undertakers-daughter/

Poem Prompt #2

Write about food(s) you associate with a particular person(s), living or dead.

Toi Derriotte answers questions about writing, explaining why she hates the question 'who is your favorite poet' and topics she thought she was done writing.

Derricotte’s family life was marked by death, abuse, pain and racism; coupled with her Roman Catholic schooling and light skin, Derricotte often felt alienated and guilty. In an interview with Contemporary Authors, Derricotte revealed that: “As a black woman, I have been consistently confused about my ‘sins,’ unsure of which faults were in me and which faults were the results of others’ projections.” She added that, “truthtelling in my art is also a way to separate my ‘self’ from what I have been taught to believe about my ‘self,’ the degrading stereotypes about black women.” Derricotte’s writings explore race and identity through autobiography as well as literary forebears, and her work is known for treating sexual topics with candor. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly characterized Derricotte as a writer who “blends personal history, invention and reportage.”

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/toi-derricotte

More, Please!

From Blossoms
BY LI-YOUNG LEE

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee reads his poem "From Blossoms" from the Poetry Breaks series -- a series of videos filmed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by creator Leita Luchetti. Poetry Breaks features short videos of internationally renowned poets reading their work, reading the work of other poets, and discussing their takes on poetry in a variety of locations.

Colossal Bean photographed this in the 100 North Clinton block, west loop Chicago

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Writing Prompts: Things to Do Around . . . (#2)

6/25/2020

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Hey, we've been here before! "Things to do around Seattle" and "Things to do Around a Ship at Sea" both by Gary Snyder, were a hit six months ago when we first looked at his poems as a prompt. This time around, we take a different spin on it by utilizing the real and the imagined in writing about the things to do around _____.

First Mentor Poem

Hear Chris Martin read "Things to Do in Hell" here

Chris Martin, "Things to Do in Hell." Copyright © 2019 by Chris Martin.
Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/149081/things-to-do-in-hell

Poem Prompt #1:

Imagine yourself in an abstract place, a frame of mind, in a piece of music, a favorite place in a novel, wherever . . . and write about the things to do there. Write this poem for 10 minutes. Ready? Go!

Second Mentor Poem

Ted Berrigan, “Things to Do in New York (City)” from The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan. 2005
Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55276/things-to-do-in-new-york-city

Poem Prompt #2

Pick a real, tangible, specific place and explore all the things to do there – physical and metaphysical. Real and imagined. Write this poem for 12 minutes. Ready? Write!

More, Please

This poem can be seen as the "anti things to do" poem.

Don't Ask/1980BY JAYNE CORTEZ

Don't ask me
who I'm speaking for
who I'm talking to
why I'm doing what I do in
the light of my existence

You rise you spit you brush you drink you
pee you shit you walk you run you work
you eat you belch you sleep you dream &
that's the way it is

In the morning
tap water tasted fishy
coffee sits in its
decaffeinated cup
caca & incense
have a floating romance
& a stale washcloth
will make you smell
doubly stale
so don't get kissed on the cheek
don't get licked on the neck

at 8 a.m.
the trains & buses are
packed with folks farting
their bread & butter farts
the gymnasium
is dominated
by the stench of
hot tennis shoes
& one in the locker room
a few silly-talking
intellectual-looking
coke-drinking
cloth-dropping
paper-littering
spinach-pooting
smug arrogant women wait to
be waited on

& in another locker room
there are odors of
crotches & jock straps
bengay, tiger balm
& burning balls
sweat socks & sweat suits
of body-building
door-slamming
iron-pumping
phlegm-hawking men
all sour & steamy
& wrapped up together
in a swamp of
butt-popping towels
but don't let it
get you down
don't let it
psych you up

Outside the ledges are
loaded with pigeons
clouds are seeded with
homeless people &
lyricism of the afternoon
in a sub-proletarian madman
squatting & vomiting
from his bowels
a brown liquid of death
in front of your house

& it's not happening because of you
those socks don't stink because of me
a bureaucrat is not a jerk because of us
I'm not this way because of them
you're not that way because of me
don't ask about influences

You rise you spit you brush you drink you
pee you shit you walk you run you work
you eat you belch you sleep you dream
& that's the way it is

Jayne Cortez, "Don’t Ask/1980" from On the Imperial Highway. Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90811/don39t-ask-1980

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Writing Prompts: The Last

6/18/2020

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Last Chance Dolce & Gabbana Sale Ad, 2018 | Gif Source: milled.com

This week's focus is around the theme of "the last" -- the last of something, the last time, the last as in the most recent time. What are all the connotations of the last?

First Mentor Poem

The Last Wolf
—Mary TallMountain

The last wolf hurried toward me
through the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby-crowned highrises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless

Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping gait
closer the sounds in the deadly night
through clutter and rubble of quiet blocks
I hear his voice ascending the hill
and at last his low whine as he came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched

He trotted across the floor
he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered

Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.

Source: Library of Congress

Poem Prompt #1

Imagine the last of something – can you describe its qualities, its “habitat”, a speaker’s reckoning? or the main subject's reckoning? Write this poem for 12 minutes. Ready? Go.
Combine reality with imagined details, fictionalized details, futuristic details.

Second Mentor Poem

The Last Time
BY RACHEL MCKIBBENS

I did it alone,
without leaving.

The welt on my face
still hot, I crept downstairs,
pried open the toolbox
and grabbed the hammer
with his initials burned deep
into the handle.

Upstairs, my brother slept
in his room, a glass box
of reptiles watching over him.

I turned the knob slowly,
and stood over my father's body,
his chest heaving, then sinking,
when his tongue rattled, then stopped,

and the whites of his eyes
rolled over, and he stared
only at the weapon in my hand
and I looked at him and said,
If you ever touch us again,
I will kill you.

Rachel McKibbens, "The Last Time" from Pink Elephant. Copyright © 2009 by Rachel McKibbens.
Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/153340/the-last-time

Poem Prompt #2

Tell me about the “the last time” something happened, as in someone put a stop to it. Write about it in a poem. – OR – Tell me about the last as in most recent time something happened, as in last time it rained, the last kiss, this last year. Write this poem for 12 minutes.

Something Extra

Source: poetryfoundation.org

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Writing Prompts: Knowing & Imagining #2

6/11/2020

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BTW, I need a CREATE button.

This week's focus is to develop poetic imagination. When we don't have direct experience to guide us, we always have our imagination as a bridge to the knowledge. The challenge is to imagine what you can't know, mixing the ordinary with the fantastic.

First Mentor Poem

Source: Poetry 180, Library of Congress

Poem Prompt #1

Write a new poem in response to whatever speaks to you from this poem—whatever has energy or resonance.
Or, write a poem about your observations of strangers in public places – real or imagined. What do they need? What do they give? Write for 10 minutes. Ready? Go!

Second Mentor Poem

Academy of American Poets · Ama Codjoe: "Hunger"

Hunger
AMA CODJOE

When I rose into the cradle
of my mother’s mind, she was but
a girl, fighting her sisters
over a flimsy doll. It’s easy
to forget how noiseless I could be
spying from behind my mother’s eyes
as her mother, bulging with a baby,
a real-life Tiny Tears, eclipsed
the doorway with a moon. We all
fell silent. My mother soothed the torn
rag against her chest and caressed
its stringy hair. Even before the divergence
of girl from woman, woman from mother,
I was there: quiet as a vein, quick
as hot, brimming tears. In the decades
before my birthday, years before
my mother’s first blood, I was already
prized. Hers was a hunger
that mattered, though sometimes
she forgot and I dreamed the dream
of orange trees then startled awake
days or hours later. I could’ve been
almost anyone. Before I was a daughter,
I was a son, honeycomb clenching
the O of my mouth. I was a mother--
my own—nursing a beginning.

Source: Poets.org

Poem Prompt #2

Imagine your inception. Imagine yourself in womb. Imagine your birth. Write the poem.
Imagine your parents “desire” or imagine your own. Write the poem.
Write for 12 minutes. Ready? Go!

More, Please

Midnight Office
BY CYNTHIA CRUZ

The child is not dead.
She is sleeping.

Gone from this world
Which is broken.

The angel of Michael
Outside the garden
His circle of fire
Maddening around the tree.

He put the word
Back into her:
A heavy kind of music.

Then she was free.
As we all are.

All night I stood in the icy wind,
Praying for the storm to destroy me.

But the wind blew through me
Like I was a hologram.

If you say I am a mystic,
Then fine: I’m a mystic.

The trees are not trees, anyway.

Source: Poetry Foundation

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Writing Prompts: Those Hours of the Night

6/4/2020

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Overview

This week's focus -- those odd hours of the night -- is a counterpart to last week's study and writing on the hours of the day. What is it about night that sometimes stretches on and on, what we notice when we can't sleep, what we notice when we do sleep . . . and dream and dream and dream. Each hour of day and night has its own character.

"Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight."
~From NATURE AND WALKING Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson

First Mentor Poem

A Clear Midnight
Walt Whitman (bday May 31, 1819)

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

Poem Prompt #1

Tell me about the random images and thoughts of your dreams. Tell me what you ruminate on in the depths of the night when you aren’t sleeping. Tell me about releasing the soul back into the universe through sleep. Write a poem on any of those for 12 minutes. Ready? Go.
Remember: The prompts are suggestions. Write to what triggers you from within the poem.

Second Mentor Poems

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation .org/poetrymagazine/poems/ 42227/and-day-brought-back-my-night

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poems/48418/sad-steps

Poem Prompt #2

Write in response to whatever triggers you or intrigues you from either poem.
Tell me about what you observe when you sneak to the window in the middle of the night. Tell me about a night you were awakened and looked outside, what did you see? What did you think?

Write these in a poem for 12 minutes; focus on the imagery. Ready? Go.

More More More, Please

I adore this poem from Jim Harrison, mostly for the person who first shared it with me. He was reminiscing about his mother, his own troubled life, how he may have inherited some of that soul unrest from her. He spoke of their late night talks, their shared bottles of drink, their similar wonderings. He is a writer, too. A journalist. But much like Jim Harrison, a hard scrabble man, at home in his books, and in rural places.

Mother Night
Jim Harrison from Saving Daylight.

When you wake at three AM you don't think
of your age or sex and rarely your name
or the plot of your life which has never
broken itself down into logical pieces.
At three AM you have the gift of incomprehension
wherein the galaxies make more sense
than your job or the government. Jesus at the well
with Mary Magdalene is much more vivid
than your car. You can clearly see the bear
climb to heaven on a golden rope in the children's
story no one ever wrote. Your childhood horse
named June still stomps the ground for an apple.
What is morning and what if it doesn't arrive?
One morning Mother dropped an egg and asked
me if God was the same species as we are?
Smear of light at five AM. Sound of Webber's
sheep flock and sandhill cranes across the road,
burble of irrigation ditch beneath my window.
She said, "Only lunatics save newspapers
and magazines," fried me two eggs, then said,
"If you want to understand mortality look at birds."
Blue moon, two full moons this month,
which I conclude are two full moons. In what
direction do the dead fly off the earth?
Rising sun. A thousand blackbirds pronounce day.

More "hours of the night" imagery
from Colossal Bean's study series "The City in Which I Love You"
Click thumbnail for full image.

Click "comments" below to leave one! I would love to hear your thoughts about the words and imagery in this week's theme.

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...the boost your writing practice needs

Writing Prompts: Food (#1)

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

More, Please!

Writing Prompts: Things to Do Around . . . (#2)

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1:

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

More, Please

Writing Prompts: The Last

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

Something Extra

Writing Prompts: Knowing & Imagining #2

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

More, Please

Writing Prompts: Those Hours of the Night

Overview

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poems

Poem Prompt #2

More More More, Please

Author

Archives

#whyiwrite

...the boost your writing practice needs

Writing Prompts: Food (#1)

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

More, Please!

Writing Prompts: Things to Do Around . . . (#2)

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1:

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

More, Please

Writing Prompts: The Last

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

Something Extra

Writing Prompts: Knowing & Imagining #2

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

More, Please

Writing Prompts: Those Hours of the Night

Overview

​First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poems

Poem Prompt #2

More More More, Please

Author

Archives

#whyiwrite

First Mentor Poem