​What about your face? Write a poem about your face.  A face.  Write for 12 minutes. Go!

Poet Randall Mann wrote "Alphabet Street" in response to Prince's death, which he said "hit me hard.  It brought me closer to his music, and to a confusing, beautiful time, at fifteen, when I played ‘Adore’ on repeat; the italicized lines are from the song."  He dedicated the poem to two of his friends who "loved Prince so much" (poets.org).  Notice the structural device for the poem, A-Z alphabet.  This is formally known as an abecedarian poem.
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Write an A-Z poem about __________. Treat it like a riff; roll with the words, images, and story that want to emerge.  Next level challenge?  Try a Z-A poem.  Write for 12 minutes.

Before you read, write down three things: 

1. a word that means a lot to you
2. a sound you particularly like having in your mouth
3. a favorite word in another language

​Okay, now read.  Or listen to Wahmanholm read her poem here. 

O
by Claire Wahmanholm
Once there was an opening, an operation: out of which oared the ocean, then oyster and oystercatcher, opal and opal-crowned tanager. From ornateness came the ornate flycatcher and ornate fruit dove. From oil, the oilbird. O is for opus, the Orphean warbler’s octaves, the oratorio of orioles. O for the osprey’s ostentation, the owl and its collection of ossicles. In October’s ochre, the orchard is overgrown with orange and olive, oleander and oxlip. Ovals of dew on the oatgrass. O for obsidian, onyx, ore, for boreholes like inverted obelisks. O for the onion’s concentric O’s, observable only when cut, for the opium oozing from the poppy’s globe only when scored. O for our organs, for the os of the cervix, the double O’s of the ovaries plotted on the body’s plane to mark the origin. O is the orbit that cradles the eye. The oculus opens an O to the sky, where the starry outlines of men float like air bubbles between us and oblivion. Once there were oarfish, opaleyes, olive flounders. Once the oxbows were not overrun with nitrogen. O for the mussels opening in the ocean’s oven. O for the rising ozone, the dropping oxygen, for algae overblooming like an omen or an oracle. O Earth, out-gunned and out-manned. O who holds the void inside itself. O who has made orphans of our hands.

​Source: poets.org

Write a poem, heavily laced with a letter or sound and with the intention to communicate something—as the "O" poem communicates concerns about vanishing species and the shocked expression the mouth makes in reaction to the ecological crisis.

                          Let us know your chosen words or sounds for the poem.   
                             Leave a description in the comments section below.

Use music to get at your guts and hearts  less intellectually today. Don't look at a mentor poem before writing; just listen and wait for a connection.  Then, write from there. 
 
Here's the approach I suggest.  The music prompts are about 6-10 min, with at least three interesting shifts in each piece.  Close your eyes and listen to everything: musical instruments, harmonies, dissonance, lyrics--don’t worry if you don’t get all of them, voice, timbre, tone shifts.  Whatever information, instincts, images come to you, write them. You could even listen and write afterwards.  Write for ten minutes.  

What appealed to you?  Words as a tool, how you sling words to hurt someone, words and being bruised, being pulled by the weather, hanging on, numbered days?  Or is it that morning sun waiting on the work, how she shines down on all your troubles,  how the world is made for you--made for believin--made for dreamin'.  As in a poem, where are the tone shifts in these two music pieces?  Tell us your experiences in the comments section below.

What is it in this poem that goes against the natural order of things? Or is that natural, too -- an upset in the order of things?  How is the outer landscape reflecting the inner landscape?  How are the main characters in the poem moving about?  What are their stories? How is the house a character.  Which of the little details are poignant to you in telling the story?


More Valley Queen:                                 And Melody Gardot:

When we don't have direct experience to guide us, we have imagination as a bridge to the knowledge.  In the first poem, Susan Mitchell poetically imagines what she can't know first hand about the dead, mixing the ordinary with the fantastic.

​The Dead  
BY SUSAN MITCHELL

At night the dead come down to the river to drink.
They unburden themselves of their fears,
their worries for us. They take out the old photographs.
They pat the lines in our hands and tell our futures,
which are cracked and yellow.
Some dead find their way to our houses.
They go up to the attics.
They read the letters they sent us, insatiable
for signs of their love.
They tell each other stories.
They make so much noise
they wake us
as they did when we were children and they stayed up
drinking all night in the kitchen.

Poetic Image is not just visual but an activation of any of the five senses.

How Would You Live Then?
BY MARY OLIVER
 
What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks
     flew in circles around your head? What if
the mockingbird came into the house with you and
     became your advisor? What if
the bees filled your walls with honey and all
     you needed to do was ask them and they would fill
the bowl? What if the brook slid downhill just
     past your bedroom window so you could listen
to its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What if
     the stars began to shout their names, or to run
this way and that way above the clouds? What if
     you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves
began to rustle, and a bird cheerfully sang
     from its painted branches? What if you suddenly saw
that the silver of water was brighter than the silver 
     of money? What if you finally saw
that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day
     and every day – who knows how, but they do it – were
more precious, more meaningful than gold?

Source: https://workthoughts.com/2019/09/06/the-friday-poem-
how-would-you-live-then-by-mary-oliver/
 

Take one image from Oliver’s poem (or your own first one) and write a page (poem) about it, not limiting yourself to what you see and hear and smell directly anymore, but allowing the sensory input to spark other thoughts, memories, images, story, and emotional weight. Use your poetic imagination to bridge any gaps.
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 OR Write a poem answering Oliver’s question, “What would you do if . . .?”
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We have written summer and fall vignettes, and about walks in winter.  It is only fitting to address our current spring.  It has come.  Amidst everything, it is here. Can we hold the duality of -- what spring usually means for us with what is happening in the pandemic of 2020?

The following poem blends the mention of a spring season and a key life event. 

What happened in a Spring of your memory?  Hold Spring . . . and an event . . . in the same poem.  The event doesn’t have to be traumatic.  Maybe the event juxtaposes the season of Spring.  Maybe it vibes with the season.  Write for 10 minutes.

In the "Courage of Poetry" seminar 2020, David Whyte surmised that if you only suddenly noticed that everything has bloomed, then you have missed the seasonality of spring—the essence of spring. 

So the second poem prompt, switches gears into the archetype of spring.  Of course it's about other things, too -- I mean, isn’t all poetry about something and something else!  Two examples:

A Cold Spring
By Elizabeth Bishop

The violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your big and aimless hills.
One day, in a chill white blast of sunshine,
on the side of one a calf was born.
The mother stopped lowing
and took a long time eating the after-birth,
a wretched flag,
but the calf got up promptly
and seemed inclined to feel gay.

The next day
was much warmer.
Greenish-white dogwood infiltrated the wood,
each petal burned, apparently, by a cigarette-butt;
and the blurred redbud stood
beside it, motionless, but almost more
like movement than any placeable color.
Four deer practiced leaping over your fences.
The infant oak-leaves swung through the sober oak.
Song-sparrows were wound up for the summer,
and in the maple the complementary cardinal
cracked a whip, and the sleeper awoke,
stretching miles of green limbs from the south.
In his cap the lilacs whitened,
then one day they fell like snow.

Now, in the evening,
a new moon comes.
The hills grow softer. Tufts of long grass show
where each cow-flop lies.
The bull-frogs are sounding,
slack strings plucked by heavy thumbs.
Beneath the light, against your white front door,
the smallest moths, like Chinese fans,
flatten themselves, silver and silver-gilt
over pale yellow, orange, or gray.
Now, from the thick grass, the fireflies
begin to rise:
up, then down, then up again:
lit on the ascending flight,
drifting simultaneously to the same height,
–exactly like the bubbles in champagne.
–Later on they rise much higher.
And your shadowy pastures will be able to offer
these particular glowing tributes
every evening now throughout the summer.

Source:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1952/05/31/a-cold-spring-for-a-friend-in-maryland

The gentle slide from spring to summer while the structure of the poem moves through morning to evening. All of life is in flow, the poem is in flow, our hopes are in flow. 
Tell us about your spring topics in the comment section.  Include a few lines from your poem. Respond to Bishop's poem.  
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