10 Poetry Prompts: After Sedition and Epiphany

Mentor Poem

The Necessity
ALICE B. FOGEL

It isn't true about the lambs.
They are not meek.
They are curious and wild,
full of the passion of spring.
They are lovable,
and they are not silent when hungry.
 
Tonight the last of the triplet lambs
is piercing the quiet with its need.
Its siblings are stronger
and will not let it eat.
 
I am its keeper, the farmer, its mother,
I will go down to it in the dark,
in the cold barn,
and hold it in my arms.
 
But it will not lie still—it is not meek.
 
I will stand in the open doorway
under the weight of watching trees and moon,
and care for it as one of my own.
 
But it will not love me—it is not meek.
 
Drink, little one. Take what I can give you.
Tonight the whole world prowls
the perimeters of your life.
 
Your anger keeps you alive--
it's your only chance.
So I know what I must do
after I have fed you.
 
I will shape my mouth to the shape
of the sharpest words,
even those bred in silence.
 
I will impale with words every ear
pressed upon open air.
I will not be meek.
 
You remind me of the necessity
of having more hope than fear,
and of sounding out terrible names.
 
I am to cry out loud
like a hungry lamb, cry loud
enough to waken wolves in the night.
​
No one can be allowed to sleep.

SOURCE: poetryfoundation.org  

Writing Prompts

1. When did you stop being meek?
2. What is your “necessity” right now? Explain three of them.  Turn it into a poem.
3. Who do you know is “a hungry lamb?”
4. What will you “cry out loud” about?
5. The wolves?
6. What about “the necessity of having more hope than fear?”
7. Tell about your animal behaviors. Tell about the behaviors of an animal you know—meek or otherwise.

Try writing using some of Fogel’s style choices in this poem: short and direct sentences, use full words and very few contracted forms, metaphor to tell the larger story
 

Mentor Poem

Epiphany
JOANIE MACKOWSKI
 
A momentary rupture to the vision:
the wavering limbs of a birch fashion
 
the fluttering hem of the deity’s garment,
the cooling cup of coffee the ocean the deity
 
waltzes across. This is enough—but sometimes
the deity’s heady ta-da coaxes the cherries
 
in our mental slot machine to line up, and
our brains summon flickering silver like
 
salmon spawning a river; the jury decides
in our favor, and we’re free to see, for now.
 
A flaw swells from the facets of a day, increasing
the day’s value; a freakish postage stamp mails
 
our envelope outside time; hairy, claw-like
magnolia buds bloom from bare branches;
 
and the deity pops up again like a girl from
a giant cake. O deity: you transfixing transgressor,
 
translating back and forth on the border
without a passport. Fleeing revolutions
 
of same-old simultaneous boredom and
boredom, we hoard epiphanies under the bed,
 
stuff them in jars and bury them in the backyard;
we cram our closet with sunrise; prop up our feet
 
and drink gallons of wow!; we visit the doctor
because all this is raising the blood’s levels of
 
c6h3(oh)2chohch2nhch3, the heart caught
in the deity’s hem and haw, the oh unfurling
 
from our chest like a bee from our cup of coffee,
an autochthonous greeting: there. Who saw it?

SOURCE: poetryfoundation.org

Writing Prompts

1. Tell me about your most recent epiphanies
2. Make a list of daily sounds.  Turn this discovery – this epiphany – into a poem.
3. Close our eyes and name every vision that flashes across your inner eyes.

​

For Discussion

Hear Anahera Gildea read her poem here.

Sedition — a letter to the writer from Meri Mangakāhia 
ANAHERA GILDEA                                                                                                   

​Here’s what I had in mind, kōtiro, this
clipping at words like overgrown maikuku — 
return the blankets of domestic life; don’t fold
washing or wear shoes, polish these rerenga kē.
 
Eh. But this world.
I s’pose neither of us planned to be in politics,
never did do what others told us to — 
wahanui though, go on, get
 
your sedition on girl,
your agitator, your defiant speak
to each other eye to eye — 
Māori been jailed for nouns, phrases;
 
butcher up a clause, get buried
in Pākehā kupu, then dig that
out like the old people. No one approved
of their language either.
 
Source: poetryfoundation.org

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Check out this Poetry Podcast about Gildea's poem.  Editors of Poetry Magazine, discuss the poem and the use of native language in a poem that references imprisonment for speaking one's native language.  

What to Discuss?

1. Why words matter
2. Another view of sedition 
3. Use of native language in a poem about the outlawing of a native language
4. Political writing
5. Word choices (survival and protest): clipping, polishing, get your sedition on, butcher up