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Writing Prompts: Those Hours of the Day

5/28/2020

Vintage sundial on side of building

First Mentor Poems

The theme of this session's poems and writing challenges are to reflect on specific hours of the DAY that resonate for some reason. Maybe it's the fire of high noon or the peacefulness of a noon time nap, or maybe it is because the beauty of that noon moment was made for the lovers in the grass (as in "Silent Noon"). When you read the poems and challenge yourself with the prompts, try to explore the uniqueness of a specific daytime hour as in Rossetti's and Macker's poems. But also explore how a single moment can contain all of time, as in González de León’s poem.

Silent Noon
(#19 from The House of Life a sonnet sequence)
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,--
   The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
   Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
   Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge
   Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:--
   So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
   When twofold silence was the song of love.

Source: poetryfoundation.org

Noon
TEDDY MACKER

It is the summer of the day, the gold-bodied hour, the good
bookless eternity. It is the epoch of blaze, labia, white oblivion.
No melancholy yet, nor reverie, nor singing, barely any talk—it is
the matterful backs of cattle, thigh-quiet of tree trunk, insect
wing nickeled with sun. It is a horse standing flat foot casting no
shadow, the wishbone of fire on the flicker’s neck. It is the blessed
hopeless hour, red thunder inside the watermelon.

Copyright © 2015 by Teddy Macker. This poem originally appeared in This World (White Cloud Press, 2015). Source: poets.org

Poem Prompt #1

Write YOUR version of noon?—What happens(ed) in a specific noon-time? How is noon experienced in the senses: taste, touch, sight, hearing, organic, extra-sensory, etcetera. Be sure to capture whatever is the “noon-ness” about it. Write a poem for 12 minutes. Ready? Go.

Second Mentor Poem

Octavio Paz says in his introduction to González de León’s poems, “Poetry is the wink of time, the sign time gives us in the moment of its disappearance."

Minuto / Minute
ULALUME GONZÁLEZ DE LEÓN
Translated from the Spanish by Terry Ehret, John Johnson, and Nancy J. Morales

Any order, beloved, unrepeatable
Monday June 4, for example
1991
6:12, let’s say
tea on the balcony
a bird
a kiss
a yellow flower
words
that cloud
your beard
my dress
blue wool
fingers that touch
—at 98.6o--
a flash of teeth
our voices
6:13
and all that’s left is time

No, not time
All that’s left
are the goodbyes

Goodbye to hours, minutes, days, yours and mine
The sorrow of overlapping goodbyes
leaves its crust
Black threads of goodbye
are rusting our solar house
I look at you,
look at you, my friend through all the minutes
point of light
I look at you
You will fill
my retinas, my time, my sadness
like gazing at a lamp too long.

Source: Poetry Daily

Poem Prompt #2

Think about an “unrepeatable” moment that occurred in an hour of a DAY: 6am, 9am, 4 in the afternoon, early evening. But stay within the daylight hours. And remember, the events can be in “any order.” Write a poem for 12 minutes. Ready? Go.

Something Extra

My 24 Hour Version
LOIS RED ELK

Light pried open my eyes for vision to
unravel the layered dream bundle tossed
my way last night. It is always the energy
of the last thought, last vision
that urges breath to store all the little songs
floating over my head. The window shade
tuned to the wakening dial pulled me
to hunger, to thirst, to an empty bowl
as I contemplate
how to cut and dry buffalo grass
for cereal and bread.
All I want is my 24 hour version
of my life and more.
Last evening's storm was caught
by all the rooftop vanes and turned into
horse energy galloping around and around
one square room after another in an effort
to bring clear red circles
onto all the dark pages
that were written for our lives.
And, the hooves keep pounding
the message home.
This day I’m collecting all those old diseased
blankets everyone’s hanging on to,
burning them and sending a smoke signal
to open all the doors
that keep our people apart.
Right now I need to take a breath of
my mother’s vermillion medicine with
a full glass of my father’s healing bloodline.

From Why I Return to Makoce (Many Voices Press, 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Lois Red Elk.
Source: poets.org

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Writing Prompts: Masks

5/21/2020

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Image by Gordon Johnson

First Mentor Poem

Lucha Libre
Esteban Rodríguez

It was the mask I wanted more
than fame, the tight turquoise leather
tied with red shoestring around my nape,
the thought of being someone else
without being anchored to a face,
so as not to face the features in the face
that were slowly changing, growing
stranger by the year. And there was
the white complexion so different from
the darker shades of skin around me,
and the pimples unwilling to renounce
their loyalty, leaving me to reinvent
the candy-red bumps as chickenpox instead.
Even if I didn't know the one-hit wonder
of this disease, once I saw those Mexican
men fighting on TV, I couldn't care less
if anyone else believed it, if I, like them,
was putting up a front because a front
was the surest thing to guise myself in,
to carry my confidence further than
their choreographed jumps, than their lunges,
plunges, angelic dives, than the tiptoe
rope-walking as they back-flipped farther
into the ring, or as their sweaty bodies
began to sync with the crowd's shock
and awe, feed off their praise and screams.
And there I was, bouncing off my bed,
mumbling Spanish I could barely speak,
and hardly able to drop-kick, eye-poke,
cross chop, pile drive, head-butt, body slam,
brain-bust, somersault, shoulder claw,
slingshot or sleeper hold into my role
as rudo, the dirty-playing villain desperate
to pin the appearance I no longer wanted,
to wait for the count and finish off
with a headlock so I wouldn't have to take off
my mask, reveal to myself who I knew
I really was.

Copyright © 2019 by Esteban Rodríguez
Source: https://poems.com/poem/lucha-libre/

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) explains Lucha Libre moves and masks, helping us appreciate the speaker in the poem when he describes the guises, lists dives and craves audience reaction!

Pick a Lucha Libre name, learn some moves and . . .
a few other surprises.

Illustration by Leo Romero

Poem Prompt #1

Recall a mask. Who wore it? What did it embody? Who did it influence? How? Where did it come from? Can you remember a mask of your own? Write a poem about mask or about the specific mask you recalled for 12 minutes. Go!

Second Mentor Poem

Phizzog
Carl Sandburg

This face you got,
This here phizzog you carry around,
You never picked it out for yourself
at all, at all—-did you?
This here phizzog—-somebody handed it
to you–am I right?
Somebody said, “Here’s yours, now go see
what you can do with it.”
Somebody slipped it to you and it was like
a package marked:
“No goods exchanged after being taken away”—-
This face you got.

Image by David | Funky Focus

Image by Michelle Badenhorst

Poem Prompt #2

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

For Discussion

Move to the City
Nathaniel Bellows

live life as a stranger. Disappear
into frequent invention, depending
on the district, wherever you get off
the train. For a night, take the name
of the person who’d say yes to that
offer, that overture, the invitation to
kiss that mouth, sit on that lap. Assume
the name of whoever has the skill to
slip from the warm side of the sleeping
stranger, dress in the hallway of the
hotel. This is a city where people
know the price of everything, and
know that some of the best things
still come free. In one guise: shed
all that shame. In another: flaunt the
plumage you’ve never allowed
yourself to leverage. Danger will
always be outweighed by education,
even if conjured by a lie. Remember:
go home while it’s still dark. Don’t
invite anyone back. And, once inside,
take off the mask. These inventions
are the art of a kind of citizenship,
and they do not last. In the end, it
might mean nothing beyond further
fortifying the walls, crystallizing
the questioned, tested autonomy,
ratifying the fact that nothing will be
as secret, as satisfying, as the work
you do alone in your room.

Copyright © 2013 by Nathaniel Bellows.
Source: https://poets.org/poem/move-city

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Writing Prompts: Alphabet

5/14/2020

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This is our first effort with the Abecedarian poem--a style that wears many costumes! We take an additional approach today, the letters of the alphabet down the left side of the poem, and a focus on specific letter and its sounds in the second writing challenge. See our second challenge with the Abecedarian poem and how we expanded on the form here!

First Mentor Poem

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.

Source: poets.org

Click orange arrow to hear Mann read his poem.

"Adore" by Prince

"Alphabet Street" extended version with "Kat's rap" at 2:45.
Now that's poetry.

Poem Prompt #1

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.

Second Mentor Poem

Before you read, write down three things:

a word that means a lot to you
a sound you particularly like having in your mouth
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

Poem Prompt #2

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.

Something Extra For Discussion

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=37355

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Writing Prompts: Music

5/7/2020

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Image by Michael Gaida, Düsseldorf/Germany

Writing Prompts

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.

"Pulled by the Weather" Valley Queen

"Morning Sun" (live) Melody Gardot

Talk Back

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.

Something Extra

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:

Valley Queen's Tiny Desk Concert, NPR

Melody Gardot's rendition of "Ain't No Sushine" by the late great Bill Withers

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...the boost your writing practice needs

Writing Prompts: Those Hours of the Day

First Mentor Poems

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

Something Extra

Writing Prompts: Masks

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

For Discussion

Writing Prompts: Alphabet

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

Something Extra For Discussion

Writing Prompts: Music

Writing Prompts

Talk Back

Something Extra

Author

Archives

#whyiwrite

...the boost your writing practice needs

Writing Prompts: Those Hours of the Day

First Mentor Poems

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

Something Extra

Writing Prompts: Masks

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

​Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

For Discussion

Writing Prompts: Alphabet

First Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #1

Second Mentor Poem

Poem Prompt #2

Something Extra For Discussion

Writing Prompts: Music

Writing Prompts

Talk Back

Something Extra

Author

Archives

#whyiwrite

Second Mentor Poem