Colorful Writing

Artist: Prawny

Hello, Poetry

It's a colorful life!  The first poem below, Matt Donovan's "Green Means Literally a Thousand Things or More" is a favorite of mine -- so layered -- and wanted to kick off this session with it.  Does it look familiar? PoetryBones has read this poem before, but in a closing discussion.  You can see it HERE along with other "color-related" poems with which we've worked.  TODAY, we revisit the theme, but with a different writing challenge!  Off you go, now!

First Mentor Poem

Academy of American Poets · Matt Donovan: "Green Means Literally a Thousand Things or More"

Green Means Literally a Thousand Things or More
MATT DONOVAN
​
So concludes an essay on “Fern Hill,” in which the student seems
somewhere between jazzed up & pissed off that green might mean
so many things from one stanza to the next: here, a blooming

Eden proxy; here, rot made by the grip of time. For starters. Or
that sun-slaked field, not far from our classroom, as lush-green
as any Welsh farmyard, greyed overnight with frost. Emerald

beer bottle hurled from a car. The slack-jawed lime-green
goblin face spanning a front porch post-Halloween
for so many weeks it looks like it’s here to stay. The long-ago

brown-green of Cleveland, where it rained always & without pity
upon a past I crave despite myself & our team lost always 14—2.
Every time we waited in the bleachers for the game to resume,

my father would look down upon the outfield’s diagonal lines
& proclaim Still a lot of green out there, meaning anything
can happen & will. Have you ever heard in a crowd the saddest part

of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” where everyone lies & pretends
we don’t care if we ever get back & makes the last word echo
twice more? We always want to get back, whether or not

we’re hailing childhood green. Like the student in her essay,
I too could keep rattling off images of spring & decay—June
sunset horizon flash, summer hair stained olive from churning

over-chlorinated pools, green shadow of a hand somewhere
that makes it feel as if owls were bearing everything away--
instead of looking again at the image online I glimpsed before

returning to the still-ungraded hay-high stack of student work. 
Maybe you saw it too? Maybe you also had the spellbound luck
of wandering to other tasks instead of asking what it means to know

anything can happen in a wholly different way, instead of looking 
once more at the slash of police tape that is the only horizon
that matters just now for the two men in the photograph who sit

together on the curb, faces glowing blue-red in the lights, both of them
bleary-eyed but alive, swaddled in aftermath & a blanket that is green,
a detail that couldn’t matter less, given how the numbers of the dead

still rise. Here we are again, as inevitable as the clock’s tick, looking in
at a place that now will never be young. Is there a way to say it--
There’s been a shooting—that will allow it to be heard, remembered

& heard without the easy glide of our past tense? That will stop us
from wanting to turn to anything under the wide starry sky that is not
the green fire burning in the minds of those men or the green

of a blanket America provides & provides without change? 

Writing Prompt

Think of a color.  Then take a walk!  Observe EVERYTHING in that color--or color family. 
Take notes or pictures.  Write in your head as you walk.  Write when you get home.  

Second Mentor Poem

Oranges
ROISIN KELLY

I’ll choose for myself next time
who I’ll reach out and take
as mine, in the way
I might stand at a fruit stall

having decided
to ignore the apples
the mangoes and the kiwis
but hold my hands above

a pile of oranges
as if to warm my skin
before a fire.
Not only have I chosen

oranges, but I’ll also choose
which orange — I’ll test
a few for firmness
scrape some rind off

with my fingernail
so that a citrus scent
will linger there all day.
I won’t be happy

with the first one I pick
but will try different ones
until I know you. How
will I know you?

You’ll feel warm
between my palms
and I’ll cup you like
a handful of holy water.

A vision will come to me
of your exotic land: the sun
you swelled under
the tree you grew from.

A drift of white blossoms
from the orange tree
will settle in my hair
and I’ll know.

This is how I will choose
you: by feeling you
smelling you, by slipping
you into my coat.

Maybe then I’ll climb
the hill, look down
on the town we live in
with sunlight on my face

and a miniature sun
burning a hole in my pocket.
Thirsty, I’ll suck the juice
from it. From you.

When I walk away
I’ll leave behind a trail
of lamp-bright rind.

Remember 

Take a look at the other color poem prompts  from January 2020 !

Something Extra

I find Philippa Stanton's work engaging for her color-themed photographs.  I will post more about her work later and link you to her sites.   But for now, wanted to share this Sensory Collecting video with you as you go on your "color" walk.  Why not make it a Sensory Collecting walk, as well!

Click on thumbnails below for full image. From Stanton's CONSCIOUS CREATIVITY book.