February as a Writing Prompt

Gif by ColossalBean

Oh February.  It's the month of Hallmark love, long winterly nights, bitterly low temperatures and snow. And more snow. And sometimes, even more snow.

First Mentor Poem

February
MARGARET ATWOOD
 
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

​Source: poetryfoundation.org

Poem Prompt

Write a poem about February where you are now.  Also, consider what draws you in and out of the month, like the cat draws the speaker in and out of her own thoughts. Can you make that agent work in the poem?

Second Mentor Poem

Things to do Around a Lookout
GARY SNYDER

Source: poetryfoundation.org

Poem Prompt

Write your own “things to do around ___” poem.  Things to do around your homestead.  Things to do around here. Things to do around the bend. And so on . . .  Include physical things and psychological things, and . . . what other kinds of things are there?

For Discussion

Spellbound
​EMILY BRONTÉ
 
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

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