Writing Prompts: CONFESSIONAL POETRY

This week's theme springs from the confessional poetry movement of the 50's and 60's.   Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or "I" with subject matter that previously had not been openly discussed in American poetry. Private experiences with and feelings about death, trauma, depression and relationships were addressed in this type of poetry, often in an autobiographical manner. Ann Sexton,  Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, WD Snodgrass are examples.

We’ve become so much more acquainted with the confessional theme in 21st century poetry that we almost forget it was a thing to break from what were perhaps acceptable poetic subjects.  We will explore adaptations of confessional poetry, applying some poetic imagination.

First Mentor Poem

Beautiful Freak Show
JILLIAN WEISE
 
I don't pretend to have been all pink
and unplucked. I knew nakedness,
knew the rattle of a leg in bed.
You rented a room from an old man
and his girlfriend, always cooking
bacon in the morning. The smell
of grease, the old man's whiskers
on my shoulder, him saying, I've seen you,
and I could smell the meat of him,
peeking from a hole in the closet wall.
Beautiful freak show, he said.
You left the closet door open and he
stopped asking for rent. You ask me
to pivot and pose, unstrap the leg.
I wanted to tell you I'm doing this
for myself. You think I care for
this body? Watch.
 
Source: Poetry Daily
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Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist and disability rights activist. Her first book of poetry, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, was recently reissued in a 10th anniversary edition with a new preface. 

​Weise has written about being a cyborg for The New York Times, Granta, and elsewhere. She hosts a web series that highlights literary ableism under the persona Tispy Tullivan.  Read more about Jillian Weise at the Poetry Foundation website.

Writing Prompt #1

Think of a scene that could come from your life, one that is plausible but one people who aren’t you wouldn’t necessarily think or believe.  Create a persona to inhabit that scene, maybe one that looks and sounds like you, but is fundamentally different – perhaps meaner,  more assertive, or brave.  What  does that persona do that you’d never do? What does that persona say that you’d never allow yourself to say? What does that persona enable in yourself?  Write this piece for 10 min.  Prompt from a series “What Sparks Poetry”  at Poetry Daily and found in  the book THE POEMS OF OTHERS II

Second Mentor Poem

The Story, For Now
JANLORI GOLDMAN

No father. That’s what I told you.
        By second grade, friends said
                all kids have one, somewhere,
called you liar. The difference between biology
        and Dad? That’s the story that grew
                as you grew, like dated pencil marks
on the doorframe. Now I tell you--
        I met him on a work trip.
                In the morning, we circled Henry Moore’s
massive, marble women.
        In other cities we’d meet for Greek food,
                fool around. A divorce.
He said he was getting one. I said,
        you should know. I’m going to have this baby.
                I’m not asking you for anything.
I knew nothing of asking.
        All I knew, the gift was in me,
                even if he didn’t mean to give it.
He looked at the mound under my sweater--
        you can always make another. This one
                will ruin my life. The wife and I,
we’re trying to work things out.
        He needed me to keep a secret,
                and I could only see my way
to one very sure place of going it alone.
        I agreed to No Father,
                just xxxxxxxxx on your birth certificate.
When you’re very young I give you this story:
        a friend helped me. A woman
                needs sperm to make a baby--
this is true the way a story with a missing piece
        can be true. By twelve, you ask
                what was your friend’s name?
I forgot, I say. You hear the lie,
        demand I put his picture and name
                in the piano bench, inside the purple book
with mirrors on the cover. Is he good at math?
        Do I have a brother? Over soup, you say
                he should’ve wanted to know me,
should’ve told his wife—aren’t you angry?
        I thought I’d given you enough of a story,
                but under the clapboard a vine’s been growing,
a prying wedge. I tell you now, I am angry.
        For not knowing you’d long to fill in the blank
                with something other than a string of x’s.

​--from Rattle #41, Fall 2013
Tribute to Single Parent Poets

Writing Prompt #2

Write about a secret. Tell the story. Use a metaphor to describe what it has/had become.
Or-- Make a list of regrets, large and small, lighthearted or otherwise, and see how the listing develops a poem.
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Poem for Discussion

Any Style
JACK GRAPES
 
Lord, I’m 500 miles from home,
you can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.
—Peter, Paul, and Mary
Driving west out of El Paso,
the sun coming up behind me,
I look for a diner or roadside café
off the main highway.
Maybe I’ll just follow those dust clouds
that cars coming the other way
leave in their wake.
Maybe it’ll be
just a scratched Formica counter
and a waitress wearing
jeans and a T-shirt.
“Eggs any style,” I tell her,
waiting to see if she gets it--
the joke, I mean—but she doesn’t.
“Anything on the side?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, studying
the menu as if it were
that calculus final I barely passed.
“Yeah, gimme the bacon,
the hash browns,
… you got grits?”
I look up from the menu
and admire her frontage.
After seven hours driving
in the dark, then heaving away
from the sun, the mouth waters
for the old breakfast roadside
standbys: toast, butter,
greasy bacon and eggs.
And frontage.
The urge rises from my toes,
through my stomach and into my chest,
the urge to reach out and touch them,
those well-fed breasts
inside that hefty bra
inside that white T-shirt.
“Yeah,” she says, moving the eraser
of the pencil back and forth
behind her ear, “we got grits.”
“I’m up for grits,” I say,
making the word grits sound
like I’d already eaten a mouthful.
She shifts her weight from one leg
to the other, writes on the pad,
then says it
—what I came in here for
in the first place,
not the food,
but to hear her say the words:
“Three eggs,
any style,
side a bacon,
side a hash browns,
side a grits.”
I almost swoon,
almost lean
across the counter
and place my head
between her breasts,
almost blurt out that I love her,
that I’ve been loving her
all night long--
loving her as I drove through the darkness
on this two lane highway
filled with nothing
but tractor trailers
and 18-wheelers
and tank trucks and boom trucks
and freight liners and box vans,
two-ton stake trucks
and Scammell ballast tractors,
not to mention the flatbeds
and the pick-ups,
all heading west,
just like me.
I want to tell her
that I love her
right now, here in this diner,
thirty miles west of El Paso,
and will always love her,
love her to my dying day,
love her any style,
side a bacon,
side a hash browns,
side a grits.
But I don’t.
The sun’s already breaking
the water glasses on the counter,
rousting the silverware,
dashing the flies to the floor
in where they languish the heat.
Five-hundred miles to go
before I hit L.A.,
before I take the big curve
where the I-10 turns north
under the overpass,
and heads up the Pacific Coast Highway,
white beaches to my left,
brown cliffs to my right.
Five-hundred miles to go.
“Yeah,” I say, “that should do it,
and gimme an order
of wheat toast, butter, jelly,
jam, marmalade with those
little pieces of citrus fruit
and rind, and coffee,
thick black coffee,
coffee that’s been sitting
in the pot for days,
just bring the whole pot,
and sugar, lots of sugar,
and cream, lots of cream.”
Then she sticks the pencil
in her hair behind her ear
and looks at me, finally.
“Mr. Poet,” she says,
smiling as the sun
begins to creep up
across her face.
“Yep,” I say, relaxing
onto the stool
and putting both elbows
on the counter,
“I’m Mr. Poet,
and I got
lots of poems,
any style you want,
side a bacon,
side a hash browns,
side a grits.”

--from Rattle #52, Summer 2016
Tribute to Angelenos
 
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