Writing Prompts: Those Hours of the Day

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