Writing Prompts: Those Hours of the Night

6/4/2020

Overview

This week's focus -- those odd hours of the night -- is a counterpart to last week's study and writing on the hours of the day. What is it about night that sometimes stretches on and on, what we notice when we can't sleep, what we notice when we do sleep . . . and dream and dream and dream. Each hour of day and night has its own character.

"Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight."
~From NATURE AND WALKING Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson

First Mentor Poem

A Clear Midnight
Walt Whitman (bday May 31, 1819)

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

Poem Prompt #1

Tell me about the random images and thoughts of your dreams. Tell me what you ruminate on in the depths of the night when you aren’t sleeping. Tell me about releasing the soul back into the universe through sleep. Write a poem on any of those for 12 minutes. Ready? Go.
Remember: The prompts are suggestions. Write to what triggers you from within the poem.

Second Mentor Poems

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation .org/poetrymagazine/poems/ 42227/and-day-brought-back-my-night

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poems/48418/sad-steps

Poem Prompt #2

Write in response to whatever triggers you or intrigues you from either poem.
Tell me about what you observe when you sneak to the window in the middle of the night. Tell me about a night you were awakened and looked outside, what did you see? What did you think?

Write these in a poem for 12 minutes; focus on the imagery. Ready? Go.

More More More, Please

I adore this poem from Jim Harrison, mostly for the person who first shared it with me. He was reminiscing about his mother, his own troubled life, how he may have inherited some of that soul unrest from her. He spoke of their late night talks, their shared bottles of drink, their similar wonderings. He is a writer, too. A journalist. But much like Jim Harrison, a hard scrabble man, at home in his books, and in rural places.

Mother Night
Jim Harrison from Saving Daylight.

When you wake at three AM you don't think
of your age or sex and rarely your name
or the plot of your life which has never
broken itself down into logical pieces.
At three AM you have the gift of incomprehension
wherein the galaxies make more sense
than your job or the government. Jesus at the well
with Mary Magdalene is much more vivid
than your car. You can clearly see the bear
climb to heaven on a golden rope in the children's
story no one ever wrote. Your childhood horse
named June still stomps the ground for an apple.
What is morning and what if it doesn't arrive?
One morning Mother dropped an egg and asked
me if God was the same species as we are?
Smear of light at five AM. Sound of Webber's
sheep flock and sandhill cranes across the road,
burble of irrigation ditch beneath my window.
She said, "Only lunatics save newspapers
and magazines," fried me two eggs, then said,
"If you want to understand mortality look at birds."
Blue moon, two full moons this month,
which I conclude are two full moons. In what
direction do the dead fly off the earth?
Rising sun. A thousand blackbirds pronounce day.