Writing prompts just in time for summer
In the throes of bringing up spirited daughters, working, and struggling for time and energy to write, my then-husband remarked, “Funny how the more you have to do, the more you write.” It was true. But now, with both daughters off on their own, what to do for that intense pressure? Drum roll: for me, writing prompts. I tweak the tired-and-true or make up my own. Here’s a sampling just for fun.
* Odes *
In general, odes are splendid prompts. Looking to see how others have not written them is a way to make an ode one’s own. For this I’ve combined two prompts: communing with a text and declaring my love to a line (especially a line from one’s youth).
Ode to Eliot’s Line “Do I dare / disturb the universe?”
Yes. But not this universe these days:
unlike those where I’d stand at a pay phone,
dialing for him I could not call from home;
unlike younger years in radical groups
debating how to seize state power. Disturbance then,
as natural as avalanche.
Now, I bite my tongue
when I detrain to visit an adult child.
“Disturb”: what do you now mean, my once life-line,
my directive erstwhile?
* Stealing *
Speaking of T. S. Eliot: although he is credited with the saying, “Good poets borrow and great poets steal,” his exact words are more useful:
One of the surest of tests [of merit] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
A few classic examples arrive from “talking back”: Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Sir Walter Raleigh’s reply, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”; Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”; and Anthony Hecht’s “Dover Bitch.” So why not join the canonical crowd? At the risk of showing up as immature:
After Frost’s Design
An Argiope strung its zigzag in our weeds,
minute but sturdy enough for rain
followed by a steady breeze—
I kept checking on its condition.
Abandoning its torn threads at dusk,
trusting what the bones trust as axis,
I imagined weaving in the dark—
what the nerves realize as access
among those same bitter leaves and sour stalks
to repair a daughter’s rancor.
I searched for the spider after breakfast
in the sparkling, quieted air
to find the strict design restrung
without anger or passion.
The stealing impulse can travel from a close reading to the question, “How did Robert Frost do that?” This is an assignment I give my grad students. Here is a response by Brian Matta to a poem by Dickinson and an essay by Helen Vendler on the same poem:
In Vendler’s reading of #340, she describes how Dickinson keeps using the word “and.” “Here there are twelve “and’s”. . . And there are words and phrases that imply “and” as well: “treading-treading. . . .” I am interested in how Dickinson’s use of “and” grew throughout the poem until the final stanza where each line begins with “and.” My take-away, my own writing prompt, is to use a word sparingly at first then use it over and over again to create an effect of anxiety or paranoia or some other intense emotional response.
The possibilities of creative theft are numerous and go way beyond writing a poem dedicated to another writer or opening with an epigraph. Donald Justice often tipped his hat to another poet: “Variations on a Text by Vallejo,” “Sestina on Six Words by Weldon Kees,” and “In Memory of the Unknown Poet, Robert Boardman Vaughn.” Marianne Moore quoted wildly from disparate sources that were fantastically annotated. A good handbook, so to speak, is Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems, Brown and Schechter, editors (Everyman Pocket Poets).
* Monostich *
A “low stakes” exercise is good in any season. For a monostich (or haiku for that matter), try journaling, then look for a curious line or two.
June 18. Here in Brooklyn, the Dutch elms along the avenue are shaggy and white and I feel freed from the rooms of winter. Still, with bits of ice and mud on the sidewalk this morning, I need to watch my step. In doing so, I notice a number of dead birds—so young they have no feathers—crushed by passersby. So much for a welcome walk.
[Isolate a bit of text] with bits of ice and mud on the sidewalk this morning, I need to watch my step. In doing so, I notice a number of dead birds—so young they have no feathers—crushed by passersby.
[Revise] A bird, so newborn it has no feathers, lies crushed by a passerby on her spring walk.
* Haibun *
The above journal could also be revised into a haibun.
June 18. Here in Brooklyn, the Dutch elms along the avenue are shaggy and white and I feel freed from the rooms of winter. Still, with bits of ice and mud on the sidewalk this morning, I watch my step.
a newborn bird
crushed underfoot by a passerby
an early spring walk
Even on an exhilarating spring morning, there are things I do not want to see.
* Zuihitsu: list configuration *
The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon was a cult classic for the Beats. The aristocratic lady from the turn of tenth-century Japan was utterly subjective and seemingly spontaneous (one can revise, say, the order of the list and still hold on to a feeling of spontaneity). These are two requirements for this quintessential Japanese genre. What follows is a translation and example. And by the way, even if a list poem doesn’t hit home, an “item” on the list can become a working title and prompt more writing.
[Things that make one’s stomach churn]
by Sei Shōnagon
the reverse side of a brocade
the inside of a cat’s ear
newborn mice, hairless and pink, squirming from their nest
the seams of an as-yet-unlined leather robe
a dingy dark recess
a homely woman tending to her sizable brood
a woman who has been sick for a spell—she must strike her lover,
especially if he is not that caring toward her, as distasteful
Things that Give an Unclean Feeling
Strands of hair anywhere in the kitchen
Nail clippings anywhere. Especially disgusting when someone clips nails in the subway. Even the sound. Also in the subway, long hair brushing against my arm.
I still feel nauseous when I use a certain soap that I used when I had morning sickness and didn’t know I was pregnant. (Yardley lavender?)
Grade school spaghetti sauce
Seeing the president’s comb-over blown up in the wind. It’s symbolic of his whole administration—more than unbecoming, there’s a kind of deceit. As if a sleight of hand.
He was much younger and his jacket rank with cigarette smoke, a smell I’d found foul then came to love. Then again, I couldn’t appreciate his annoyance with callouses on my heel. Until he stroked my instep at a Japanese restaurant. Looking back these decades, it’s sad that I did not appreciate such ardor.
(Unlike Sei Shonagon, I actually like the inside seam of clothes—admittedly a fashion with some designers so my penchant isn’t unique. Often enough, I wear a shirt inside out just for that eccentric appearance.)
subway pole, subway turnstiles, but also shoelaces (remember the character in The Sopranos?)
Children in cages—well, nothing can be compared to this. Such an abomination doesn’t belong on any list.
The word magnolia. Not the word rancor.
For more on the zuihitsu, see the Sei Shōnagon collection.
* Senryu *
The poor haiku! Much of what non-Japanese write is really senryu, the haiku’s delightfully vulgar cousin. While the haiku should possess a reference to nature and a pivot (analogous to a volta), the senryu is really a snapshot of human nature. Here’s a comparison. (You will notice below that I don’t maintain the seventeen syllabic count because Japanese and English are so extraordinarily different.)
Haiku by Basho
translated by William George Aston, 1899
On a withered branch
a Crow is sitting
This Autumn eve.
Senryu
wriggling paws
the dog dreams of chasing her tail:
my man shoots zombies
* Translation *
I have my students—and therefore myself—use the The Classic Tradition of Haiku by Faubion Bowers (Dover Editions) because it often presents several translations of the same poem. The footnotes are super. Romanized Japanese is included (alas, there’s no transliteration but that’s not difficult to find online.) From these, one can compose an attempt, as I have with the classic above. Poets who are also committed translators will tell you that there’s nothing like translating to get the creative juices flowing. Here is my attempt at the same Basho haiku:
Haiku by Basho
on a scabby branch
a rook alights
autumn’s nightfall
* Cento *
Search engines were made for centos, the form where one can revel in “stealing” lines by writers whom one adores. Here is one using lines by both Brownings.
A Marriage
a cento with lines from Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning
The thoughts, called bees, stung me to festering
The bee sucked in by the hyacinth
The bee that once did suck thee
The bee goes singing to her groom
As on a bee shut in a crystalline
As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids again.
* Lesser-Known Forms Such as the Bouts-Rimés *
There are unfamiliar forms out there. Thanks to an issue of Court Green, I “discovered” this French parlor game of sorts. If the words rhyme, then there’s also a pattern. For example: rise, train, cries, chain, etc.
Because the form reminded me of a Chinese form, Cípái 詞牌, that uses a borrowed set of end-line words, I tried mash-up. For the following, I used end words from Emily Dickinson’s poem #1108: House, death, industries, earth, heart, way, again, eternity.
After Emily’s #1108
A snail intimates the body as a House
accreting Impertinence until its death—
Architecture, among its tended industries
as well, with tooth-like tongue, questioning earth—
without original Blueprint what is fixed by heart?
Without globe, how to find one’s way
trusting tentacle, foot and slime again and again,
to faith in a Calcium eternity—
* New Takes on Given Forms *
There are moments when a line in a draft just wants to be repeated (maybe in the future I’ll try “Even in spring, I’d prefer not to see” and “A bird so new it has no feathers”). Or a line in an article wants to be heard repeatedly. This is when I cut-and-paste together a form such as the villanelle. I’ve been playing around with an old handbook on beekeeping, enamored as I am of scientific diction. Let’s call the borrowed lines, found-lines.
Illustrated Desire
a villanelle employing lines from Illustrations
Natural queen cell inserted in a comb
A slatted fence makes a good windbreak
Shaking part of the bees directly on the frames
Brood frame fitted with wired foundation
As the lid is raised a few puffs of smoke are desirable
Natural queen cell inserted in a comb
Raising a frame for examination
Removing queen in cage from package
Shaking part of the bees directly on the frames
Section comb honey wrapped in cellophane
A comb ravaged by the work of the wax moth
Natural queen cell inserted in a comb
The telltale work of a drone-laying queen
Uncapping knives
Shaking part of the bees directly on the frames
*List of Illustrations*
Colonies of bees packed in tarpaper for winter
Natural queen cell inserted in a comb
Brood from box hive transferred into a frame
Source and Resource
a triolet
Rows of artificially produced queen cells
Extracted honey, bottled and labeled
Pussy willows are an early pollen source
Rows of artificially produced queen cells
A typical western apiary arranged in rows
Portion of comb containing larvae dead from American foul-brood
Rows of artificially produced queen cells
Extracted honey, bottled and labeled
* Forms *
Then again, there’s always the tried-and-true.
For Eunice in Gambier
a triolet
Eunice, I envy you your hummingbird,
And you, my firefly!
Without either, we’d feel bored!
Eunice, yes, I envy your hummingbirds—
Envy, a rapture-filled abode:
One hums, one fires (both an eventual pyre).
Eunice, you envy my hummings and birds!
And I, your fires that fly!
Here’s to a fruitful summer!
