For today's interaction, a series of prompts inspired by the first section of Phillip B. William's Thief In The Interior, a book which I picked up purely because it had cover art by one of my favorite artists: James Jean, but which has become one of my favorite collections of poetry. Williams messes with forms in truly inspired ways while still making great, accessible poems. I'm not sure, yet, if this would be the first book I'd present to a Poetry 101 class, but it would definitely be one I taught early in the semester to get people into enjoying poetry, and would reference frequently near the end of the semester when I tried to inspire final projects. Bound: Write a poem with your vernacular: how you, personally, speak. Don’t try and model your speech after a movie, or a writer you like, or how you imagine other people hear you, use your own unfettered grammar, without stylizing spelling. Allow yourself to interrupt yourself, make an incomplete thought if you would make an incomplete statement in conversation. The subject can be anything you care about or would talk about with friends, or it could be you trying to explain yourself to someone who communicates differently.
Can I be only one thing at once? Embrace your own dichotomy, and your inherent contradictions. This is not a Who I Want To Be/Who I Really Am exercise. This is a Who I Am Sometimes Clashes With Who I Am exercise. How do you balance your own opposing desires or actions? Do you? Black Witch Moth: When most people approach nature poems, they merely report what’s around them. Many of us have seen wind through grass, water streaming over rocks, a fucken flower growing between cracks in a fucken sidewalk. So what? Write about something visual in your environment (which does not have to be a pretty lake, or a graveyard, or some distant mountain range) and explain why we should give a fuck about it. You don’t have to say “There is a graffiti mural on this wall that I love. Here is why.” You can point out the mural and write about something else in your life, or in the news that you relate to the mural. Maybe the flower growing through rocks inspires other writers to consider how something beautiful can grow in an unexpected place, but to you, it evokes a feeling of despair that there aren’t any other flowers around to hang out with, and it seems as though it will be inevitably crushed. Let the earth take in the boy as it with the bull. Ignus Fatuus: Write a poem about the way you love, without mentioning a specific person you love. Specific bitterness or fond individual memories have no place in this poem. It’s not who you love, it’s how you love. If it has gone right for you, how did you learn to allow it to go right? If it hasn’t yet gone right for you, how does it always seem to go wrong. Don’t blame the other person (even if it’s totally their fault), find a behavior or recurring action of yours that plays a part in things going right or wrong for you. This about the way you love, not the way others are loved by you. Imitate the varied stars that/have failed to guide us; now imitate everything/beneath the stars First Words: What deliberately dangerous thing have you done in your life? Nothing as abstract as “loving someone imperfect” or “being real with the people I love”, we’re talking skydiving into crocodile-infested waters, putting a fork in an electrical socket. Something that gets the adrenaline pumping that has a reasonable chance of serious physical injury or death. Why did you do it? thunder’s umbrage: using as few words as possible, personify the weather in a way you haven’t encountered before Then As Proof The Land: For me, the word spiders actually means good luck to me. I don’t mean that when someone goes on a journey, I wish them spiders (though I may start doing that), I mean that when I talk about spiders, I am not talking about fear or entrapment, which some people associate with them, I am talking about how, usually, when I notice spiders in unusual places, something positive then happens in my life. So I might use the verb spiders instead of portend. What image or word means something particular to you that isn’t inherent in its definition? Because when I write “tree” I mean fire/of autumn. Inhertance: Spinning Noose Clears Its Throat: Write a poem where the first word is also the last word. Make sure it is a thematically necessary word to your poem. I am leery of shape poems. It is very rare that they transcend their gimmick. Phillip B William’s example here far transcends gimmick. If you can, write a shape poem that will convince me that Williams isn’t the only genius to ever pull this off. As far as I’m concerned, freedom/Desires no promise. Simply feet, strange horizons. Vision In Which The Final Blackbird Disappears: When a person dies or becomes victim of major trauma, people who know that person often seek to validate the person’s existence by saying things like she was so smart, she could have been a doctor or he had such a great heart, he would have made a wonderful teacher without taking into account that the person probably didn’t want to be either of those things. So often, we speak about people we don’t know as well as we imagine. Have you ever heard someone talk about your desires or ability in ways that make you uncomfortable? Using third person, explain the difference between the person they have made you out to be and the person you feel you are. his hands a chorus of heat and recoil Inheritance: The Force Of Aperture: Using a photograph, audio, or video as a starting point, explain how your country of birth is dangerous to you. Did aesthetes go blind when the myths looked back? God As Failed Figuration: Portray a single image in a poem. Let this one moment in time signify an important belief you have. Keep the poem as short as possible. Inheritance: Anthem: Take a story that’s important to you. A specific memory. Write two poems: one with lot of imagery, word-play, and metaphor; the other a straight-forward account of what happened to you using no hyperbole or poetic devices. Myth does not/radiate from the target,/rather the target calls/myth to its core Sonnet With A Cut Wrist And Flies: Deconstruct a poetic form. Make it your own. from which all darkness was made legible A Spray Of Feathers, Black: This poem is a sonnet, a terza-rima, and an anagram because Phillip B Williams doesn’t fuck around when he writes in form. Blend (don’t Frankenstein, blend) two or more poetic forms into your own creation. Look how a lilt of dust is built to serve/sits on the lips like a song with no verse Prayer: Everybody wants prayer to heal the sick, help feed their greedy desires, enact vengeance. Maaaaaan, ain’t no god got time for all those boring prayers. Prayer for something specifically yours. A series of things you don’t think anybody else has thought to ask for. If there is a god answering prayers, make them laugh enough to consider granting your creative requests. Help me distinguish between approaching blizzard/and his breath against my ear Misericorde: Bees and I have an arrangement. I don’t fuck with them, they don’t fuck with me. Any time a bee or hornet or wasp shows up in my writing it’s signifying danger. Unlike the spiders mentioned earlier, this is not an unusual association to have with the sharp little bastards. The title of this poem refers to “a long, narrow sword used in medieval times to deliver the death stroke to a seriously wounded knight.” Bees won’t kill me (I hope!) but the comparison between the bee stinger and the misericorde fascinates me, and I wouldn’t have made the connection if I didn’t Google the poem’s title. Go ahead and embrace a trope-ic image in your poem but pair it with a piece of trivia not widely known. A sweet burn nets the room
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Ode To The Crossfader: Forget the looks and the money, what culture did you get handed down from your mother or father?
Practicing Fade Aways: Think of a small group of your friends when you were young. Ones where you have lost touch with most or all of them. Where have they gone? What are they doing? (Facebook or Google-stalking is encouraged for this poem. It's not creepy. It's research.) The Corner: Meeting the devil at the crossroads isn't as popular as it was in the early twentieth century. Should the Trump Residency bring it back en vogue, imagine the crowds built up at the crossroads. What are they wishing for? What do they talk about while they wait? Hustle: What habit or activity have you been using all your life in attempts to better your circumstances? Has it occasionally worked? If not, why haven't you given up on it? At The Metro: Two line poem that encompasses the surface of someone's living situation. Santayana, The Muralist: Find a mural you particularly like. Imagine a conversation between the artist and the patron who commissioned it. Did either of them achieve the message they'd hoped for? Sheman Ave, Love Poem: Imagine a situation you believe you could justify killing yourself in. Talk yourself out of it. Enter The Dragon: Write about your favorite movie where you identify with someone who isn't the main protagonist. 1989: Pick your favorite year that you lived through. Look up what the most popular song was. Rewrite it. Renegades Of Funk: Write an ode to a person or thing you encountered when you were young that you think about more than you imagined you would. Up Jump The Boogie: Ghost line: "Try to scrape the cool from the womb of you." The Poet Laureate: Write about the poet laureate of a place you traveled to and didn't like. Monster Boy: What myths (urban or otherwise) did you believe in as a kid that you've never seen disproven? Variations On A Theme By Eazy-E: Choose one of your favorite songs from when you were a teenager. Write about a time that you heard it, and use the themes of the song as much as possible. November 26, 1980: Write about a time when you had to caretake for a friend, relative, or stranger. Do not talk about your own heroics or hint at how great you are for doing it. Just focus on what put the person you are caretaking for in that position. Dream Fragment With A Shot Clock And Whistles In It: Ghost line: Blacktop Sisyphus in sweat socks. How To Split A Cold One: Was there a time you fought against a part of your inherited culture that you now celebrate? What caused you to change your position? Sin Vergüenza: Ghost line: Shame is a luxury lost on the wretched. Trouble Man: Remember a time you were leaving a place you desperately wanted to stay. Write about the limbo place between the environment you were leaving and the one you were headed towards. Allow your reactions to the physical parts of this limbo tell your feelings. Flowers For Etheridge: Apologize to a ghost as thoroughly as possible. Miralo: Someone once tried to tell you a story that broadened your mind. You focused on how it related to the person telling the story, rather than the story itself. Revisit that story or lesson as if it were told to you by someone you never need to care about. The Prisoner's Wife: Where do you first touch someone you love that you haven't seen in long enough to have felt their absence? Stolen Starlight Lounge Sutra: What act does someone want you to apologize for that you can't imagine ever wanting to apologize for? Soon I'll Be Loving You Again: Think about your favorite artist in any medium. What drives them? Round Midnight: What does your muse do while you're busy not imagining things? For The Good Times: In a world without wedding rings, what would mark a person as being in a relationship? The Juju: Ghost line: Something whispered years ago in another city. Second Line: Write a praise poem for a traditionally mournful event. Song: Objectify a place instead of a person. |
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