I hope you’re enjoying Barbara’s prompts as much as I am. Day 19 prompt is about the narrator. Who can be anyone. The first person voice is the pov. Anyway the first person voice is God in what I wrote. Between the monster and God I choose God.
For years my customary absence would
be replaced by the presence of others,
or other things–trivial pursuits, fresh
adventures, the weather changes.
But this spring you would be brought
to me, to be baptized.
There had been a windstorm.
You found me cleaving to
the hawthorn, in a dream,
suddenly within range, and ran
to a creek that ran beside
the road, water running through
your fingers. Like a stream, things being
eclipsed out as you got older.
Day 16 prompt is a lesson on abstraction. Make an abstraction (eg love, freedom, friendship, whatever) particular and concrete, and do not even refer to the abstract word you have in mind, in your poem. Refer to it only in the title.
We have about 13 days left in April. Step on your writing game will ya?!
Presience
What was that, she’d asked, in playfulness.
It was a gesture of sorts. When I saw her,
she was always providing, cooking
a meal, carrying on, not hemmed in.
But all that had dissolved in a day,
when she wanted out. Perhaps
she’d already gone to immerse
in the river of Lethe. She’d looked out
over the hill, into the city she’d loved,
could not leave. And the other one,
she would not know, but nay.
She would not live out there,
grey, for the rest of her days.
We’re already done with the second week of April. Barbara’s Day 13 prompt is to tell someone’s secret in thirteen lines. It would be a telling prompt. What is the thing that needed telling? It’s hard because it’s buried in the lines. There’s no telling.
A Mended Crack
I wondered if it was something she needed
to go through, to save herself?
All that roaring and danger for
a mended crack. He was lacking, too much
a materialist. She would like to hoist
herself up, to God, to provide.
With luck it could all be managed.
She would be calm and reckless.
With distance she had achieved
a kind of willpower. Like a winter pudding she ate,
relished, till it was coming to an end.
Not a negligible truth–it would wrap all
around her like the smell of lilacs.
Barbara’s Day 9 prompt is to write a poem using special knowledge. Do you have special knowledge? Or knowledge special to you? It’s easier to go with the latter, I feel. Here’s the link.
If you’re feeling bleary eyed already about this daily writing habit, you don’t really have to write daily. Just one in a couple of days would be fine too. That’s what I tell myself. You should smell the flowers first then write about them. Conversely you could also read about the flowers first and then go find them to smell. That means when you read you’re sent on a quest. And when you write, then the quest is related to poetry. Bingo!
Of Azaleas, Rhododendrons and Magnolias
Delving deeper, into azaleas,
rhododendrons and magnolias—
learning what my Chinese name meant
so late in life, romantic and passionate—
you would have knowledge special to you;
knowledge imbued you with something
to hold on to in a fragmented world,
might lead you to think,
isn’t the universe meant to teach you
something; as you learned more
wouldn’t you be more steeped
in the world you find yourself in,
wouldn’t you have thoughts
like a beacon shining a light
on your consciousness, and
wouldn’t you, steadily reading, long
to smell their perfumed notes?
That would be man, whose physical
self having fallen off from
an astral plane, would change
with time—shape-shifting from public
to private and to the secret presence,
whose tone, whose depth,
whose light would change
in a mere whisper.
Whose range would sometimes come
out in language, like a poet using
language as a compass
to find God, or meaning,
who is “not all there”,
whose diffidence,
whose jauntiness, is all
concealment, whose connection to
the stars an uninhibition, is
a longing, and a sanction.
Use that as the title, the first line, the ending, the springboard. Altered or as is.
I chose one and used it as the title.
Thank you, my heart
Continuous heat relieved by no rain.
We went out for nourishing soup,
had to burrow in the heat.
We ducked into the aircon
and then once stepped out the
cold would dissipate like flour
coming apart in your hands.
There is a gulf between us, not
least the weather, though that’d helped
with the crops of radishes, leaf
lettuces, onions and bok choy.
All the green and spring-like
full of ordinary delights.
Grateful pleasures were meant to tell.
I watched the New Jersey earthquake
that rocked your world.
Strange and rare it seemed
and no lightness of heart.
An emptiness and confusion
sifting through us like forebodings.
Crystallized into ease and hope.
This is a Day 4 Prompt. It’s called the Name Game. Barbara wants us to go to Poetry Foundation and find a title that somehow attracts us. And come up with a poem to match the title. Interesting game.
Your Fade-out is a Tiny Philosophy But No Less True for That
To the woman in the green patterned bralette,
Adidas pants with vertical grommets
and matchy green socks peeking out
of your gold sneakers, I say,
your intense devotion to colors
and color blocking skills
is admirable. It shows an insidious
choice, which only some people might notice,
and some might say, an observation not deserving
mention, definitely not a ground for poetry.
Yet isn’t poetry a useful handle for an aesthetic
approach to life’s pleasures?
Or should we constantly look toward
horses feeding, or tortoiseshell cats,
or blackthorns, or holly trees?
I’ll let nature poets have their day.
Weakening at the sight of colors,
made up in the fabric of everyday lives,
not faded but vibrant, stylized,
that can be solace, and poetry yet.
Barbara’s Quickly prompt site (https://imprompt.wordpress.com/) gave us the idea of two things, the thing of which you decide for yourself. Two. A quick trick is to put two and two together. In my case, it’s love and hope, lilies and narcissus.
Are you writing to prompts yet? I know you are. It’s happening. Yay!
Aspiration
She traipsed over to the herbaceous border
which was just by the alfresco table,
cutting off the stems of some flowers to
put in glass vases. I liked watching that.
Often the distant chimes of a church
accompanying a wedding or a service.
Once she had cried–it was so beautiful—
the real reason of which I had forgotten.
They’d host parties out in the garden
or just beyond the pergolas inside the
greenhouse. Her dachshunds which she called
sausage dogs, would grope in the mud
–she’d bathed and groomed them to perfection–
or simply choose a sunbathing spot to lay.
There would be a cake made by hand in a stand,
a chantilly cake with seasonal fruit. Could this be
my little version of heaven to claim, with my man,
clad in a gillet, festooned in love and hope,
climbing into a dark green Land Rover Defender
as I roamed between the narcissus and the lilies?
First, the obvious. It’s National Poetry Month. This year I’m geared up and raring. A poet friend said it’s the season for resurrections, revivifications.
Second, the announcement. Red Wolf Editions is seeking submissions for a prompt-based anthology. Submissions open 1 April to 30 June 2024, with the anthology targetted for release in July 2024.
For now, it’s pretty much a ghost concept. It’s in the future. While we do not know what’s in the future, the future is definitely coming. But the future is also now, since you poets will be writing to prompts in the month of April, revise and submit by June 2024. Hope that’s happening. You can write to prompts from any source or multiple prompts from multiple sites. Clearly include the prompts and their sources.
Another poet friend just wished me “interesting and blossom-like entries”. It is Spring after all. I just wrote my first prompt-based poem below. The prompt came from Barbara Young, a talented member of our online poetry community. I hope you write along and submit to redwolfeditions. While the contents are presently empty, the title and book cover is already conceived, The World of Prompts. Talk about a leap of faith.
Time had come to move the body in new ways, achieve different postures. Bend it, crook it, swing it upward like a toppled cedar tree in a storm hoisted upright by a force. Oh, if I had that kind of power! The ruinous would sob and shake, but they would be far away. An obelisk had been erected for the war dead. You kept your eyes on their gravestones and read their names. Ah, the unknown soldier, whose name’s effaced, a stone meaning somebody.
The living behaved sometimes like Hamlet. Sometimes, to be or not to be, is the question when you ran out of ideas. Yet in my long life I recall so many firsts– at first uncertain and pathetic moves; then you practice daily till you make it look easy and great. By then your feet would’ve gotten wet.
Feet getting wet is the prompt guys! Heh heh. Snuck in ‘cedar’ from NaPoWriMo prompt site.
And if you’re not the prompt sort of poet, then you may submit to Red Wolf’s other multi-author anthology, called Wondrous Leaflets. The details are in the site.
The world is transitioning to one where AI is all pervasive. Is AI robot intelligence superior to human intelligence? Yes and no, I think. AI is able to generate a full length poem in a matter of seconds. That we cannot beat. It fulfills all the criteria of a poem but still lacks the human spark, the human difference. Below is a poem written by Chat GPT. I had to edit the poem because it had elements that weren’t to my liking. That said I think AI can write better and even better poems with time. It is learning. How do we poets stay one step ahead? To write poems that aren’t in the mold but unique and unpredictable.
What do you think?
And here’s the poem I wrote to the prompt, ‘pine’.
It was the sort of day when the air was getting
cold, dark clouds overhanging.
But do you know, every day I feel lucky
you were within my reach
where once you weren’t, weren’t;
you were in outer space,
out of bounds, out of frame.
You forgot my name, had to pry that open
along with all other things.
And you telling me you don’t want
to miss a thing. Like how the sun setting
in the horizon made the sky irresistible.
And me standing amongst the pine trees
feeling golden–the shocking density of life in
nature’s seeping smells, its yellow shapes–
you sleeping with mouth ajar,
overcome by a queer feeling–
how these things happen.
Red Wolf Prompts 