Prompt for the Week: 6/1/20 “My current definition of poetry...is that a poem is the artifact or the trace that is left behind and created through the poet’s movement of mind over a problem or a situation,” says Kiki Petrosino in “Between Worlds,” an interview by India Gonzalez for Poets & Writers. “When we think about these problems, language is generated, and what we are left with is a poem.” Think of a problem or issue you have been struggling with—practically or emotionally—and write a poem inspired by this idea that poetry is language left behind by work done in the [...]

The Visible World Launch Audio in a New Window BY JORIE GRAHAM I dig my hands into the absolute. The surface                                                                  breaks into shingled, grassed clusters; lifts. If I press, pick-in with fingers, pluck, I can unfold the loam. It is tender. It is a tender maneuver, hands making and unmaking promises. Diggers, forgetters. . . . A series of successive single instances . . . Frames of reference moving . . . The speed of light, down here, upthrown, in my hands: bacteria, milky roots, pilgrimages of spores, deranged                                                                  and rippling mosses. What heat is this in me [...]

Local Boys and Girls Small Town Stuff Marsden Hartley A panther sprang at the feet Of the young deer in the gray wood.  It was the lady who had sworn To love him, That rose, wraithlike From the flow of his blood. He swooned with her devotions. There was never one  More jolly and boyish Than he was, in the great beginning. Once his slippers were fastened With domesticity, He settled down Like a worn jaguar Weary with staring through bars. The caresses that were poured Over his person Staled on him.  Love had grown rancid. Have you emptied the garbage [...]

Prompt for the Week: 5/25/20 “You know who I imagine? The narrator. I imagine the narrator as an actual reader, reading what I’ve written and commenting to me about the voice and point of view,” writes Lorrie Moore in a New Yorker interview by Deborah Treisman, about the reader she imagines when writing. “You have to be true to your narrator. The narrator is the supreme reader. And narrators may quibble with the narration you’ve created for them.” Write a new version of an old story, or perhaps one you never finished, while imagining that the narrator has objections about how they [...]

Prompt for the Week: 5/18/20 “However it is encountered, beauty is always an exception, always in despite of. This is why it moves us,” writes John Berger in “The White Bird,” his 1985 essay on aesthetics. Write a personal essay that examines a moment or particular object that you found beautiful during a difficult time in your life. What was this beauty in despite of? Describe the physical and emotional environment that surrounded this object or incident. How did this beauty change your perspective on your situation or on what was going on in the wider world?" (from Poets&Writers)

The Birds Outside My Window Sing During a Pandemic Lee Herrick What we need has always been inside of us. For some—a few poets or farmers, perhaps— it’s always near the surface. Others, it’s buried. It was in our original design, though—pre-machine, pre-border, pre-pandemic. I imagine it like the light one might feel through the body before dying, a warm calm, a slow breath, a sweet rush. There is, by every measure, reason for fear, concern, a concert in the balcony of anxiety made of what has also always been inside of us: a kind of knowing that everything could break. [...]

Prompt for the Week: 5/11/20 Write in detail about a garden or natural space you remember from your childhood. (from the Brooklyn Writers Collective)

The Mothering Blackness BY MAYA ANGELOU She came home running        back to the mothering blackness        deep in the smothering blackness white tears icicle gold plains of her face        She came home running She came down creeping        here to the black arms waiting        now to the warm heart waiting rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face        She came down creeping She came home blameless        black yet as Hagar’s daughter        tall as was Sheba’s daughter threats of northern winds die on the desert’s face        She came home blameless

Prompt for the Week: 5/4/20 “The writer’s obligation in the age of X is to pay attention,” writes Wayne Koestenbaum in a recent Paris Review essay. This phrase is repeated throughout the piece as Koestenbaum floats from one memory to another and suggests that a writer should “revisit books to which we have ceased paying sufficient attention, books we have failed adequately to love” and “play with words and to keep playing with them—not to deracinate or deplete them, but to use them as vehicles for discovering history, recovering wounds, reciting damage, and awakening conscience.” Write an essay about your personal perspective on [...]

A Poem for You: Kindness Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952- Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian [...]