A Poetry Prompt from Kurt Vonnegut

The doodle that Vonnegut sometimes used as a signature,
as with the letter below. His actual signature is that mess that
is the ear and hair on the doodle.

In this reply to a high school class, Kurt Vonnegut gives a poetry prompt that you might want to try. It's not one that would work well for Poets Online, but it makes a good point about the rewards of writing poetry.

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don't make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you're Count Dracula.

Here's an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don't do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don't tell anybody what you're doing. Don't show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals [sic]. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!
Kurt Vonnegut

via  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/14/kurt-vonnegut-xavier-letter_n_4964532.html

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Prompt: Conversation

Whenever our call for submissions involves formal poetry, submissions decrease. I understand that. Forms - villanelles, sonnets, sestinas et al - can be difficult. They can also remind some poets of the kind of poetry that was pushed upon them in their early schooling and might have turned them off from reading and writing poetry. But there are other forms for poems that are far less "formal."

I was reading “Walking Home” from Magdalene by Marie Howe and it struck me that the poem is a conversation. It lacks the punctuation of dialogue but maintains the form.

This is the kind of poem that will sometimes make a reader ask "How is this a poem and not just a chunk of prose lacking punctuation?"   A fair question.

I suspect that this conversation happened to Marie Howe and her daughter. Is it an exact transcription, a paraphrase or is it a poet's version of a conversation recalled. I think it is the latter. The opening "Everything dies" is a good poem opening but the poet doesn't recall how that came up as the topic of conversation. Was it something they saw on their walk?

The tone of the poem seems light, with laughter and joking, but the topic is one of the classic big and serious themes - death. If you're a reader of Howe's poems, you know that life and death are very much a part of her themes.

This month's call for submissions is simply a poem that is a conversation. How you format the dialogue, how much narration and commentary is contained and the topic or theme is up to you.

Though it is difficult to draw a clear line between this kind of prose and poetry, there are clearly poetic elements that can be employed that separate what you write from a prose passage.

The submission deadline for our September issue is August 31, 2023. Hope to read your conversation. 

   

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