Prompt: On the Anniversary of My Death

W.S. Merwin died on March 15, 2019. He died at home at the age of 91, in the house he built, among the thousands of palms he planted. In 1976, Merwin moved to Hawaii to study with Robert Aitken, a Zen Buddhist teacher. He married Paula Dunaway, in 1983, and settled on Maui. For over 40 years, they lived in a home that William designed and helped build, surrounded by acres of land once devastated and depleted from years of erosion, logging and toxic agricultural practices. Together, the Merwins painstakingly restored the land into one of the most comprehensive palm gardens in the world.

On the first anniversary of his death, I posted here a poem by Merwin titled "For the Anniversary of My Death" (from his collection The Second Four Books of Poems  

The poem begins: 

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day   

When the last fires will wave to me...

I found the idea in Merwin's poem of writing a poem that imagines what you would have to say on the anniversary of your death unique. It sounds like a depressing idea but there is the wonderful optimism in the poem of having passed that day every year without knowing it. 

Today might be the anniversary of my death, and considering that possibility, perhaps I should also be "bowing not knowing to what."

I have this quote on a card over my writing desk.

On the last day of the world

I would want to plant a tree

– W.S. Merwin

This month's writing prompt is to write a poem for the anniversary of your death. It could be the first anniversary or any year after. Who is the intended audience?  I think the prompt is more open to possibilities than the title might suggest at first. It could even be humorous.

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Poetry and Audience

When I read an entry on The Writer's Almanac about poet Ted Kooser, I was struck by this quote:

"I believe that writers write for perceived communities, and that if you are a lifelong professor of English, it's quite likely that you will write poems that your colleagues would like; that is, poems that will engage that community. I worked every day with people who didn't read poetry, who hadn't read it since they were in high school, and I wanted to write for them."

Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa in 1939 and says he started writing poetry seriously as a teenager. Though he wanted to be a writer, when he flunked out of graduate school he took the first job he was offered. It was at a life insurance company, and he worked there for 35 years. 

Though I was struck with his idea about the community you have in mind when you write, the more I thought about it the less valid it seemed that you write for the community you work or live within.

Another insurance company poet is Wallace Stevens. His poems do not seem to be written for people who hadn't read poetry since high school but more for that college professor.

Billy Collins was an English professor for his career, but his poems always seem to appeal to a wide audience (and maybe less so to those professors).

But the theory works for Kooser whose poetry I really enjoy - even though I spent my life in academia. Kooser's poetry is usually simple and straightforward. 

In his poem "Student," I know very well this student he is watching.

He’s got his baseball cap on

backward as up he crawls, out of the froth

of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,

and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

And it is easy for me to envision the "Four Secretaries" in his insurance company office.

Kooser took an approach to his writing practice that I know matches that of other writers - up early and writing before getting dressed and out to a non-poetic job. It worked for him well. By the time he retired in 1999, Kooser had published seven books of poetry, and he continued to write every morning. In 2004, he got a totally surprising phone call informing him that he had been chosen as poet laureate of the United States. As the poet laureate, he started a free weekly column for newspapers called "American Life in Poetry" that hoped to put a poem into the life of people who didn't typically pick up books of poems.

In a craft book Kooser wrote, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, he talks about the relationship between poet and reader, which he believes is poetry’s ultimate purpose - to reach other people and touch their hearts.

Certainly, all writers have an audience in mind when they write. For my own writing - and I don't think I am at all unique in this - my audience is myself. I want to write the kind of poem that I would enjoy reading. 

Who do you think the audience is for your writing?

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National Poetry Month 2021

The Academy of American Poets celebrates the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Month.

 

Each April, the Academy offers activities, initiatives, and resources so that anyone can join in National Poetry Month online and at home:

• Order a free official 2021 National Poetry Month poster (shown above) featuring lines by Joy Harjo
• Read about 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month online and at home and also
• 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month in the virtual classroom and\
• Encourage students in grades 5 - 12 to participate in the 2021 Dear Poet Project 
• Join the Academy of American Poets for its first-ever virtual Poetry & the Creative Mind gala on April 29
• Find online poetry readings and events on our Poetry Near You calendar, and add your own 
• Sign up for Poem-a-Day and enjoy a free daily poem in your inbox, this month curated by award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield
• Follow the thousands of celebrations taking place on social media with the official hashtag #NationalPoetryMonth and follow the Academy of American Poets on Twitter and Instagram @POETSorg
• Share a #pocketpoem on Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 29

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Prompt: Metonymy and Synecdoche

Image by M. Maggs

This month we are looking at two famous poets and two similar and often confused literary terms.

Carl Sandburg was born in 1878 and died in 1967. He was a very American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as a major figure in contemporary literature, especially for his poetry, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed broad appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because his plain language and the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life.

I was introduced to Sandburg in school with some of his most anthologized poems, including "Fog" which we use as a model for this prompt.

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri and was a contemporary of Sandburg, though they are not very similar (and I suspect they were not friends). He moved to England and became a British subject in 1927. He wrote widely from The Waste Land and Four Quartets to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (which was the basis of the Broadway show Cats) as well as prose, and works of drama. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. T.S. Eliot died in 1965.

I first encountered Eliot in college. As much as I had liked Sandburg's simple poems, I fell under the spell of Eliot and the idea that poetry should be complex and not easily understood on that first reading. My college copy of Four Quartets is full of margin notes about things I had to research to understand.

My taste in poetry and my own poetry today is probably closer to Sandburg than Eliot. It might seem that pairing them is unlikely but this month we are doing that by figurative language and one image.

Figurative language is essential in poetry. Ezra Pound said that his fear with modern poetry that it was becoming "prose with line breaks." He was not a fan of narrative poetry that could be read like prose with complete sentences and little or no figurative language.

Metonymy is often confused with synecdoche. These literary devices are similar but can be differentiated. 

Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to signify the whole. To ask for someone’s “hand” in marriage of course means to ask the whole person. "Boots on the ground" signifies soldiers. When they ask at checkout "Paper or plastic?" they mean the type of bag made from that material. The "stars and stripes" signifies the entire U.S. flag. "Suits" can mean people in business. "All hands on deck, I see a sails" uses two synecdoches.

Metonymy is a figure of speech in which one word is used to replace another to which it is closely linked, but, unlike synecdoche, it is not a part of the word or idea it represents.

Shakespeare writes “lend me your ears,” and "ears” are not meants as a synecdoche for people but as a substitute for “attention.” “O, for a draught of vintage!” write Keats’s in “Ode to Nightingale,” with “vintage” standing in for “wine.”  A very metonymy-heavy sentence is "The press got wind that the feds were investigating management in Hollywood.

In our two model poems - Sandburg's short poem "Fog" and an excerpt (stanza 3) from Eliot's long poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" - the poets use metonymy and also use the same image of a personified (or cat-ified) fog.

For our April prompt, we ask you to write a poem based on a central image that uses metonymy. If you wrote a poem about "cradle to grave" you would have a double metonymy. If you decide the central image needs to be a synecdoche - perhaps about your "lead foot" - that's also fine.

You might even want to consider building upon these poets' use of fog since it can also mean, figuratively, unable to think clearly as in "she was foggy with sleep" or indistinctly expressed, as in "Exactly what Eliot meant is still foggy."

    

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Spring and All

Spring slipped into place yesterday morning. Did you feel it? Perhaps not, since there is a good chance that where you are now doesn't look or feel like spring. In my neighborhood, it still looks like winter but for a few buds on trees or shoots poking out of the muddy ground. Of course, you might be south of me and it looks like summer, or far north where winter still reigns. Still, the universe tells us that in the Northern Hemisphere will begin on March 20 and ends on June 20 and by that last day of spring, it will probably look and feel like summer here. 

In William Carlos Williams' poem, "Spring and All," the opening is rather ominous. 

By the road to the contagious hospital

under the surge of the blue

mottled clouds driven from the

northeast—a cold wind.

Williams wrote the poem not long after T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," was published. Eliot's poem also opens with a not-so-favorable view of early spring.

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Eliot goes on to use an image of winter that is not typical: 

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

When we brought my first son home from the hospital, it was the first day of spring and the daffodils, crocuses, and wood hyacinths were covered with snow.  Spring is a fickled season.

In literature and mythology, spring usually concerns themes of rebirth and renewal with symbols from the season. Spring also refers to love, hope, youth and growth. The seasonal symbolism for this period may also allude to religious celebrations such as Passover or Easter.

The Vernal Equinox: "vernal" translates to “new” or “fresh” and equinox comes from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night). The time of daylight between sunrise and sunset has been growing slightly longer each day since the Winter Solstice in December. Of course, we messed with the celestial plan last weekend with Daylight Saving Time.

I still try to mark the vernal equinox as it has been seen for centuries as a turning point. It is not the only turning point, but daylight does defeat darkness, and that is a reason to celebrate.

Soon, I hope the only things like snowfall here will the storm of blossoms from cherry and other spring-blooming trees.

A version of this post first appeared at Weekends in Paradelle.  

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Blake's Unanswered Questions

art print of Blake's The Number of The Beast is 666

Last month, while thinking about a new prompt, I considered using "The Tyger" as a model poem. It might be the most famous poem written by William Blake, though "The Lamb" and "Jerusalem" are also contenders. The opening line, "Tyger Tyger, burning bright" is among the most famous opening lines in English poetry.

It turns out that I have already used "The Tyger" as a prompt about questions since the poem is a series of questions, as is "The Lamb."

Little Lamb who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

The poem appeared in Blake’s 1794 volume Songs of Experience, which complemented his earlier collection, Songs of Innocence. I was taught that the poem was a kind of answer to the earlier "The Lamb." 

"The Tyger" is a series of questions as the speaker wonders about a creator who would make something so fearsome. The tiger is "burning bright" and its creator is a kind of blacksmith.

In the fifth stanza, Blake brings in the "stars" which I have always associated with both astrology and destiny.

Blake seems to ask why this all-loving God made such a fearsome animal? "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"

"The Tyger" is in Blake’s Songs of Experience, and is seen as a complement to the earlier Songs of Innocence with its innocent "The Lamb." Was Blake reconsidering the innocence of the world?

Scan of a plate printed by William Blake from Songs of Experience (1794)
British Museum, Public Domain via Wikimedia

     

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Prompt: Toys

Dolls by ErikaWittlieb

I have a new granddaughter and so I now have an excuse to play again with toys. It would be the rare adult who doesn't have at least a few strong emotional attachments to some childhood toys. Although I am a collector of things, I have very few toys from my childhood. There were some that survived to be toys for my two sons - such as my Matchbox cars - but the toys I have the fondest memories of have vanished - a stuffed lamb and dog, my "medical bag" for playing doctor (often on that lamb and dog).

Having your own children or grandchildren is a wonderful excuse to shop in toy stores, buy toys (perhaps ones you want more than the child) and play again.

My favorite toy poem is "Kinky" the title poem from Denise Duhamel's collection Kinky (Orchises Press, 1997). I thought of her poem recently after reading that Mister Potatohead is no longer a "mister." Now he can be Mr., Mrs., Ms. or whatever combination you want. Of course, it's not like kids haven't already playing gender games with this and other toys.

 In Duhamel's poem, Barbie and Ken dolls are brought to life and: 

...decide to exchange heads.

Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin 

over Ken's bulging neck socket. 

It's not something I didn't see my older sister do with her dolls. It even shows up in the Toy Story film series both as villains who make hybrid dolls and as those hybrids come to life. Duhamel's dolls don't go in the direction of evil but rather to the kinky side.

The two dolls chase each other around the orange Country Camper 

unsure what they'll do when they're within touching distance. 

Ken wants to feel Barbie's toes between his lips, 

take off one of her legs and force his whole arm inside her.

You don't have to tell us (maybe tell your therapist) about any strange fetishes you may have acted out with your dolls or action figures, but this Barbie and Ken (who Duhamel reminds us have "only the vaguest suggestion of genitals") finally get to act out some of their repressed feelings.

Soon Barbie was begging Ken 

to try on her spandex miniskirt. She showed him how 

to pivot as though he was on a runway. Ken begged 

to tie Barbie onto his yellow surfboard and spin her 

on the kitchen table until she grew dizzy. Anything,

anything, they both said to the other's requests,

their mirrored desires bubbling from the most unlikely places.

But our writing prompt this month is not necessarily dolls or anything kinky but rather simply TOYS. What are your memories of them? What is your current connection to them? How did they fuel your young and now adult imagination?

Submission Deadline: March 31, 2021.  Please read our submission guidelines.

read more poems by Denise Duhamel

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