"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Archive for the ‘2016 Prompts’ Category

Daily Prompt :-) What We Can’t Know

Happy National Poetry Month! A beautiful poem and a prompt!

to the sea

BY ARACELIS GIRMAY

 

You who cannot hear or cannot know
the terrible intricacies of our species, our minds,
the extent to which we have done
what we have done, & yet the depth to which
we have loved
what we have
loved —
the hillside
at dawn, dark eyes
outlined with the dark
sentences of kohl,
the fūl we shared
beneath the lime tree at the general’s house
after visiting Goitom in prison for trying to leave
the country (the first time),
the apricot color of camels racing
on the floor of the world
as the fires blazed in celebration of Independence.
How dare I move into the dark space of your body
carrying my dreams, without an invitation, my dreams
wandering in ellipses, pet goats or chickens
devouring your yard & shirts.
Sea, my oblivious afterworld,
grant us entry, please, when we knock,
but do not keep us there, deliver
our flowers & himbasha bread.
Though we can’t imagine, now, what
our dead might need,
& above all can’t imagine it is over
& that they are, in fact, askless, are
needless, in fact, still hold somewhere
the smell of coffee smoking
in the house, please,
the memory of joy
fluttering like a curtain in an open window
somewhere inside the brain’s secret luster
where a woman, hands red with henna,
beats the carpet clean with the stick of a broom
& the children, in the distance, choose stones
for the competition of stones, & the summer
wears a crown of beles in her green hair & the tigadelti’s
white teeth & the beautiful bones of Massawa,
the gaping eyes & mouths of its arches
worn clean by the sea, your breath & your salt.
                                             Please, you,
being water too,
find a way into the air & then
the river & the spring
so that your waters can wash the elders,
with the medicine of the dreaming of their children,
cold & clean.

 

Make art about water, about being water.

water watercolor

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, Nature, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Daily Prompt <3 What Work Is

Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poem from a favorite poet 🙂 And a Prompt at the end!

What Work Is

by Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

Make art about what work is. 

Philip-Levine’s-Poetry-of-the-Working-Man

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Daily Prompt <3 Where the World Ends, Or Begins

Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poet!

Perhaps the World Ends Here

by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
Make art about where the world ends, or begins.
joy harjo

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Daily Prompt :-) What You Really Want

Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poem 🙂 

What Do Women Want?

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it   
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store   
with all those keys glittering in the window,   
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old   
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers   
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,   
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.   
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.   
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you   
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment   
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body   
to carry me into this world, through   
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,   
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,   
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
Make art about what you really want. 
woman red dress

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Daily Prompt :-) Memory and Mystery

The Stolen Child

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

Make art about magical mysterious creatures. Or your earliest art memory. 

stolen child

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Daily Prompt <3 Rebirth and Wonder

Happy National Poetry Month! ANDDDD it’s my birthday! So, one of the poets who turned my lil middle school girl self on to the wonder of poetry! 🙂 ❤ 

I Am Waiting

BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Make art about the rebirth of wonder. 

ferlinghetti

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Daily Prompt <3 Your Singing Place

Happy National Poetry Month! 

The Singing Place

 by Lily Long

Cold may lie the day,
         And bare of grace;
At night I slip away
         To the Singing Place.
A border of mist and doubt
         Before the gate,
And the Dancing Stars grow still
         As hushed I wait.
Then faint and far away
         I catch the beat
In broken rhythm and rhyme
         Of joyous feet,—
Lifting waves of sound
         That will rise and swell
(If the prying eyes of thought
         Break not the spell),
Rise and swell and retreat
         And fall and flee,
As over the edge of sleep
         They beckon me.
And I wait as the seaweed waits
         For the lifting tide;
To ask would be to awake,—
         To be denied.
I cloud my eyes in the mist
         That veils the hem,—
And then with a rush I am past,-—
         I am Theirs, and of Them!
And the pulsing chant swells up
         To touch the sky,
And the song is joy, is life,
         And the song am I!
The thunderous music peals
         Around, o’erhead-
The dead would awake to hear
         If there were dead;
But the life of the throbbing Sun
         Is in the song,
And we weave the world anew,
         And the Singing Throng
Fill every corner of space—-
Over the edge of sleep
         I bring but a trace
Of the chants that pulse and sweep
         In the Singing Place.
Make art about your singing place. 
birds and krishna

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Love, Music, Nature, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Daily Prompt <3 What We Love

 

Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poet, the amazing Amy Tudor. 🙂 ❤ 

What We Love

Amy Tudor
I walk my old dog down a street called Holiday,
past trees whose white bark is trimmed with silver
in the light rain of early Spring. The dog’s small heart
is failing and the vet’s said he shouldn’t be out,
but if we walk slowly he can go four or five squares 
of sidewalk, then I let him stop and rest. 

He puts his nose up into the cool air, the wind ruffling 
his black and white coat and the gray on his ears, 
the wind smoothing over him. When he can’t go 
any further (halfway past that lovely ocre-colored house 
in my neighborhood, the one that’s half-hidden by linden 
and guarded by an iron gate), I carry him against my chest.

One day a black lab stood at a driveway gate
and barked at us as we passed.  My old dog 
looked from beneath half-lidded eyes and didn’t answer, 
and finally the other dog’s owner, an older man,
came out the screen door and called the dog to come back.  
The dog rose from where he sat, a hind leg dragging 
and his right-front hitched as he moved toward the house.  
I watched it go.  The man looked at me holding 
my old dog against my chest.  The man smiled.  
He raised a hand, half-greeting, half-regret.

I should say here that I know the rules I’m breaking.
I was told years ago that poets shouldn’t waste 
their time on trivial  things like dying pets. 
“It’s been done, and done, and done to death,”
a friend once said.  And it has, sure 
as death’s been done and done and done to death. 

So I’ll make a deal with you– forget 
what I’ve said about my dog in my arms, 
his nose in the air, the wind like hands.  And forget 
the man and his black lab that limped up 
those brick back steps.  I won’t write about any of that.  
I’ll write a poem about what we love instead. 

What we love is a night and a house 
wreathed with linden, the dark kept outside 
a circle of light over an iron gate.  It’s fine 
as silver paper or the wind of early Spring.  
What we love is a tree that grows outside our window 
as we grow inside its panes, a small good thing 
we bring home – or that follows us there — one day.  
Then it’s a friend that walks with us, gentle 
and welcome as rain.  It’s what we call to us to come 
when darkness is coming, and it’s what tends us, 
and what we tend. And finally it’s what we carry 
close against us, feeling blessed as we hold it 
and joy for what it gives and has given, 
for the comfort it’s been through hard, heavy days, 
forgiving every burden it’s been, grateful 
for even the grief we must carry when it’s gone, 
that soft, warm, impossible weight.

Make art about what you love.

tenderness

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Family, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Daily Prompt! Claiming What’s Yours

Happy National Poetry Month! ❤ Another favorite poet. This poem’s from an amazing collection entitled Red Sugar. If you haven’t read Jan’s work, do it. Seriously. ❤
 
I’ll Write the Girl
Jan Beatty
 
The thing I’ll never write is the green leaf
with its rubbery-hard veins, I’ll never
write the structure exposed, instead
 
I’ll write the girl picking it up, green leaf,
her pudgy hand & her wanting it, that’s it,
because she knows the sky is full
 
of stumbling ghosts, & she’s back in the cold
room, back on the dark floor, & along
so much sky, what does one person do?
 
She says, bring it to me & devours,
hungry girl, breaks it open, tastes
the day’s first plasma of leaf, first blood
 
of green on her city street, she takes it
to her like morning’s first kill, &
owns it, stem to point,
 
& knows her life will always
be this biting open one thing
to leave another, that the only
 
way she’ll get anything is
with this tiny hammer
in her animal brain
 
saying: mine,
& again,
& now.

 

Make art about what you’ve claimed as yours. 
city-streets-art-three-woman-mural

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Sometimes the Prompt Is the Body

Happy National Poetry Month! 

Daily Prompt Time!

spring song
by Lucille Clifton

the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible

Make art about the body of the planet. 

earth hand

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Family, Gratitude, Nature, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

Tagged with:

Tag Cloud