"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

Posts tagged ‘fiction’

Daily Prompt <3 The Elders

 

Happy National Poetry Month!

Another of the poets who made me want to be a poet, one of the voices of my childhood. This poem still takes me to my Appalachian grandparents’ table.

The Bean Eaters

Gwendolyn Brooks

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, 
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
          is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
          tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

 

Make art about the old ones.

Biggers_Old_Couple___aka_Home_Sweet_Home_Image_Only0

Old Couple by John Biggers

 

Category:

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

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Daily Prompt <3 Finding That Way Out

 

Happy National Poetry Month!

I love this poem, its fierceness, its choice.

A Message from the Wanderer
by William Stafford

Today outside your prison I stand
and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
you have relatives outside. And there are
thousands of ways to escape.

Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
and shouted my plans to jailers;
but always new plans occured to me,
or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
or some stupid jailer would forget
and leave the keys.

Inside, I dreamed of constellations—
those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
heroes that exist only where they are not.

Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as—often, in light, on the open hills—
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then—even before you see—
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.

That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

Now—these few more words, and then I’m
gone: Tell everyone just to remember
their names, and remind others, later, when we 
find each other. Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way—
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.

There will be that form in the grass.

Make art about escape, the “thousands of ways to escape.”

escape-room

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Walking and Uncle Walt

 

 

Happy National Poetry Month! No way the month can pass without Walt Whitman ❤ I still have the copy of Leaves of Grass my mama gave me when I was ten.

As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman

As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,
Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)
Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,
The announcements of recognized things, science,
The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.

I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.

But I too announce solid things,
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,
triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,
They stand for realities—all is as it should be.

Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth,
The rapt promises and luminé of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.

Make art about walking.

fsem-whitman-circa-1867-mathew-brady-getty-museum

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2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt :-) Making and the Maker

Happy National Poetry Month! 

Spent this weekend making things with my hands, gifts for some of the children I’m blessed to have in my life 🙂 I often tell my writing students, “Remember: you are now the maker. You have the magic of the maker.” Thinking on this a lot this weekend, on how the mystery of art emerges from our hands.

Making a Poem
by Paul B. Newman

You make a poem like a man
taking the measure of a sheet of copper;
first you cut it in the round
clipping the disc of dull soft metal,
then you take a hammer and pound
over all its surface on the small
iron hoof of the anvil,
forming a deepness within the curve
light within light reflecting
cool as the ripples in a well,
forming it on the resistance of the anvil
until it is so with texture, and with
usefulness a form and with delight a unity.

Make art about being a maker, about the act of making.

Hammering steel

Blacksmith hammering red hot steel on a wooden surface that is catching on fire. Focus is on the hammer and glove.

Category:

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

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Daily Prompt <3 Returning, and Kindness

Happy National Poetry Month!

When I was fourteen and scribbling poet-y words on every scrap of paper or napkin I put my hands on, Peter Makuck, who ran the Poetry Forum at East Carolina University, was so kind to me, encouraging me to “never stop writing.” That kindness followed me and made me brave, almost twenty years later, when, terrified, I reclaimed my poet self, and went back to college, in my early thirties. The only thing larger than Peter’s big loving heart—is his talent.

Après le Déluge, or How to Return
Peter Makuck

Forget French fads,
paradigms, Foucault and Sartre,
the eggistential toothpick, the semiotic egg,
and the text beyond which there is nothing
but eggheads.

Make the river your own. Rename it the Tar
after its shiny blackness and nothing will fall
routinely into place
like that dogwood, white and dying
for attention at your window.

Tell yourself a room’s the wrong place to receive.
Quit the house like a bad job.
Hand your dead brother the shovel,
shove off in a leaky canoe,
and follow that monarch, its orange flit
above the current.
Immensity will make a return
and every face will offer less
than the smooth cool face of the water.

Let the river teach you
how to steer toward subtle surprise.
Tell me, what even comes close
to this scented air you’ve noticed for the first time?

The sun falls,
anoints the surface with orange oil.
Dark lifts from the water faster than you think.
A meander brings
a soft snicker of owl wings close to your gunnels.
Around the bend, a lamp appears
with a Coleman hiss
and a hunched figure with his hook
pole-tossed in the current.

That’s it, that’s it.
Everything you need is beginning to find you.

Make art about returning. Or about someone whose kindness changed your life.

Peter

 

Category:

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

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Friday Call for Submissions Love! Sliver of Stone

Friday Call for Submissions Love! 

Sliver of Stone Magazine
DEADLINE: July 15, 2016

Sliver of Stone’s 12th issue is now available online.

A bi-annual, online literary magazine dedicated to the publication of work from both emerging and established poets, writers, and visual artists from all parts of the globe.

Authors featured in this issue include Richard Godwin, Gilbert King, Conor McCreery, Laura McDermott, and Will Viharo. Visual Art by Andrés Pruna and Terry Wright.

Check out past contributors, such as Lynne Barrett, Kim Barnes, John Dufresne, Denise Duhamel, Barbara Hamby, Allison Joseph, J. Michael Lennon, Dinty W. Moore, Matthew Sharpe, and many talented others. Past interviews with Paul D. Brazill, Janet Burroway, Edwidge Danticat, Beverly Donofrio, Dean Koontz, K.A. Laity, Susan Orlean, Les Standiford, José Ignacio Valenzuela, and Mark Vonnegut.

They’re now looking for submissions for the 13th issue!
Website: www.sliverofstonemagazine.com

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Call for Submissions, Creativity, Editing, fiction, Friday Call for Submissions, Gratitude, litmags, Love, nonfiction, poetry, publishing, Writing

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Daily Prompt :-) Will We Listen?

Happy National Poetry Month!

The Messenger

by Ann Stanford

I don’t deny that I believe in ghosts
Myself being one. No, not the ultimate last
Spirit, I mean, but this is a messenger.
Soft, soft, last night, falling into sleep
I rose like smoke up, curving past the window,
Floating, a grey cloud seaward, slow and pale.

And then, the wings!

Did you hear the birds piling against your window?
A snow of wings, crowding and gentle, crying
Over and over, each with a single errand
Light cannot bring, nor ever my tongue would say.
Archaic doves, rustling your sleep, and calling
Crowding upon you, drifting and crying love.

Make art about a messenger.

homeless angel

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

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Daily Prompt :-( When Fans Cry

Can’t even voice the loss I feel at Prince walking on to the next life. His music has been one of the most consistent and most important soundtracks of my life. I just don’t even have words. 

Make art about the importance of music in your life.   

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2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Family, Love, Music, One Love, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt :-) Oh Those Eyes

Happy National Poetry Month! My daughter and I agree that her beautiful baby boy has my mother’s eyes. Oh those eyes ❤

Eyes:

by William Matthews

the only parts of the body the same   

size at birth as they’ll always be.   

“That’s why all babies are beautiful,”   

Thurber used to say as he grew   

blind—not dark, he’d go on   

to explain, but floating in a pale   

light always, a kind of candlelit   

murk from a sourceless light.   

He needed dark to see: 

for a while he drew on black   

paper with white pastel chalk   

but it grew worse. Light bored   

into his eyes but where did it go?   

Into a sea of phosphenes, 

along the wet fuse of some dead   

nerve, it hid everywhere and couldn’t   

be found. I’ve used up 

three guesses, all of them 

right. It’s like scuba diving, going down   

into the black cone-tip that dives   

farther than I can, though I dive   

closer all the time.

 

Make art about eyes, about what eyes might see, or who we see in a loved one’s eyes.

Max and nenie's eyes

Category:

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

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Daily Prompt :-) Sing the Moment

Happy National Poetry Month! Thinking on how precious each moment is. 🙂 ❤ 

(“Sing the song of the moment…”)
RABINDRANATH TAGORE

 

VII

 

Sing the song of the moment in careless carols, in the transient light of the day;
Sing of the fleeting smiles that vanish and never look back;
Sing of the flowers that bloom and fade without regret.
Weave not in memory’s thread the days that would glide into nights.
To the guests that must go bid God-speed, and wipe away all traces of their steps.
Let the moments end in moments with their cargo of fugitive songs.

 

With both hands snap the fetters you made with your own heart chords;
Take to your breast with a smile what is easy and simple and near.
Today is the festival of phantoms that know not when they die.
Let your laughter flush in meaningless mirth like twinkles of light on the ripples;
Let your life lightly dance on the verge of Time like a dew on the tip of a leaf.
Strike in the chords of your harp the fitful murmurs of moments.

 

Make art about the wonder of a single moment. 

 

moment

Category:

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

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