"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 ‘National Poetry Month’

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

 

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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 <3 Celebrating, "Between Starshine and Clay"

Happy National Poetry Month! No way we could celebrate poetry without Lucille Clifton!

won’t you celebrate with me

by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
 
Make art about celebration. Or survival. 
 
lucilleclifton

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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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 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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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Daily Prompt :-) Poetry and Power

Happy National Poetry Month! 

Celebrating by posting a poem a day, anddddd, if I can, writing a poem a day 🙂 

So today’s poem (one of my favorites!) is also our

Daily Prompt 🙂 

Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

Make art about power. 

adrienne rich quote

 

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

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