Prompts are drawn from the media—print, broadcast or social.
Terry Wolverton offered these prompts to collaborating poet Sesshu Foster:
• Hell’s Zip Code (capitalandmain.com)
• Dreams Worth More than Money (album title, Meek Mill)
• Slavery to Vegetables (rawstory.com)
• “I’m No Longer Afraid” (nymag.com/the cut)
Collaborating poet Sesshu Foster offered these prompts to Terry Wolverton:
• CA Conrad (Soma)tic Poetry prompt: Pick any (soma)tic poetry prompt by CA, this was one I could find at http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/confetti-allegiance-love-letter-jim-brodey:
Confetti Allegiance
Is there a deceased poet who was alive in your lifetime but you never met, and you wish you had met? A poet you would LOVE to correspond with, but it’s too late? Take notes about this missed opportunity. What is your favorite poem by this poet? Write it on unlined paper by hand (no typing). If we were gods we wouldn’t need to invent beautiful poems, and that’s why our lives are more interesting, and that’s why the gods are always meddling in our affairs out of boredom. It’s like the fascination the rich have with the poor, as Alice Notley says, “the poor are more interesting than others, almost uniformly.” This poem was written by a human poet, and we humans love our poets, if we have any sense. Does something strike flint in you from the process of engaging your body to write this poem you know and love? Notes, notes, take notes.
The poet for me in doing this exercise is Jim Brodey and his poem “Little Light,” which he wrote in the bathtub while listening to the music of Eric Dolphy, masturbating in the middle of the poem, “while the soot-tinted noise of too-full streets echoes / and I pick up the quietly diminishing soap & do / myself again.” Take your handwritten version of the poem and cut it into tiny confetti. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and toss the confetti poem in. Add garlic, onion, parsnip, whatever you want, pepper it, salt it, serve it over noodles or rice. Eat the delicious poem with a nice glass of red wine, pausing to read it out loud and toast the poet, “MANY APOLOGIES FOR NOT TOASTING YOU WHEN YOU WERE ALIVE!” Take notes while slowly chewing the poem. Chew slowly so your saliva breaks the poem down before it slides into your belly to feed your blood and cells of your body. Gather your notes, write your poem.
Love Letter to Jim Brodey
- Dear Jim
for
those whose
acid trips were a success
only twice
I’ve met men who
are high exactly
as they are sober
both became my lovers
both died one like
you died Jim he
played music too
loud at parties to
gather us into a
single frequency feel
healed for the length
of a song
nothing works forever
there was something in
the air that year Jim
and you put it there
a rapt center in
pivot looking
to face
love again
learning to
accept what’s offered
without guilt
to be reminded
of nothing
my favorite day not dragging
the dead around
they’re looking
for Lorca in the Valley
of the Fallen
Franco’s thugs would understand
“developing countries” means
getting them ready for
mining diamonds drilling oil
teaching them to make a
decent cup of coffee for
visiting executives
if I’m not going
to live like this
anymore I must will
every cell to
stand away
the History of Madness
725 pages is too much to
not be normal
scorn is very
motivating
I’m vegetarian unless
angels are on the
menu mouth watering
deep fried wings
shove greasy bones in
their trumpets
the cost of
scorn is
often unexpected
I see my fascist
neighbor from downstairs
“Did my boyfriend and
I make too much
noise last night?”
his glare the
YES that keeps
me smiling
- here’s another one: http://www.notnostrums.com/Conrad.html
- and another: http://www.loadedbicycle.com/conrad.html#
- and: http://somaticpoetrymeditations.blogspot.com/
- a prompt from Bernadette Mayer’s famous list:
* Write what cannot be written; for example, compose an index.
http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html
- a scientific one:
Funding Medical Research
- Role: medical scientist
- Audience: prospective donors
- Format: fundraising letter
- Topic: contribute money for research
- Strong Verb: persuade
You are a medical scientist who is working to discover cures for different diseases. Your research requires special equipment and materials that are quite expensive. Write a fundraising letter to possible donors, persuading them to contribute money to your work.
or
Greatest Scientist of All Time
- Role: you
- Audience: scientist from a past era
- Format: written interview
- Topic: the greatest contribution to science
- Strong Verb: write and document
You have the opportunity to travel in a time machine into any past era of history. Choose a date and place to meet the person who, in your opinion, has made the greatest contibution to science. Write out the interview questions you will ask this scientist and document his or her answers. You will publish your interiew when you return to the present.
http://www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com/science-writing-prompts.html
- any prompt from jerome rothenberg’s Technician’s of the Sacred:
(here’s one)
Looking for a way to spark your writing with imagery? Here’s a great suggestion from Sheila Bender. Though the exercise is taken from her book Writing Personal Poetry, any writer can put it to use. Bender writes:
Recently I was standing on a hillside I had looked at years ago from a window at a writers conference. At that conference, I learned a useful exercise from my teacher Robert Hass, who went on to become the United States poet laureate. At the time, he was studying various culture’s poetry using a book called Technicians of the Sacred. In Africa, he taught us, a tribe called the Bantu has an oral poetic tradition they exercise while working. One person says a line and, in the rhythm of the work, another answers with an assocaition that shows the likeness between two objects or perceptions. “An elephant’s tusk cracking” could get the response, “The voice of an angry man.” That day, I looked at the hillside, saw wind in the grass and wrote, “Wind through the grass,” and answered with the line, “I have the feeling you have written.” Here are two-line bantus that students of mine have written in response to this exercise:
Wire hangers on a bar in the closet
Wild geese walking by a lake
Children in a circle on the floor
The beaded necklace
Lizard rustles the jasmine leaves
Father turning pages of “The Sunday NY Times”
The full moon at midnight
China dinner plate in a dark kitchen
Write your own bantus, as many as you can. Try to evoke experiences of sound, taste and smell as well as touch and sight. This exercise is very much like metaphor and simile, but you are free of the need to make images grammatically correct and the results can be haunting.
We invite readers to write poems in response to one or more prompts (or the fevered writing that results from these prompts) and submit in the Comments section. The best Reader Poem we receive by August 31 will be awarded a $25 prize.
dis•articulations 2015 