Category Archives: Poetry

Source material

Creative writers are often asked where they get their ideas from. In my own case, the answer to that varies a great deal. Sometimes ideas arise from personal experience, of course, but one’s life offers only so much material if you are a relatively staid person like me. Topics for poems can arise from recent headlines or from histories, written or oral; from conversations overheard in a grocery line; from stories other people tell me; from folk tales; from science books; from dreams; from works of art, and numerous other sources. It’s this wide array of possibilities that make the concept of the creative-writing prompt so popular. A quick Google search for “creative writing prompts” offered well over 20+ pages of entries, in several languages.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I have written pieces based upon prompts, especially when in a workshop or class, or when I feel rather tapped out of my own imaginative source material. I’m especially fond of writing that stems from viewing or experiencing a work of art–sculpture, painting, musical composition, dance, installation art (ekphrastic poems). Generally speaking, though, that’s not from whence my poems originate.

I can’t really say why I feel an urge to put down in writing specific reflections about something that’s caught my attention–or even what sort of experience evokes my response. Maybe I feel intrigued by an image, a detail, or an ambiguity–a question arises in my mind that I tussle with for awhile. Then, I may compose a draft and let it sit. Two days. Two years. Longer. Lately I’ve been revising some old poems and have realized I no longer recall what their incipience was. Which can be a good thing, because I am no longer wedded to the “reason” I wrote them and can instead consider whether they can be crafted into decent poems.

I am also working on a manuscript that I let sit for at least six years. An idea got into my mind after reading Robert Burton’s 17th-century book on depression, The Anatomy of Melancholy, quite some time ago (2017, perhaps?). I took a stab at writing what seemed to be evolving into a historical fiction story, which is not my usual approach (I have zero practice at plot and dialogue). Then, I stopped. As one does. But the topic lodged in me somewhere, I suppose, and early this year I returned to it. What if, I wondered, the draft could be restructured into a series of prose poems? There might be a sort of hybrid novella-poem in the earlier draft.

That’s more or less what I’m developing, at least for now, and we’ll see what if anything emerges. It’s keeping me interested, which I like, and the experiment feels fresh compared with “writing what I know,” or writing “how” I know. Because yes, of course we ought to write what we know; but we also know about human beings, and we have imaginations, and anything is possible.

By Robert Burton – Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, 1628, in the British Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84390857

Magnificent

Qesra Îshaq Paşa or Ishak Pasha Palace, Ağrı Province, Turkey, Ottoman Empire, 17th c.

For a recent poem draft, I looked up the etymology of the word “magnificent” even though I was fairly sure I knew it. Like many words, its meaning has altered a bit over the centuries, but in this case less so than most: from the old French, from Latin, the root words for “great” and “make,” it formerly referred to great-mindedness, courage, nobility [per the Online Etymology Dictionary] and later gained the additional meaning of splendor or costliness; “Meaning ‘greatness of appearance or character, grandeur, glory’ in English is from late 14c.,” whereas later uses of the word carry connotations of architecture, expensive taste, grand works of a more human variety.

The draft I was working on was about Melville and whales, but of course thanks to stopping to look something up, I went down a research rabbit hole and ended up deciding that the magnificence whales possess would be more of the greatness of appearance sort and perhaps was not quite the way I want to describe whales. But the word did put me in mind of some of the monumental temples, mosaics, palaces, castles, and sculptures I saw in Turkey last month. Many of those are “magnificent,” but they act as reminders of how fleeting human magnificence is, in comparison to whales. Whales evolved into their modern form about 4 million years ago, long before humans were modern humans, let alone building palaces or temples to please the gods, intimidate their enemies or their subjects, or glorify and deify their kings.

The photo below is of the temple and perhaps the tomb of Antiochus I of Commagene (because archaeologists have so far discovered no actual tomb, the existence of said tomb is speculative, though the site is considered to be a hierothesion). The top of the hill is not natural but is a gravel tumulus. Human-made. Gravel hauled up the mountain to increase the size of the mountain and deter potential grave-robbers. Who else would do that work but slaves?

https://annemichael.blog/2025/10/20/back-in-time/

I know the theme’s been written into poetry before, but in these times it seems to bear repeating. Here’s an early draft I’ve been working on, in loose blank verse, in which I invoke a famous poet whose poem on the theme has lasted a mere two centuries. But that’s longer than many an empire has endured.

~

Hierothesion (Nemrut Dağ)

Tomb or temple, likely both, one king’s
angling for a pantheon he’d crafted
on his own, as kings will do when empire
hardens in their veins. They turn to stone.
Minions, memorize my name! (like
Ozymandias, as Shelley can attest).

Tourists scale the tumulus and find,
at sunrise, eagles, lions, and Apollo,
gods of brokenness, unhumbled despite
centuries of disregard. Extinct.

We know him not. And what has made us pause
speaks not of his glory but of our dismay:
how much purely human work, slaves’ toil and toll,
it took, interring him this way, high up
and rubble-laid, to raise him above all.

Where are those workers’ bones? We walk on them.
This we know without a temple or a tomb.




Walking

Numerous so-called health and fitness articles continually pop up on my screen, and many of them not only tout the benefits of walking but claim to know how many minutes or miles of walking (or rate of speed and such) are necessary to ward off dementia, keep your heart healthy, your bones in shape, your muscles well-conditioned, your circulatory system moving, your lungs going, or to extend your life. Oh, and relieve stress. And while you are at it you can get a device for your wrist or an app on your cellphone to monitor your pace, steps, heartbeat, etc.

But not everyone can walk. Too many of us forget that, take it for granted–especially “content” developers online angling for clicks. And, while I do like walking, I don’t particularly relish being told how I should go about it. I agree that it would probably be good for me to walk at a brisk pace for an hour every day, and some days I am inclined to do just that. There are other days I want to hike up a hill, or take a pokey amble around my meadow, or wander through a nearby park, or climb Nemrut Dağ just as dawn breaks. Or curl up on the sofa and read a book. I appreciate routine, but not invariable routine.

Autumn happens to be a time of year I like a slow stroll or hike; save the brisk walks for cooler, lousier weather. Now that most of the leaves have fallen, I can spy bird nests and paper-wasp nests (there’s one of those in our tamarack tree; last year, there was one in the Japanese maple). Milkweed puffs are swirling in somewhat chilly air, red berries decorate shrubs and trees. Red-tailed hawks and black buzzards wheel overhead. No reason to churn through the scenery at a rapid pace.

A. R. Ammons wrote an essay titled “A Poem Is a Walk,” in which he describes the physical act of taking a stroll “with” a poem, rhythm, breathing, the stride; he says both a walk and a poem are useless–though you might want to read the essay before agreeing or disagreeing on the uselessness, since his essay is almost a phenomenological argument (and we have to decide what is meant by “useless”). [Note: The essay is paywalled behind University of Arizona’s site, and–oddly–the one legible free version I found is here, from the Università degli Studi di Milano! Well worth reading, though, and in English.]

I think better when I walk slowly and steadily, with pauses to look around. That’s when images come to mind, metaphors, descriptions, sensations, ideas. Sometimes, it is a kind of haiku-walking, generally undirected. I don’t plan to reflect on anything or come up with prompts for poems. And I don’t do it to improve my life expectancy.

I just like to walk. And maybe, a walk is a poem.

Elegy (dog)

I heard about Laika, the first dog in space, many years ago when I was a child; but on a recent visit to The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA, I learned more about the early space programs in the USSR and the USA and the (mis)treatment of animals chosen for experimental flights. These animals are lovingly portrayed in portraits on the museum’s third floor.

I don’t think I’ve ever written an elegy for my own beloved dog, gone many years now. But I felt moved to write this one. We’re in the All Souls Day period; I don’t know whether dogs have souls, or whether people do, but it seems a good time to do some remembering.

~

Dog in Space

Constrained
while trained,
you kept
your hardworking 
heart, your 
trusting lack
of expectations.
If you knew
you were to die
it was no different
from the street
except instead
of death from 
city’s cold
it was due
to module’s heat.
Re-entry sent
you everywhere,
cosmically dispersed.
Of all the objects
and beings
our kind has
pitched into
outer space
you, Laika,
are most
beautiful 
for your
willingness.

~~


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika

Zeugma

Zeugma, an ancient city in what is now Türkiye’s Gaziantep Province, is near where we began our tour of a 2000-km section of the Silk Road trade route. The city’s name comes from the ancient Greek word for “bridge,” (it means to join or yoke together); the city was located on the Euphrates, where there was likely a floating bridge, like a barge or pontoon bridge, that enabled people, largely traders, to cross. Most of the ancient city is now left to underwater archeologists to examine, alas, since it lies beneath the new Biricek Dam.

Photo [Euphrates] by Fu0131rat Gedikou011flu on Pexels.com

Turkey itself is, and has ever been, a bridge–for trade, cultures, conquests, languages, religions: a place of shifting allegiances and changing empires. Arab traders brought Islam from the south, while Seljuk Turks brought their version of Islam from the northeast (Kyrgyzstan and the Turkic Khaganate, a region of Medieval-era Muslim nomadic groups with substantial dynasties and a loose empire that spanned into what is now China, hence the Uyghurs of today’s China). Earlier, the Christian gospel had arrived along the Mediterranean shores from Jerusalem and then probably through Syria to Ephesus, a Hellenic city south of Istanbul. St. Jude the Apostle/St. Thaddeus supposedly got as far as Şanlıurfa, then known as Edessa, where an early Armenian king converted to Christianity before 100 AD. So they say.

~~~

Our tour guide was excited when I told him that the word zeugma is used in poetry terminology. It’s a figure of speech in which words or images in a phrase are connected, often for humorous or ironic effect, as in a sentence such as: He lost his heart and his wallet at the stage door cafe. The word “lost” joins both heart and wallet. It acts as the bridge. It’s an intriguing little literary device that’s seldom the first thing I notice in a poem, but when I do identify it, I appreciate it. I like knowing the etymology, and I like knowing that I’ve been where the city was.

Joining and breaking apart and rejoining in new ways, Turkey spans cities, rivers, and eons.

Back in time

At Şanlıurfa in the Urfa region, a Kurdish area in eastern Turkey, we stayed two nights after our visit to two amazing, ancient monuments that are really out in the middle of nowhere: Mt Nemrut Dağ (the tomb of Antiochus I) and Göbekli Tepe, a Neolithic site of the Stone Mound Culture, both Unesco World Heritage sites. I remember reading about the discovery of Göbekli Tepe in the early 1990s, when German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began excavations there; the “buzz” at the time was that these megaliths mark the earliest temple or place of community worship ever recorded [ca. 9000 BC]. Since then, new discoveries unearthed at Göbekli Tepe, as well as discoveries of similar sites (such as Karahan Tepe, which we later visited) in the region, have somewhat altered Schmidt’s original speculations.

It appears now that people lived here at least part of the time, though until these discoveries, historians assumed humans in the pre-pottery Neolithic Era were hunter-gatherer nomads who did not build permanent structures. Our guide told us the current thinking is that the buildings here played some sort of role in preparing young men for adulthood–almost all of the reliefs and statuary portray male figures and male animals. But it is early yet to guess, and besides, we can never know for certain.

But there are cisterns, a system that distributed water through tunnels, containers that have traces of grains and, yes, beer. Back to the argument of which came first to humans: Bread or beer. My money is on beer. *

But to back up a few hours–first, we rose at 5 am so that we could take the circuitous drive up the mountainside to Nemrut Dağ, a relatively youthful site built around 60 BC, presumably by Antiochus I, who was connecting a slew of peoples and cultures together in a kind of Iranian-Hellenic-Armenian-etc. aggregation in a move toward empire at a time of Roman ascendancy. Commagene is the Romanized name used for this ancient region, which was a merger of Persian and Hellenic areas once Alexander the Great’s empire had disintegrated. Antiochus married a Cappadocian princess and had big plans, but his empire did not last long after his death; by 29 BC, his sons had died or been executed.

The path we walked up to get to the tumulus, 6:45am; my photo

And then over time, this huge tomb monument was forgotten until its rediscovery in the 1880s. The region feels deserted and surreal, and the climb up to the tumulus–though there is now a partially paved path–is long, the wind swirling around, full of dust. My sunhat blew off my head even though I had a neck strap. I guess that was my offering to the ancient king.

What an astonishing place it is, especially at dawn, and despite a fair but not overwhelming number of tourists.

~

Monuments are a step toward writing: they tell stories, written in stone with picture images, because the stories we tell or sing with our human voices don’t leave much of a record for cultures other than our own. I found myself wondering what the poets of these ancient places said or sang, and how their language sounded, and whether I would feel exhilarated or moved by those lays had I been there.

And at Göbekli Tepe, when I learned about the cisterns that contained beer, I thought of a poem I’d written some years ago after visiting a Mesopotamian exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. So with a bit of awe and a bit of tongue in cheek, I’ll post it here. [It initially appeared in Mezzo Cammin.]

~

*Porter, Stout, & Mesopotamian Deity

Sisters, let us raise a glass
to agriculture, to dark brew
made possible by wooden hoes,
by seed-gatherers: me and you,
our aunts, foremothers, those
who stayed, patient, and grew
grains, diverted rain, winnowed,
boiled, fermented mash, who
certainly invented ale. For we
descend from goddess Ninkasi
who nourished babies through
breast milk fortified by beer
and whose forgotten virtue
we revive, consuming her.

~~

Thanks to copyright-free photos from Pexels since my own photos are snapshots taken with an out of date cell phone.

Adventure and ibises

At my daughter’s suggestion, we ended up in Mesopotamia: central to eastern Turkey, fertile crescent, Euphrates and Tigris, vaguely following the borders of Syria, Iran, and Armenia up toward the Caucasus to Kars. It was, indeed, quite an adventure. We were booked on a tour following a section of the storied Silk Road through Wild Frontiers, a British company, and spent 11 days in Turkey. It was informative, beautiful, marvelous–a fabulous way to spend over a week with someone I love who lives about 2,000 miles away from me. Our expert tour leader Timuçin Şahin (Tim) is a history enthusiast and sustainable-agriculture proponent who loves his native land and–despite its current repressive government–is not shy about noting its failings, complexities, and fraught past; he says a truthful narrative is the sanest way to accept the past and learn from it rather than repeat it. Though Türkiye doesn’t seem to be heading that way at the moment, and if anything, some of the processes that have led to Erdoğan’s consolidation of governmental power sound frighteningly familiar to this US citizen.

Which brings up another point about our trip: we were the only two Americans. The other ten tour participants were British, mostly pensioners. After a few days, when we felt comfortable with one another, one person admitted that “we were all a bit apprehensive about having Americans on the tour.” Apparently the perception is that more of us in the US support the current administration than is actually the case. So it was up to me and my daughter to correct some stereotypes and present as informed, kind, curious, reasonably well-educated world citizens. I hope we succeeded.

A larger-than-life bald ibis statue and yours truly at the bird sanctuary.

As I’ve no desire to chronologically report the entire trip, and honestly cannot do it justice, I am using my back-at-home time to reflect not on “highlights” (though there definitely were some) or inspiration–though there was that, too–but on some of the quieter surprises that enrich an experience like this one. For example, the Bald Iris enthusiast and savior we met in Birecik along the banks of the Euphrates. This man, whose name I didn’t write down, alas, has been operating a sanctuary for these birds for almost 40 years. The migratory kelaynak was once seen in huge flocks throughout Egypt and much of the Middle East and was considered sacred in some cultures. They went extinct in Egypt quite long ago and have been declining rapidly in the 20th century due to pesticides, climate change, environmental habitat destruction, sport hunting, etc. There are a few non-migrating colonies of Northern bald ibis in Morocco. Yes, it’s a funny-looking bird, but beautiful in its way. The ones we saw in Birecik are theoretically migratory but mostly reside in the colony, because whenever they are let out to migrate, they end up dead (found through tracking devices). The cheerful, enthusiastically hopeful ibis savior who photographs, tags, puts up nest boxes, and corrals the birds so they don’t fly off in winter is a veritable encyclopedia about these avians. He has put together a small museum, informational pamphlets, gift shop, and fund-raising platform in Birecik. There are decent human beings in the world who recognize the value of non-human creatures. This guy is an inspiration.

My readers may wonder whether I found poetry inspiration on this trip; the answer is, dunno yet. Probably, once I settle down and reflect, mull stuff over, consolidate my notes and my photos, and get over my intense jet lag. There was certainly no time for writing during the tour, as the itinerary was packed with cool things to learn, see, do, visit, hike up, float on (there were boat rides), and eat. I’d never been on a tour before. I liked this one, and because I had no knowledge of Turkey’s culture, language, economic situation, transportation options, etc, I was truly grateful for our tour guide’s expertise and enthusiasm.

Adventuring

The weather here has been hot and somewhat humid, though it continues to be dry–much drier than autumns used to be. Drought extending past August into October is becoming a more usual thing, according to my garden journal. One plant that thrives this time of year is tithonia (Mexican sunflower), and it attracts monarch butterflies like crazy. These are the monarchs that go adventuring: the super-generation of these insects that makes the 3,000-mile trip to Mexico. Here’s a brief blog from the Xerxes Society that has some quick facts. The monarchs I see in my garden may, if they are lucky enough to survive the trip, live up to 9 months, which is well past the life span of spring and early summer generations.

They are not even returning to a place they know or have ever been. Human science has never yet determined how monarch butterflies of the last summer generation find their way to Mexico. They just go adventuring, floating on air currents, supping on flowers as they travel.

I’m about to go adventuring, as well, traveling further east than I’ve ever been, in the company of one of my favorite persons in the world–my daughter. She and I had long talked about taking a mother-daughter trip together once I retired, and sooner is better than later! She found an environmentally-conscious adventure tour business that offers some really intriguing historical/archeological/environmental hike-and-bus options. We’ll find out whether the company is worth recommending & I’ll report back here, meanwhile keeping our destination unrevealed for now. A little mystery is fun.

While I am taking this trip for reasons beyond writing inspiration, I can’t help hoping it will act as a prompt and opportunity for drafting new poems. I’ve been working on new drafts, and revising older ones; but I have to admit that for awhile my creative mojo has been a bit off. Yes, this happens to any so-called “creative” occasionally, but it never feels terrific. One prefers the juicy, challenging urgency of creative flow. Wish me luck (and traveling mercies).

Points of view

I ran across something online that made me shudder–and it wasn’t politics or global tragedies but something sillier and more personal. Apparently there was a trend a decade ago of adults reading their adolescent diaries, aloud, in public (see “Mortified”). Ugh. The few times I have been tempted to read any of my old diaries or journals, I’ve stopped after a few sentences. Shuddering. This is less likely to happen with journal entries I wrote in my 30s or later; at least I hear my younger adult self in those words. But hearing the adolescent me, or the young woman of college age? No, thank you. I embarrass too easily.

Yet I found I was thinking today of this passage of Proust’s, which he gives to the character of the artist Elstir:

“There is no man,” he began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man–so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise–unless he has passed through all the fatuous and unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded…We do not receive wisdom, we discover it for ourselves, after a journey through a wilderness no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.”

There’s some comfort in that. I would not call myself wise, but I’m definitely wiser than I was at 15 or 21. I suppose I’m still sometimes “fatuous and unwholesome” (whatever Elstir meant by that), awkward in society, and mistaken in some of my intuitions. But I have discovered myself for myself, with all the pain, sorrow, embarrassment, and joys that such discovery requires, and have developed my own point of view. In addition, I’ve learned that each person holds their own point of view. We don’t all think alike or in concert and may never fully understand one another. That makes the world contentious, yes. And interesting.

Reading Old Diaries

When I wrote about the city
it was as though I knew
I didn’t belong there,
would not thrive—as though
I wouldn’t stay long
and so pressed each line
on page urgently, camera
shutter clicks, each image
framed in fractioned seconds
as people jaywalked and
side-walked, as pigeons
or sparrows alighted to peck
at civilization’s least crumbs,
as young men lovely and
unattainable grew ill, as city
failed to succor any of us,
as my ambition floundered.
Years back. So that what
I recall is what I photographed
or wrote, however inconsistent.
Naively urbane, the city 
my youth inhabits lies brittle
in the pages. The past undoes
itself at last. Or I do.

~~
I'm embarrassed to note that I've forgotten where this poem was published. My files are elsewhere at the moment. I'll update if I remember... *It appeared in Loch Raven Review!

Illusions, connections

Reading Proust again returned me to some of my own past reflections on memory and self, the capital-S Self. A decade or so ago I spent considerable time reading in philosophy, physics, and neuroscience in an endeavor to get a grip on human consciousness and, perhaps, behavior. I posted about some of these texts on this here blog, in between writing about poetry, the garden, and my teaching job. Recent coincidences of reading returned me to this topic, “the hard problem of consciousness,” and made me consider how our embodied selves/minds/awareness: use shortcuts to manage the overwhelming inputs of our environments; define who we are using subjective if physically-based perceptions; and fail to see the obvious because of habituation and the apparent need to confirm what we believe we know. Illusions! The Vedic concept of Māyā, Plato’s Theory of Forms…propaganda, Penn & Teller, quantum physics, complexity theory, Marcel Proust, complementarity. I have a lot on my mind.

If it IS on (or in) “my” “mind.” For there’s even some question about that, as proposed by Neil Theise in his book Notes on Complexity. Just as light can be a wave or a particle, depending upon perspective and viewer (see: complementarity), it’s possible that our minds or selves can be individual and separate but also connected and boundary-less. The subtitle of this text is what appealed to me: “A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being;” so far, I’m enjoying it and finding inspiration.

It’s needed, inspiration. Despite a few plunges into new drafts (see here), I have not been writing much for at least two months, and I miss it. The ideas from physics and neuroscience that intrigue me include potential metaphors and terms such as quenched disorder, endosymbiosis theory, and holarchy. These–along with the hard problem of consciousness–all have some relationship to complexity theory, and Theise does an elegant job of writing about complicated science concepts for the non-expert.

I ran across Notes on Complexity right after finishing Sleights of Mind, a book about the neuroscience behind the sort of illusion we call entertainment magic: sleight of hand, sawing people in two, mentalist “mind-reading,” and other performances; the authors, Susana Martinez-Conde, Stephen Macknik, and Sandra Blakeslee, are trying to discover more about how brains work (or filter, and sometimes don’t work so well) by studying how we get fooled by illusionists. This is a fun book, even more fun for me because one of my Best Beloveds has long been an enthusiast of magic shows and magicians. Martinez-Conde and Macknik are neurologists, so–unlike Theise’s text–this book is very body-mechanics in its basis. Their work reminded me of how amazing the human physiological system is. And it’s entertaining.

Before these non-fiction reads, I was finishing up with Proust who, in his own creative way, was exploring the interiority of the human self and carefully observing human interactions, behaviors, assumptions, prejudices, and aesthetics. Not neuroscience, because there is no science to it, but definitely related to how our brains and bodies process experience. My sense is that poetry works that that way for me: it’s not an abstract stream of thought but something inextricable from bodily experience, maybe even, through the environment in which we exist, something deeply connected to everything, a global being-there.

The way we process experience (and is this consciousness?) is largely what leads us to the arts, to make art or to appreciate it, and to decide what feels compelling, important, beautiful. And it’s not all in our heads.