Tag Archives: writing prompts

Unlovely drafts

Well, I have been writing. But less about the current wintry days than I expected, because of the online poetry seminar I’m taking.

One recent prompt in Anita Skeen‘s workshop involves employing phrases from a text and using those words, or images, as a start to a poem that would not encompass or even relate to the original topic. I’ve written work that does that; but more commonly I continue the topic in some way, most notably with my long-poem/chapbook manuscript The Librarian of Pyok Dong. And what I notice is that I tend to choose “unlovely” texts, articles or essays that are historical, scientific, or academic, rather than to use the words of poets or novelists. Why that is, I can’t say for sure; it may simply be due to my deep-rooted nerdiness. But I think of poets like Martha Silano, Rebecca Elson, Muriel Ruykeyser, and others who have created amazing work, beautiful poems, from newspaper articles, scientific papers, academic texts, encyclopedias–so I feel encouraged. The result, for me, however, is often an unlovely draft.

Etching by or after J. Gamelin, 1778/1779. Created 1779. Contributors: Jacques Gamelin. Work ID: h3ybfzwe.

I have recently spent some time proofreading one of my brother’s papers that addresses the origins of some of the crania in Samuel George Morton’s collection, which resides at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia and is among the controversial holdings there of sacred/religious objects and human remains. The University has committed to “repatriating” such items in its collections that belong to indigenous peoples, for example, and to returning human bones to places of origin or to “respectful interment.” The challenge with Morton’s large collection is to ascertain where, in fact, these human beings came from. [Informational page is here.] My brother has been trying to track down the people, likely young Africans, who made up one set of about 55 skulls collected in Cuba around 1839-1840.

It’s a terrible history, of course. The Middle Passage, slavery, illness, misery, abandonment even in death. And it’s an academic paper, so the language–not to dismiss the author’s writing ability, since he’s keeping to the conventional style–does not lend itself to poetry.

Basically, I’ve given myself a difficult task. Yet we learn through difficulty, do we not? Often, too, the unlovely poems are those that deal with how rotten human beings can be, or illuminate the worst of times and offer us insight and information that we had not been taught, hidden horrors, trauma, all of the above. I have written many lovely poems about lovely things. The world, however, manages to be far more complicated than beautiful, a mixed bag of joys and miseries, and it seems to me that literature and art ought to reflect that fact sometimes.

What I’m posting below is a very rough draft, just to demonstrate how I begin a difficult poem, a poem based upon historical facts that I’m learning myself. It’s a completely different process from when I write from an image or observation of my own. For example, the “Librarian” poem, which is about 15 pages long, took me a couple of years and a visit to the United States Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) at Carlisle Barracks, PA! First I pull some quotes, make a lot of notes, highlight images or place names that seem most resonant. Then I develop these into what I call “jottings” and fragments, and start setting them into an initial sequence–which I often change later.

Stanzas? Line breaks? Metaphors? Meter? All of that can wait; I like to work on structuring the narrative first when I try something in this vein, and I want to find images that might speak to a reader. So it is clear to me that this poem is not one I’ll have finished before the end of the 5-meetings-long workshop. Assuming I ever do finish it. Yes, poetry is hard work.

~

José Rodríguez y Cisneros, Havana Physician, Ships 55 Human Crania
to Samuel George Morton, Anatomist (1840)


A Cuban journalist writes that by 1915
“The Vedado of my childhood was a sea rock
over which the seagulls flew”

sandy, overgrown with Caleta sea grapes
the nesting-place of rats, iguanas

but once a cemetery for paupers and bozales,
the unbaptized, slaves, the suicides

abandoned on this coast as carrion

where turkey vultures and wild dogs
fed on corpses hastily interred

“el Pudridero” they called it—
the rotting place—
local people thought it cursed

for a more scientific-minded man, opportunity
to harvest skulls for anatomic pursuits.
Nameless, blameless nobodies

who were otherwise less than worthless:

the definition from a 19th century
Spanish dictionary:

“bozales. A Negro recently removed
from his [native] country—
metaphorical and vernacular,
one who is foolish or idiotic…

can be applied to wild horses.”

~~

*note~

“the Vedado Interment Site…originated as a sinkhole that came to be utilized as a mass grave…[the majority] of the Vedado Group likely consisted of enslaved people born in Africa during the early 19th century, most of whom died of infectious diseases soon after arriving in Cuba.” —John S. Michael

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

Solo endeavor?

It was great fun to be back in person, in Philadelphia, reading poetry aloud. Prepping for the performance made me aware, though, that I have no current obsession to mull upon; that may be why I have not been writing many poems of late. However, I recently felt inspired by Lesley Wheeler’s blog post including some prompts from poets. Prompts! Of course. Those are ways into writing when writing has not supplied the writer with her own ways into writing.

Therefore, I’ll close another year of my blog with a piece I drafted using Lesley’s conjunctions prompt. What resulted from the free-write surprised me, which is a good thing (it’s fun when I surprise myself, though this gets a bit dark toward the close–but dark contains interesting objects). And many thanks to Lesley and to the other poets whose prompts she shared. It’s likely I will keep working with them until my next poetic preoccupation.

~

So I’m tired of hearing people start their sentences with “So” on podcasts and the radio and TV, “so” a verbal tic, a word instead of “um,” which serves the same purpose but admits, more humbly, of uncertainty, which says I am pausing to gather my thoughts before speaking; whereas “So” sets up an explanation leading to opinion or argument, or so it seems to me.

So I’m sitting on my back porch even though it is late December, clouds gathering over bare trees. I hear woodpeckers deepening holes in trees, a rat-a-tat drill, and white-breasted nuthatches loud along the woodlot, and I ponder emerald ash borers and climate change and how to handle human aging in a capitalist society.

So what I wonder is “Am I afraid?” Some questions possess a looming quality, I guess this is one such. In my wicker chair, in my own backyard, no. Not afraid. The mood’s serene, no tightness in my chest no racing heart, not even facing death–as we all must do, though most of us refuse. Where are you going with this, Writer?

So all I’m saying is, I have fears about the future yes but not about dying, because dying I will face alone. Even when loved ones can be beside us, we are not an us when death comes. Each dies to their ego alone, interior to the world, most alone at death no matter who surrounds us.

So why, then, do I volunteer for hospice work, where the goal is not only to alleviate some of the pain but also to keep people from dying unaccompanied? My reasons are complicated, people are complicated. So let me just say that having been present when human beings die, that passage may not necessarily be a lonely one. But it is accomplished alone.