The moderator for this week is Abby!
Abigail Licad is an immigrant from the Philippines, a former editor-in-chief for Hyphen magazine, a full-on feminist, a diehard Tori Amos fan, a mediocre classical pianist, a dog mama, a chocolate fiend, a terrible cook, a succulent addict, a lover of sending care packages, and a poetry junkie through and through. She has no tattoos and lives in Portland, Oregon.
Prompt for Monday, August 14, 2023
“Dirt Being Dirt” by Carl Phillips
Video of Poet Reading:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVpueEPm7WE
1. Incorporate or respond to one of the following passages in your poem:
“while decoration is hardly/ever necessary, it’s rarely meaningless”
“How far is instinct from a thing like belief?
“You broke it. Now wear it broken”
2. Following the example of Phillips’ poem, write a poem in medias res (i.e., opening with the action already underway, or “in the midst of things”), and give the poem a surprising title that compounds, directs, or extends the interpretation of the poem itself.
3. Write about something you’ve broken – whether a material object (like your grandmother’s favorite vase) or a more abstract idea (like someone’s trust). Write about how you felt in the moment, and what you learned in retrospect. What changed after the damage?
4. Compare and contrast two abstract ideas that are closely related, such as “instinct” vs. “belief” in the poem. A few examples are below:
respect vs. admiration
love vs. lust
love vs. sacrifice
relief vs. freedom
Prompt for Friday, August 18, 2023
“Traveling Through the Dark” by William E. Stafford
1. Incorporate or respond to one of the following passages in your poem:
“Beside that mountain road I hesitated.”
“under the hood purred the steady engine”
“around our group I could hear the wilderness listen”
2. Write a narrative poem about a moral dilemma you’ve faced where you’ve had to make a difficult choice between competing situations. Establish the context, dramatize the dilemma, then conclude with the choice made (without rationalizing or explaining why, leaving the reader to do this work).
3. Write about an encounter with nature or with an animal. What surprised you about it? What was difficult? What did you learn from the encounter? Some examples of themes to explore are:
the encroachment of human constructions upon the natural world
the cyclicality of life
the beauty of the natural world
the co-mingling of joy and pain in existence
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