Poetry is about looking – it’s about how we see and perceive things, and it's about how we translate our observations and perceptions into written language. This week, begin "looking" by thinking about things (not feelings or people) that make you happy, inspire you, motivate you, encourage you, elevate your mood, or stir your creativity (something tangible that informs your world in a positive way).
Choose one thing and write a poem about it using the Wallace Stevens poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” for inspiration.
In thirteen short, almost mystifying sections, Stevens “looks” at a blackbird with a kind of “multiplicity of seeing,” a unique “perspectivism” that challenges the imagination to look beyond the immediately observable. Look – really look – at your subject, and write beyond the obvious into deeper layers of meaning.
You may “borrow” from the Stevens title and adapt to something like “Five Ways of Looking at Hydrangeas in Bloom.” Similar is okay, just be sure to make the poem your own. Like Stevens, you may want to organize your poem in sections (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.). Try a different number, make your sections longer or shorter, but remember that each stanza should represent a different angle of “seeing.”
An alternative prompt is to write a parody of the Stevens poem. Use the same structure, but treat your subject with humor rather than with the deep philosophical and observational insights we find in "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
Love the Stevens poem! What a great prompt (as always). Thanks, Adele!
ReplyDeleteJamie
Thanks, Jamie!
ReplyDeleteAmazing almost Zen-like poem by Stevens about recognizing connections between human and natural life.
ReplyDeleteConsider these lines: "That the black bird is involved / In what I know." All nature is involved in what we know!
Yes, bob.fiorellino! There is a definite Zen quality in the inspiration poem. One gets the sense with this prompt that each section might be a haiku or haiku-like poem. It would be interesting to try writing a haiku for each section, each a different "view" of the same thing.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Adele, for another thought-provoking prompt!
Máire Ó Cathail (Ireland)
The following simile is freighted with meaning, and extremely subtle (even for an academic), though it is not poetic. Charles DeFanti
ReplyDelete"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a
suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure." -- Daniel C. Dennett
bob.fiorellino and Maire,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, which share the link to Eastern sensibility in the inspiration poem and in this prompt!
Thanks, Charlie, for your comment.
ReplyDeleteApropos of nothing in particular, yes?
The following is a poem based somewhat 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. It's pretty much 9 ways of thinking about a 1957 Mercury
ReplyDelete1957 MERCURY
1.
One Friday night,
my father drove up
to the bungalow colony
with a new-used Mercury.
If that's the way it's
going to be, I thought,
that's the way it's going to be.
2.
The Mercury replaced
a '51 Buick Roadmaster
which couldn't make it
up hills anymore.
3.
It had push-button transmission
in a box on the dashboard
for left hand control
in the time of Sputniks
and Project Mercury.
4.
Everyone had a rocket
of their own, 400,000 pounds
of thrust provided by an air pump
and faucet water for fuel.
Ignition. Lift off.
5.
The rockets just cleared the trees.
They were red and blue plastic.
Unbreakable, then, like us.
6.
One of those summers, I had
a relationship with Miriam. We'd meet
in an unrented bungalow and kiss
behind a folded up mattress.
This could be a setting for a movie-
an adulterous affair in the Catskill foothills.
It's called Jews With The Hots
For Each Other or something
with the word betrayed or betrayal in it.
7.
Part of the script might read:
Ever notice how Ira,
the fat horse bookkeeper
with the whiny son,
who’s also something of a bully,
spends too much time
with his neighbor?
You see them by the lake.
They play pinball at the concession.
He says he's an accountant,
but I heard he's just a bookkeeper
who can't pass the CPA exam.
8.
We'd drive to Shoppers Paradise
on weekends. The store had everything.
All that mattered to me were
the baseball gloves and school supplies.
I'd stock up.
9.
We'd walk into town on the railroad tracks,
parents worried sick. That's the way
it's going to be with him. They'd envision
the headline: Honor Student Run Over By Train.
My parents must have thought
I wouldn't hear it, or that my foot
would get caught in a switch track.
Little confidence in a sensitive kid never helps.
FANTASTIC, bloom306!
ReplyDeleteYou really captured the idea, and what great subject matter - great details we can all identify with.
Thanks for posting. I always enjoy your poems.
To Bloom 306
ReplyDeleteWOW! Thanks so much for posting.
A BIG ditto to the comment made by Bob's Mustangs. You really nailed it!
Thank you for the kind comments. I didn't see the Stevens poem as metaphor so much as imaginative leaps. I tried for what seemed like an abundant optimism of the late 1950s, a nostalgia for something very positive and forward looking, mixed up with something unique to personal experience,even gossipy, which few families are immune to.
ReplyDeleteTo bloom306
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your poem and your thoughts about writing it. The "psychology" you note is interesting and, in my reckoning, integral to a "period piece" like this.
Máire Ó Cathail (Ireland)
bloom306!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the memories -- some the same, some different, but all of a time that no longer exists except in our memories: our fathers' cars, shopping in those great old stores, walking along the railroad tracks (a forbidden pleasure back then).
Jamie
My Winter Walk
ReplyDeleteAn immense eastern sky red and orange coloured hills the chill
to loiter among leafless trees and through the sparkling
lights on the stream a trout fixes her eye
there to hawk in the air above the loose-limbed stride
and smile on head held high with happy thoughts and laughter
and dance and song on this day my winter walk.
Very nice, Lewis! I'm so glad you're exploring the past prompts and finding some of them helpful! All good wishes to you!
Delete