A while back, I posted a prompt about wearing masks. With
Halloween just around the corner, this seems a great time to revisit that idea and to write about
masks, both literal and metaphorical. Anyone who has dressed up for Halloween knows how transforming masks can
be, how they provide a sense of escape, and
how they offer a
freeing quality that allows you to be someone other than yourself or, perhaps, to be who
you really are.
In
literature, the persona poem derives from a Greek word that means “mask” and is
a poem in which the poet figuratively dons a mask and writes from the fictional
“I” of another viewpoint. This prompt, however, goes in a different direction.
For our poetic purposes, let’s consider the kinds of masks we
wear and why we wear them. (Remember: masks may be anything
that disguises or conceals—physical features, facial expressions, attitudes,
and behaviors).
Most people wear “comfort masks” at times as
protection from judgments, to guard their real feelings from others, to gain
social or business positions, and to generally feel safe. People in emotional pain may mask their distress with smiles, and
unhappy children may wear the masks of class clowns or bullies. In many cases,
people who suffer from depression will deliberately seem to be happy or
optimistic; similarly, people who suffer from anxiety will create an illusion
of being relaxed or at ease. This kind of deliberate mask-wearing is a kind of
protection, but it can be very lonely.
What masks have you worn?
Suggestions:
1.
What metaphorical mask do you wear most often? What does it hide? Write a poem
about this.
2.
What “comfort mask” do you wear to guard your real feelings from others? Can
you write about a time when you wore a “mask” for emotional protection?
3.
How are you like the Phantom of the Opera? What emotional scars do you hide
behind a figurative “Phantom”
mask?
Write a poem about this.
4.
Write a poem about a time, place, social gathering or other situation in which
you would have liked to wear an actual mask.
5.
Write a poem about a memorable Halloween (read Catherine Doty’s “Living Room”
from her book Momentum: Click here
and scroll down to the poem http://www.kickingwind.com/073007.html).
6.
Write a poem about the best or scariest Halloween mask you’ve ever worn or ever seen.
Examples:
We
Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The
Mask by William Butler Yeats
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