Prompt #352 – Writing Prose Poems

Although we’ve explored the subject of prose poems in the past, I thought this might be a good time to revisit the subject as we struggle with a “new normal” (that isn’t limited to any specific geography and applies to all of us). I’ll begin with a reprint of an article I wrote for the most recent issue of Tiferet Journal (Spring/summer 2020). 

For this prompt, imagine that you’re not writing prose, and you’re not writing poetry. You’re writing neither and both at the same time! It's a little like two wings that work together to make a prose poem "fly." So ... relax, let the words flow, and go wherever your prose poem leads you. (If the spirit moves you to write about the current Covid situation then, by all means, "fly" with it.) Once you’ve edited and refined your work, you might even find an online journal, print journal, or anthology for your poem.

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Prose Poems: One Foot in Prose, the Other in Poetry
By Adele Kenny

Reprinted by Permission from Tiferet Spring/Summer 2020.

Copyright © 2020 by Tiferet Press. All rights reserved.

To view the complete Spring/Summer 2020 issue of Tiferet free of charge, click here.

In recent years, prose poems have appeared more and more often in mainstream journals, anthologies, and books. There is justifiable fascination with a form that challenges readers with a name that seems contradictory if not downright oxymoronic. How can a piece of writing be both poetry and prose at the same time?

In the first issue of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, editor Peter Johnson explained, “Just as black humor straddles the fine line between comedy and tragedy, so the prose poem plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels.” A fusion of poetry and prose, the prose poem commits completely to neither.

While prose poems are not defined by the line breaks (lineation) typically associated with poetry, they maintain a poetic quality and necessarily use techniques common to verse. A standard prose poem is one that resembles prose in structure (paragraph form), but moves away from customary prose techniques in favor of poetry-like imagery and/or emotional effect. Prose poems may vary in length from a single paragraph to more than a page. Their lines break with the margins and, significantly, their margins are justified (left and right whenever possible). Thus, they appear in blocks of language (or as “language in a box”).  

The prose poem’s allegiance to poetry is unmistakable in sonic impression, compression, internal rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and figures of speech. Although prose poems appear as paragraphs, they lack the narrative structure of prose. Characterized by complete sentences and deliberate fragments, they are often driven by metaphor and imagery, and they sometimes speak the dialect of dreams. Prose poems generally include unexpected juxtapositions and startling twists of language. Based in reality, they often give a nod to the surreal.

Importantly, prose poems should make sense despite the fact that they are often presented through highly poetic language and almost always stretch the boundaries of poetry and prose. A confusing mishmash of words, however, is not a prose poem (at least not what might be termed a good one). By the same token, a prose poem is much more than a narrative story told in a generic way; there is always a strong element of surprise in the language, always something unpredictable. Too often, inexperienced poets assume that a prose poem simply tells a story, and many amateur prose poems read like diary entries or travel journals. Often confused with flash fiction and mini-memoirs, they are distinctively neither.

Historically, the prose poem is not a new concept. There are, arguably, prose poems contained in such ancient texts as the Bible, but prose poetry is most recently related to the haibun, a Japanese literary genre that became popular during the 17^thcentury. In most haibun, short poetic prose passages (paragraphs) are followed by haiku. Haibun are not exactly prose poem prototypes, but there is a relationship in the blending of prose and poetry, as well as a similar affective sensibility.

Western prose poetry emerged in the early 19^th century as a rebellion against traditional poetic structures. Symbolist poet Louis-Jacques-Napoléon “Aloysius” Bertrand is credited with introducing prose poetry into French literature in 1842 with Gaspard de la Nuit. In 1869, Charles Baudelaire published Petits Poèmes en Prose (Little Poems in Prose) and gave prose poetry its name. The form was firmly established in France by Arthur Rimbaud (Illuminations, 1886) and Stéphane Mallarmé (Divagations, 1897).

Throughout the 19^th century, poets continued to experiment with prose poems, which remained popular into the 20^th century and enjoyed a mid-century renaissance of interest during the 1950s and 1960s. Several distinguished American poets of that era wrote prose poems, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Robert Bly, to name a few. In 1989, Charles Simic won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection of prose poems, The World Doesn’t End.

Over time, individuals and groups of writers have adapted the form and developed their own rules and restrictions, ultimately widening the parameters of prose poem form.  Other prose poets involved include (among many others) Paul Fort, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Patchen, John Ashbery, and Mark Strand. However, prose poetry was not embraced by all. T.S. Eliot contested the form and argued that it lacked the rhythm and musical patterns of verse; he did, however, write one published prose poem called “Hysteria.”

It may be said that the prose poem is not yet, and likely never will be, defined by a specific “method.” That is, a “prescription” for writing prose poems is elusive at best. Prose poet Russell Edson stated in his essay “The Prose Poem in America” (published by Parnassus in 1976), “… for all the interesting poets who have written them, the prose poem has yet to yield up a method.”

Today, prose poetry is developing a 21^st century character. It remains uniquely neither poetry nor prose but is fundamentally a hybrid of the two, and is widely considered its own genre. Because prose poems do not function in a linear, logical manner, some may seem, at first blush, to be rather “odd.” They frequently require considerable thought and, more often than not, they mean much more than the words they contain. For poets who embrace the form, prose poetry is both a challenge and a delight that takes poetic art into a singular area of aesthetic expression.

Examples:

From the Semi-Annual Cross-Stitch Conference, Savvy Stitch

By Rogan Kelly

The bird died on a Thursday. She held it all night like an egg. Next morning, she packs the car with the bird in a cooler, wedges it in the middle console and drives to a conference in Jersey. Others went to dinner. She returns to the room where the winged body rests by the window: a grey vase of tulips on the sill beside. She pulls strips of lettuce from a turkey sandwich, collects part of the crust from the bread. And when she speaks to the empty room, her voice is the faint rusted creak of a half-hinged storm door before the wind picks up.

Wisdom in a Crayon

By Gary Szelc

                    (for Eleanor)

          My daughter, my daughter, did you leave me a page in my notebook?

At last, I find an empty sheet, and begin to write. But then, when I turn the page on my written thoughts, a childish scrawl reveals indigo streaks of a magic universe where the curve of an angel’s wing unfurls to one side and flutters in a breeze. On the page before my discourse, a rainbow horse swirls over a fuchsia tinted sea. Elsewhere, a purple forest and orange fruit surround a curious red spider (or octopus) or perhaps a swinging orangutan. There is marvel after marvel in this museum-quality exhibit of imagination—so much wisdom in crayon. So much that I tear out the page with my once pithy words.

Nuthatch

By Ray Cicetti

I watch it fly across the yard, carrying sunrise on its back, then land upside down on the sugar maple, wings tucked in like a teaching, only to disappear into the dark woods, like a small blue god's visitation. How I want to follow it, praise it, cup its soft fierceness in my hands.

I step into the moment, arms outstretched, and secretly become a bird. I breathe in autumn's fullness and turn in the crisp air.

The morning lifts me like wings over charcoal roofs. I warm my lined face with my hands, far away from the poverty of knowing. Awake as I will ever be.

Where He Hangs My Hat

By Bob Rosenbloom

If I begin to wear a hat, it could mean that an old Jew—not just any old Jew, but my father, a sweet, old Jew—has gained ground and overtaken my body. He’s begun to enter my soul. His hand has entered my hand through a gaping hole at the wrist and begun to write the rough draft of this poem under another title. We had so many heated arguments across the kitchen table. Only the food cooled off. I defended Al Sharpton. Dad kept the right wing flapping. We were pig-headed, stubborn. Mom refereed and sent us to our rooms when she had enough. Maybe my father has forgiven everything: dropping out of school, smoking pot, being named in a Brooklyn College lawsuit against SDS members. I did nothing wrong. It’s been decades. All the witnesses are gone.

Waiting for Ed McMahon
By Laura Boss

Ed McMahon, today is January 24th and I am sitting here waiting for you.  I am waiting for you to bring me ten million dollars. You sent me a letter two months ago with my name on the envelope in two-inch letters saying I was a winner—or at least that's the way it looked until I read it a second time. But then it seemed that I still had a really good chance of your giving me ten million dollars if I would just get my envelope back to you on time—especially if I affixed the gold sticker with the number 10 million correctly though it was hidden among all the magazine subscription stickers and to even further my chances I took a subscription to a magazine I didn't especially want, and Ed McMahon, I stuck that sticker on so carefully and even checked that I wanted my payment in one lump sum rather than monthly installments, and yes, I checked that I'm willing to be televised when you hand me that check for ten million dollars.  And because I was getting my letter back to you so fast, Ed McMahon, I stuck the bonus Jaguar sticker on its special card in my choice of green though I hesitated for a few seconds over the red one. And I left my calendar free for today—no free lance workshops (not that I have them everyday though I wish I did so I wouldn't be waiting so desperately for you today, Ed McMahon). Ed McMahon, I am sitting here waiting for you. I am waiting for you to bring me my ten million dollars.

 

The Beef Epitaph

Michael Benedikt

This is what it was: Sometime in the recent but until now unrecorded past, it was decided by certain ingenious and commercially forward-looking cattle-ranchers in a certain large, modern Western nation which prides itself on being nutritionally forward-looking, that since people are increasingly nutrition-conscious, and increasingly insistent that “you are what you eat,” all cattle on the way to market were to be marked with brief descriptive tags noting the favorite food of each animal; and also stating approximately how much each ate of it. This, it was felt, would both delight the diner and comfort the nutrition-conscious consumer: people would be able to tell exactly what kind of flavor and texture of beef they were purchasing beforehand, and always be able to secure exactly the kind of product most likely to delight their taste, since they would know a whole lot more than ever before about the quality and kind of nourishment which the animal had received (it was a little like our own, well-established, present-day modern American system of catering to preferences for light and dark meat in chicken—by supplying each part shrink-wrapped in a separate bag in the supermarkets). The system set up by those ingenious and commercially forward-looking cattle-ranchers was remarkably efficient; and seemed—at least at first—to be destined for success. This is how it worked: First, on each animal’s last day on the ranch, they attached the main, or so-called “parent” tag—made out according to information provided by each rancher, or their hired hands, or even (in some cases) their immediate family—to each head of livestock. The information contained on each tag would be of course be definitive, since it was compiled just before the two or three days required for shipment of the animal to the slaughterhouse—during which travel time, of course, the animal customarily doesn’t eat anything, anyway.... Once at the slaughterhouse, they carefully removed the “parent tags”; and during the slaughtering, mechanically duplicated them numerous times, preparing perhaps hundreds of tiny labels for each animal. Immediately afterwards, at the packing plant, these miniature, or “baby” tags were affixed, respectively to the proper bodily parts—each section of each animal being separately and appropriately tagged, each as if with an epitaph. But then something went wrong with this means of delighting the diner, and of comforting the nutrition-conscious consumer. At first, quite predictably, the tags came out reading things like “Much grass, a little moss, medium grain” and “Much grass, much grain, generally ate a lot.” And this, as one might expect, proved (at least at first), a great pleasure to purchasers! But then tags began coming through reading things like “A little grass, a little grain, many diverse scraps from our table”; and “She was our favorite pet—gave her all we had to give”; and there was even one (featured at dinnertime one evening on network television news) which was tear-stained and which said, in a child’s handwriting, “Good-bye, Little Blackie Lamb, sorry you had to grow up—I’ll sure miss you!” And so, gradually, despite its efficiency, this system somehow ceased to delight the diner, and comfort the nutrition-conscious consumer. And this is how the practise of The Beef Epitaph became generally neglected over the course of time; and how the members of a large, nutrition-conscious, and otherwise generally quite sophisticated modern nation very much like our own, came to eat their beef—as indeed they still do today—partially or even totally blindfolded.

From Night Cries, published by Wesleyan University Press, 1976. 
Copyright ©1976 and Copyright © 1999 by Michael Benedikt. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Laura Boss, Executor of Michael Benedikt’s literary estate.

Writing Prose Poems

First Try:

1. Go for a walk or find a quiet place to think and ponder some memories or experiences. Free-write for a couple of pages. Follow leaps of thought that catch your attention.

2. Read through what you wrote and highlight a few phrases that have special meaning for you (not too many).

3. Think about the emotional center of what you’ve written—this will become the emotional center of your poem.

4. Use selected portions of your free-write as the basis for a one-paragraph prose poem (be sure to vary your sentence length and structure).

5. Incorporate at least two striking images.

6. Include internal rhymes and slant rhymes, alliteration, or other poetry devices. Be sure to work on these as you write, or during the early stages of revision.

7. Cut out anything that is not essential. Do this increasingly strongly as your revision progresses.

8. When you feel you’re close to a final draft, read your prose poem aloud to yourself. What do you hear? Is there a definite “sound quality” to your poem? Does your imagery strike and stun? Have you nodded to the surreal? Have you incorporated both complete sentences and deliberate fragments?

Second Try:

1. For starters, think in terms of a single paragraph as your goal for this prose poem. Approach your subject knowing that you won’t be concerned with meter, stanzas, or line breaks. Your prose poem will take the shape of a paragraph (think “box,” and be sure to justify both the left and right margins when you type your poem). Remember to include complete sentences and sentence fragments.

2. For content: think about a particular image that remains clear in your memory.

3. Now think about how that image entered your memory. Where were you?  Was anyone with you? What happened? How did you feel?

4. Write a paragraph based on the image and about the experience. Bear in mind that your poem’s “muscle” will lie in the strength of your sentences. You will need to express thoughts and subtleties in ways that might be hampered by line breaks.

5. Pay particular attention to poetic devices (simile, metaphor, alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme, repetition, onomatopoeia, symbolism). Focus on describing the images and your feelings.

6. You may tell a story, but remember that the storyline is second to the language you use to tell it. There are two caveats.

     A. Your prose poem shouldn’t read like a diary entry.

     B. Be careful not to go over the top with poetic devices and poetic language.

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Stay safe and well, my dear blog friends!

Tiferet Journal

I've often said in workshops and at Carriage House readings that one of poetry's unique functions is to bring people together and to tell us that we're not alone. During this challenging and frightening time, when Covid-19 is a threat to all of us, those words take on special meaning. We may be sheltering in place, staying home, and practicing social distancing, but poetry can still bring us together. Perhaps now more than ever, as we read one another's words, experience each other's feelings, and see the natural world through each other's eyes, poetry will give sound to the silence and light to the darkness we currently share.

  

Thanks to the generosity of publisher/editor-in-chief Donna Baier Stein, 

the spring/summer 2020 issue of Tiferet Journal 

is now available in a format that's free of charge and accessible to everyone!

I'm happy to share Tiferet with you

—its poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art—

while we stay home and shelter in place (alone together)! 

Just click on the link below, sit back, and enjoy. 

Click here to download the spring/summer 2020 issue of Tiferet.

I send all of you my sincerest best wishes.

Please stay safe and be well!

Samples from Tiferet (spring/summer 2020):  

After Babel

     By Jessica deKoninck

There is a common language

I cannot master; though it was

my first. English came second.

I do not know the nouns of this

language or its syntax. I cannot

conjugate its verbs. But rivers speak it,

as do bones and bottles left

for recycling, the geese in the lake,

screen doors, peach trees,

ambulances, trolley cars and kettles.

It is there in the static of stars.

But I remain dumb.

If I could speak this tongue,

if I had its vocabulary, if I knew

its tune, I could tell you,

and you would understand.

Hands: A Love Poem

     By Deborah La Veglia

I fell in love with you, when I saw your hands—

Strong:

Hands that do things.

The veins that move through them,

Remind me of my grandfather’s hands:

Capable.

The kind of hands that rub Vicks on your

Back when you’re sick.

The kind of hands that change flat tires for friends,

That paint houses and fix plumbing.

The veins are so beautiful.

I imagine they lead to your soul.

I wish I could trace them with my fingers,

Touch you lightly,

So lightly,

But you’re a stranger to me.

I don’t even know your name.

  

The River

     By Elaine Koplow

      

 She sits on the bank

where small stones punctuate

the surface in front of her,

and the river ripples

gently at her feet.

Here the forest waits

while the river crosses,

tall trunks reflected

in its flow.

             

This is a place

where grief and love come

together.  She comes here to watch.

She comes here because.

She comes in the morning

when dreams of before

dissolve with the light

and she wakes

to the thinness of things

around her.

           

She comes in the evening

after the din of distraction

and the business of living

have concealed all thought.

She comes here to listen.

           

This is a place

where knowledge fails—

and she comes here

to the river

for the answer.

You Left Me Your Legacy, Love 
     By Peter Cooley

This drawer of multicolored socks, all scored

with painters, Chagall’s couple mid-air,

Van Gogh’s cypresses churning, Cezanne’s

sheened apples, so I can walk in wonder

every step. You left me my kind of belief,

art’s pretense of immortality, an eternity

daily reflection of your faith in heaven.

But why does Seurat’s pointillism afternoon

resist a mate unless it’s “Echo of A Scream”?

This woman like a mermaid staring back

while I slip Matisse on my left foot,

now my right, crossing my legs, she’ll be here

all day, when I sit down, presence of you.

Eternity of instants, that immortality.

Roadside Memorials           
     By Cheryl Vargas

 

On the way to Michigan, billboards, road signs, all the water bottles, the lonely shoe.

Radio set at 106.7—vocals, karaoke style. No microphone necessary. I cruise along Route 80 at 58 miles per hour, dusty sunbeams reflect on my sunglasses (rims that Elton John would approve).

White crosses, so many crosses. Angels and angels and angels. Weather-beaten memorials: deflated balloons, faded stuffed animals, plastic flowers. Names inscribed, rainbow colors pay homage. Markers positioned where loved ones died.

Life ends without permission; moves forward the same way.

                                      Photo After Icarus by Bob Fiorellino

                                               All Copyright © 2020 by Tiferet Press. All rights reserved.

Prompt #207 – What on Earth Is Spiritual Poetry?

This week’s prompt was inspired by a Facebook post a few weeks ago that was written by my old friend and fellow poet (and my godson’s father), Joe Weil.  

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By Joe Weil

In the middle of being busy, I grew distracted (I have that talent), and soon forgot to be busy, and I was four years old and sitting under the sweeping arch of a large forsythia bush that used to border our back yard. There were no blooms yet, but it was late winter, the beginning of March, and sparrows were puffing up their little bodies, perching close together to stay warm. I started to pray to God though I did not know any prayers yet or how to pray. I kept saying, “God, God, God.” God, and laughing. I was silly with the word. I made a song out of it. I said God in a deep voice and a high voice—very, very slowly, then very quickly. The sky was cloudy, the color of old oatmeal. The rich and slightly damp soil beneath the forsythia was on my hands, and it smelled vaguely of root beer. I heard my mother call my name, but I did not answer her right away, “Joseph! Where are you?” I blessed myself the way I saw my grandmother do a hundred times, and I shouted, “Ma!” I came out of this reverie stained with the grief of knowing even my most sophisticated prayers, all the work I do, can never make me feel that alive and intimate with God again. I thought, “I peaked at age five,” and then I realized the longing I felt to return to some interior life like that was a gift—perhaps my only gift, a genuine prayer given to me while, as Auden said, the dog goes on with its doggy life.

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What struck me about this prose poem is its intense spiritual nature and its sense of wonder and awe. It is, in my reckoning, profoundly spiritual. It isn’t self-consciously religious and it doesn’t stand on superficial pretension. It’s spiritual, not because it mentions God, but because it affirms God’s presence in the poet’s life, the importance of the poet’s family members, how childhood’s innocence is something we all lose, and how we long for communion with the sacred.

To me, Joe’s words read like a prose poem; but, more importantly, they do what Joe is noted for: they approache the “sacred” through the here and now—an important component of spiritual poetry.

As poetry editor of Tiferet Journal, I’m often asked what spiritual poetry is. My first answer is always that spiritual poetry isn’t necessarily religious, a statement of faith, or about an “ism” of any kind. For me, it is:

• poetry that approaches the sacred through the here and now,
• meditative poetry that doesn’t just skim the surface of experiences,
• poetry that avoids the sentimental, the corny, and the obvious while reaching toward deeper truths,
• poetry that incorporates silence, awe, and humility,
• poetry that may or may not include reference to a deity but somehow affirms something larger than humanity at the core of existence,
• poetry that, without being overtly mystical or obscure, understands it has touched something that is unknowable and holy.

According to poet and translator, Jane Hirschfield, “The root of 'spirit' is the Latin spirare, to breathe. Whatever lives on the breath, then, must have its spiritual dimension—including all poems, even the most unlikely. Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams: all poets of spiritual life. A useful exercise of soul would be to open any doorstop-sized anthology at random a dozen times and find in each of the resulting pages its spiritual dimension. If the poems are worth the cost of their ink, it can be done.” (Source)

I realized when writing this that “spiritual poetry” is hard to define, but I know it when I read it, and I suspect that you do too. I thought you might be interested in reading other poets’ thoughts on the subject, so I consulted a few poet friends, and their thoughts follow.

From Renée Ashley www.reneeashley.com

I tend to think of spiritual poems as those that address the state of the inner being in the context of the long now as opposed to the lyric moment. Perhaps another way to say that is, those that address the condition of the soul over the long term, though I’m not certain what soul may be. Brigit Pegeen Kelly is very much a spiritual poet, I think. For example, her poem “Song” builds brilliantly and elegantly throughout and culminates with its reveal of the ongoing state of the boys’ inner lives after their murder of the goat. "Song" by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

From Priscilla Orr www.priscillaorr.com

For me, spiritual poems reach into the numinous.  What I mean is that the poems may be anchored in the natural world or even the human world, but they also reach into the ether.  They take the poem into territory, which is inexplicable to us but that we somehow all know or recognize as a place where we move beyond rational knowing to pure intuitive knowing.  We may not understand or comprehend in that rationale way, but we recognize the place we've entered as sacred in some way.  And sometimes it's the collision of these two worlds that reveals what we typically miss.  Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose" is a good example. The last stanzas illustrate the sense of wonder.  "The Moose" by Elizabeth Bishop

From Penny Harter www.penhart.wordpress.com

Spiritual poetry is poetry that celebrates life with a sense of wonder and humility, poetry that finds the most simple moments of our everyday experience revelatory and radiant with meaning. Also, it is poetry that searches for understanding as it probes the eternal questions of time and mortality, exploring our place in the mystery of the cosmos. Among contemporaries, Jane Hirshfield, Barbara Crooker, Julie L. Moore, Therese Halscheid, and Adele Kenny come first to mind as spiritual poets. And of course James Wright, and the late Galway Kinnell ...whom we will sorely miss! Many poets write "spiritual" poetry, too many for me to keep naming. It's an essential part of who our best poets are, I think.

From Gary J. Whitehead www.garyjwhitehead.com

It seems to me that there are many ways of defining spiritual poetry. Some see spiritual poetry to mean religious verse. Others think of it as poetry that deals with New Age topics or the occult. I've always thought of it in the metaphysical sense—as poetry that attempts to examine one's own place as a living, breathing (think of the Latin meaning of spiritus), mortal being in the world. Spirit, separate from soul, then, is that unique breath of life of the individual. Stanley Kunitz comes to mind as a good example of a spiritual poet.

From Joe Weil www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Weil

The word spiritual often gets in the way. Its connotations are usually that of uplift or wisdom or nature writing that seeks to induce "Serenity" on the part of the reader and to cater to easy epiphanies. There is an enormous market for serenity—countless self help books, and inspirational tales of affirmation, but I think serenity without some sense of ferocity is always a bit of a cheat. Miguel Hernandez was a deeply spiritual poet as was St. John of the cross and they didn't tidy things up to look like sunsets on a lake. George Herbert's pains and contradictions, and the absolutely sexual heat of much mystical writing also factor in. I think the best spiritual writing proves that uncertainty and trouble are not diametrically opposed to a peace that surpasses all understanding, or more importantly to joy. Joy can exist beyond the conditional without being in denial. Happiness is far more precarious and those who lust for easy transport often misunderstand that the spirit goes where it will, like a wind, plumbing and testing even the depths of God. It’s raucous, and rippling. The spirit has energy and ferocity to spare, and so does the best spiritual poetry. To me, it is not spiritual to sit on a lake at the end of the day feeling all blessed-out if your fanny gets to sit there because thousands of others are suffering and far from any lakes. We cannot make a heaven of others’ misery, but we can try as poets not to make misery the end all/be all. Spiritual poetry is kind, compassionate, in love with the physicality of life, and deeply wise, but it is not polite. It is not a "seeming."

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Guidelines:

1. Begin by thinking in terms of awe-filled moments you’ve experienced. Remember that these moments may be the simplest and seemingly unimportant but are moments through which your awareness of something special and good in the world was enhanced.

2. Pick one moment and free write about it for fifteen or twenty minutes.

3. Come back to your free write several hours (or even a day or two later) and read what you wrote. Cull from your free write images and ideas to work into a poem.

4. Begin writing—think in terms of form (free verse, pantoum, sonnet, haiku, haibun, etc.).

5. “Direct” your poem: to a particular person, from the first person, in narrative form.

6. Create a mood or tone.

7. Consider the spiritual insight you hope to share. What exactly is the point you want to make?

Tips:

1. Spend time on your line breaks. Remember that how you break your lines (scansion) can help the reader pause exactly where you want pauses to occur. Line breaks can also be used to accentuate content and meaning.

2. Keep in mind that the best poems make their points by showing and not telling.

3. Beware of becoming self-consciously “religious.”

4. After you’ve written a couple of drafts, put the poem aside for a while and then come back to it. Try some reorganization; that is, move your lines around (sometimes the first line of a poem should become the last line and vice versa).

5. Look for adjectives and adverbs that are unnecessary. 

6. Drop articles when possible and remove prepositional phrases.

7. Create an integrated whole of language, form, and meaning.

Examples:

1. For a wonderful article and numerous example poems with commentary, click here.

2. My personal all-time favorite when I think of spiritual poetry. (Note that this is a poem about God; that notwithstanding, how does Hopkins use language to empower the poem?)

God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

3. Here's another personal favorite (first published in Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, Issue 19, 2011).

A Valediction to the Horizon by Robert Carnevale

I marvel at friends who believe

that they will see loved ones again

face-to-unmistakable-face.

The Earth falls forward without belief,

and no struggle, no anguish of ours

can begin to deceive it.

It seems the most I could believe in

was how some grace brought us

together in ways no god would imagine.

But plots thicken beyond believing.

Nothing is still there where we knew it,

no one, still there where we knew them.

   Whose leaving was our arriving?

   What did they have to take with them?

   What will grow from our going?

But even to question is to believe

in what makes the question conceivable

over here in the impossible. 

Here, now, we can only be

on one side of a door or the other.

That is not how it is where we’re going.

Submission Tips for Summer by Guest Blogger Donna Baier Stein

With summer quickly approaching and, hopefully, some leisure time for all of us, this seems a good week to think about submitting poems to journals. I’m delighted to present our guest blogger this week, the publisher of TIFERET Journal, Donna Baier Stein, whose long career in writing, editing and publishing provides the background for some practical and invaluable journal submission tips.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Donna at Tiferet since 2006, and here’s a bit about her by way of introduction: Donna Baier Stein's poetry and prose have appeared in Poet Lore, Beloit Poetry Journal, New York Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Phoebe, Confrontation, and many other journals and anthologies. Her story collection Sympathetic People, a finalist in an earlier Iowa Fiction Awards contest, was published last year by Serving House Books. Awards include a fellowship from Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, a scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the PEN/New England Discovery Award, honorable mention in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, four Pushcart nominations, and more. Donna was a founding editor of Bellevue Literary Review and is founder and publisher of TIFERET Journal. You can visit Donna online at www.donnabaierstein.com.

From Donna Baier Stein

As writers, we want to pass muster first with our own internal editor. Then, when the work feels ready for a wider audience, we push our word babies out into the world, hoping to catch the eye, heart, and approval of a publication editor. 

This process doesn’t have to be as daunting as it sometimes feels.

After viewing thousands of manuscripts submitted to Tiferet Journal and Bellevue Literary Review, I can tell you how off-putting sloppy formatting, spelling errors, and slow beginnings are to an editor you want to impress. There are always other manuscripts waiting to be read.

So here are 5 tips to increase your chance of success with an editor:

1. Start strong. As my Missouri aunt used to say, “Don’t hide your light under a bushel.” The longer it takes your writing to hook the editor’s attention, the less likely a positive response.

2. Fine-tune mercilessly. Remove every unnecessary word. Read your poem aloud to hear its internal music. Language is your medium; use it expertly.

3. Spell check. Use standard formatting and type fonts. Fair or not, handwritten submissions begin with one strike against them.

4. Include a short, professional cover note.  List prior publications if you have them but don’t worry if you don’t. The work is judged on its own merit. What is not necessary, and somewhat detrimental, is to write a long treatise about why you have just started writing.

5. Be patient. Editors really are inundated with manuscripts. At Tiferet and most journals, review is a multi-step process, with different levels of readers.

Here at Tiferet, we look for writing that is so truthful it may elicit goose bumps. Writing that resonates emotionally. And specific to our publication, writing that offers a glimpse of the invisible world, that reminds us of all that is sacred in our lives.

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Many thanks, Donna!

To order Donna's books via Amazon.com, click here.

To visit Tiferet Journal online, click here.

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For lists of journals that accept submissions during the summer, please be sure to visit Diane Lockward’s excellent blog (Blogalicious):

Summer Journals A-F 

Summer Journals G-P 

Summer Journals Q-Z

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Prompt Ideas for This Week

(Nope! I didn’t forget …)

Guidelines:

1. Write a poem about the end of spring, the beginning of summer, or summertime,

2. Write a poem in which you highlight the tastes (or remembered childhood tastes) of summer (lemonade, Kool Aid, marshmallows, watermelon, BBQ, etc.). You may want to use a sense other than, or along with, taste for this.

3. An alternative prompt is to read Donna’s poem "The Yellow Brick Road" and let it inspire you to write something about an imaginary place or thing and its relative or metaphorical meaning to you.

Tips:

1. Focus this week on sensory perceptions (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell).

2. Remember that imagery is used to suggest all the objects and qualities of sense perception in a poem—such images may use literal descriptions, allusions, or figures of speech such as similes or metaphors.

3. Keep in mind that the best poems typically contain some element of mystery or understatement. 

Good luck with your submissions!