Prompt #236 – Halloween (Post for October 24th & 31st)

When witches go riding, and black cats are seen,
the moon laughs and whispers, ‘tis near Halloween.

—Author Unknown

Because Halloween falls on the 31st, next Saturday, I thought I'd post a Halloween prompt this week and leave it up this week and next for you to enjoy.

BTW, did you know that the poet John Keats was born on Halloween in 1795? His last poem is an untitled, eight-line fragment that seems chillingly well-suited to Halloween:

                     This living hand, now warm and capable
                     Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
                     And in the icy silence of the tomb,
                     So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
                     That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
                     So in my veins red life might stream again,
                     And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
                     I hold it towards you.

For Halloween this year, simply read a selection of Halloween and related poems to get into the "spirit" (see example poems below), and then write a Halloween poem that brings back the memory of a particular Halloween (from childhood or more recent). There are no guidelines or tips other than to observe the usual caveats and to have fun with this. Here you go ...

• Touch base with a Halloween memory, think in terms of a narrative poem (one that tells a story), and let the memory guide your poem. 

• Be sure to evoke a mood or tone that's compatible with your subject.

• Use language that's appropriate to Halloween and your Halloween experience.

Example Poems:

 

John Donne,
“The Apparition” (1633)

Robert Herrick,
“The Hag” (1648)

Robert Burns,
“Halloween” (1785)

George Gordon, Lord Byron,
“Darkness” (1816)

Edgar Allan Poe,
“Dream-Land” (1844)

Edgar Allan Poe,
“The Raven” (1845)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
“Haunted Houses” (1858) 


Christina Rossetti,
“Goblin Market” (1862)

Walt Whitman,
“The Mystic Trumpeter” (1872)

Abram Joseph Ryan,
“Song of the Deathless Voice” (1880)

Paul Laurence Dunbar,
“The Haunted Oak” (1903)

Edith Wharton,
“All Souls” (1909)

Adelaide Crapsey,
“To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window” (1915)

Robert Frost,
“Ghost House” (1915)

Thomas Hardy,
“The Shadow on the Stone” (1917)

And here's a Halloween prose poem from my book A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing at All    (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2015.
Click here to order via Amazon.

Halloween

Trick-or-treaters come to the door repeatedly—little ones early, older kids into the night until she runs out of candy and turns off the outside lights. The wall between worlds is thin (aura over aura—stars flicker and flinch). The woman buttons her coat, checks her reflection in the mirror, and stands cheek to glass (eye on her own eye, its abstract edge). She leaves the house (empty house that we all become)—shadows shaped to the trees, crows in the high branches.

Happy Halloween!

Prompt #206 – Trick or Treat

Here is the U.S., and in other countries as well, it’s long been a common practice for children to dress up in costumes on Halloween and to go from door to door saying “trick or treat.” In other words, “Give us treats or we’ll find ways to trick you. The treats typically mean candy while the tricks (usually idle) suggest mischief of some sort.

In North America, trick-or-treating has been a popular Halloween tradition since the late 1940s. The custom of going from door to door and receiving food existed early on in Great Britain and Ireland in the form of “souling,” where children and poor people sang and said prayers for the dead in return for cakes. Guising, in which children dressed in costumes went from door to door for food and coins, also predates trick or treat, and is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895. Back then, masqueraders in disguise carried lanterns made from scooped out turnips and visited homes asking for cakes, fruit, and money.

Today, trick or treating remains popular in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Puerto Rico, and northwestern and central Mexico. In Mexico, the custom is called calaverita (Spanish for “little skull”). Instead of saying “trick or treat,” children ask “¿me da mi calaverita?” (“can you give me my little skull?”)—the asked-for calaverita is a small skull made of sugar or chocolate.

This week, let’s write about a Halloween memory, a treat or a trick that stands out for some reason.

Guidelines:

1. Begin with a list of some of the Halloween costumes you’ve worn (as a child or as an adult).

2. Select one of those costumes from your list.

3. Make another list of details (things you remember) from the time you wore that costume.

4. What made that costume (or that Halloween) so memorable? Was there a trick or treat involved (something that you didn’t expect that was either a trick or a treat for you)?

5. Write a poem about the experience.

Tips:

1. Avoid over use of details, adjectives, and adverbs.

2. Pay attention to craft.

3. Enliven the poem with effective use of language and figures of speech.

4. Re-create the experience by showing, not by telling.

5. Create a strong mood or tone.

Example:

Living Room

         by Catherine Doty

Remember the Halloween night

I was sick with migraine

left alone with you

while the others went out

and we took your nap together

after the beer

you on the couch and me

on my back on top of you

I could smell the painted flames

on my devil costume

the devil’s starchy mouth hole

damp with beer

I could see the car lights

stripe the living room ceiling

hear Halloween banging

at the door

hear your breathing

turn to sleep breathing

as I lay full-length

on that bony, crabby daddy

the man who never touched

who hardly talked           

I was happier that I had ever been

I was petting a sleeping lion

I though of turning five

the next day

I though of the cake

the paints and paper

I’d asked for

a picture I’d make you

of two red devils sleeping

of bowls of candy

safe and untouched in the dark

Reprinted by permission of the author. From Momentum, CavanKerry Press. 

Copyright © 2004 by Catherine Doty. All rights reserved.