M Christine Delea's Blog, page 49
July 24, 2022
On the Other Hand: Poetry Prompt
Patricia Smith mentions Randy Travis in her poem, The Reemergence of the Noose, so we will keep it going this week.
Your writing challenge this week is to include a lyric from a Randy Travis song in your piece.
I put some below, but there are more lyrics listed online.
Remember to cite the song facts!
(If none of his lyrics appeal to you, try choice #2: refer to a singer in passing, as Smith does in her poem with Travis)
"I'm dialin' 'cross the radio for a song that I can sing"
from The ...
July 20, 2022
Deathly by Rodney Jones
Deathly
by Rodney Jones
published in his book, Imaginary Logic (2011, Houghton Miffllin)
I am alone, driving through St. Louis,
listening to a ballad by Aimee Mann.
There is a fine romance to listening to loud rock 'n' roll
as you drive a late-model car through a big city late at night:
the ordinary nostalgia, with its useless longing,
and then the clearer nostalgia for what never happened:
Februaries in Rio, blind tropical sweethearts,
the last few treaties of the Gore administration.
It...
July 17, 2022
Pain and Place: Poetry Prompt
In her poem, posted on this very blog, Kari Gunter-Seymour describes her Appalachia, both past and present.
Along with physical descriptions (white oaks, rye grass, moonlight, feathers, etc.), there are personal details--a confession of sorts--and even angel bones. The mix of these details creates the poem's feeling of out-of-reach yearning.
See if you can manage that combination in a poem you write this week. No matter where you grew up, you know things about that place that outsiders do not...
I Come From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be Seen by Kari Gunter-Seymour
I Come From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be Seen
by Kari Gunter-Seymour
published in her 2020 book, A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be
Seen, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions
White oaks thrash, moonlight driftsthe ceiling, as if I'm under water.Propane coils, warms my bones.
Gone are the magics and songs,all the things our grandmothers buried—piles of feathers and angel bones,
inscribed by all who came before.When I was twelve, my cousinscalled me ugly, enough to make i...
July 13, 2022
Iron Woman by Diane Glancy
Iron Woman
by Diane Glancy
published in her 1990 book by the same name
I knew I came from a different place,
a story cut apart with scissors.
I would find a piece of rust in the morning
or a shape in the field through a fog.
I would hear a broken language
as if spoken by a woman
with a bird’s nest on her head,
long pieces of iron welded for her buckskin.
She wears a mosquito mask,
a crooked twig for a nose.
Her teeth sewn together with close white threads.
I hear her small voice
from the bir...
July 10, 2022
Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell
Saint Francis and the Sow
by Galway Kinnell
The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words an...
What Plants Can Do: Poetry Prompt
A commercial for The Green Planet on PBS, besides being visually stunning, also prompted this week's prompt.
While showing video of gorgeous plants in action, these three words pop up on the scene: Seduce, Conspire, Destroy--not words one normally associates with plants!
This led me to find some other verbs that plants do, and that is part of this week's prompts.
Write a poem and try to use all of the words below in your poem. Your poem would not be about plants, but you should mention at l...
July 6, 2022
Text by Andrea Hollander
Text
for D.H.
by Andrea Hollander
published in Kosmos Journal, Autumn 2021
My friend tells me in a text that his cat has stopped eating. She’s in her last week, he writes, and while I am reading this, another text chirps in: Or last days, it says. I consider calling him. I’ve been where he is—on the precipice of such grief, the kind that people who don’t have pets dismiss. Shouldn’t we find a better word? Pets, as if all they’re for is us to stroke their warm bodies, welcome t...
July 3, 2022
Imagine That!: Poetry Prompt
Read the poem posted today on this very same blog (and many of the others) to see how wonderful poems that are pure imagination can be.
Honestly, I had never stopped to think what Mrs. Buddha and Mrs. God would do in any circumstance until reading Patricia McMillen's poem. Now? My head cannot stop picturing new espresso machines and red eggs!
This week's writing prompt takes today's poem as inspiration.
Imagine two people who do not exist in this realm or any other meeting up. In McMillen's...
Mrs. Buddha Calls on Mrs. God by Patricia McMillen
Mrs. Buddha Calls on Mrs. God
by Patricia McMillen
published in New Ohio Review, 2000
Tea or coffee? asks Mrs. God, hopeful
for an excuse to fire up her brand-new
espresso machine, a gift from Mr. God
last Christmas (he said it was from Santa,
their little joke). Mrs. Buddha can’t
decide. So many ways to burn water!
she marvels, wondering if it’s polite
to marvel, here in Heaven. Certainly
it would be bad form back in Nirvana
but everything’s so different here—why,
outside the front gate, di...
