J. Gabriel Scala's Blog

A Room of My Own

If you’re just recently arriving at this space, welcome!  This blog has been part of my writing routine since the fall of 2010 when I left my position at Delta State University to travel abroad and work independently as an editor/freelancer.  Over the years, it’s been a place to write and publish book reviews, commentary (read: snark), author interviews, literary happenings (and other happenings), thoughts on the publishing industry, and – most often – as a work space for drafting new essays...

P&W Prompt: You Come to Me

I don’t usually make any real use of the titles Poets & Writers’ Magazine gives to its weekly prompts: The Time is Now; however, this week the prompt title really spoke to me.  Here’s the prompt itself:

“I was young when you came to me. / Each thing rings its turn…” begins Meena Alexander’s poem “Muse.” Write a poem of direct address to a muse—any specific object, memory, person, moment, or idea that invokes wonder and reflection. Read the rest of Alexander’s poem for inspiration derived from...

P&W Prompt: The Poetry of Science

I had to laugh out loud when I read this week’s prompt from Poets & Writers magazine:

Poetry and science combined to join forces at this year’s March for Science in Washington, D.C. Jane Hirshfield organized writing workshops and readings, and science poems by writers like Tracy K. Smith and Gary Snyder were displayed on banners. Many poets are using social media to respond quickly and powerfully to events occurring in the tumult of the political climate. Browse through newspapers or online f...

P&W Prompt: Why Is the World So Messy?

Happy Spring, y’all!  This week’s Poets & Writers’ prompt is inspired by a truly inspiring short film project (if you have a moment, it’s worth the time to watch):

Can girls be robots? How do you make water? What does extinct mean? Children have a curiosity for the world that can often inspire them to ask difficult questions like these from filmmaker Kelly O’Brien’s five-year-old daughter Willow. In the spirit of childish inquisitiveness, write a poem entirely of questions. How might you use...

P&W Prompt: Crayon Colors

If you’re thinking this is going to be a sweet little poem about childhood and crayons, you’ve forgotten about just how powerful word association can be.  Here’s the Poets & Writers’ prompt for last week:

Last month, Crayola announced the retirement of one of their yellow crayon colors, Dandelion, which will soon be replaced by a blue crayon. Since Binney & Smith first began producing Crayola crayons in 1903, many colors have been cycled in and out. Some colors have remained the same shade bu...

P&W Prompt: New Language

This time last year, when I made the, what some might call “radical,” decision to leave my lucrative, work-from-home, Assistant Professor of English position at Ashford University to take a lectureship offering half of my Ashford salary and requiring a move to deeply conservative Texas, I had high hopes for what that decision would mean.  I’d been with Ashford for four years, and for four years, I’d been swept up into the most corporate, insane, fast paced, high pressure gig I’d ever experien...

P&W Prompt: Ode to Dinner

It’s hard to believe it, but this is officially my last “backlog” of exercises from Poets & Writers’ weekly prompts, The Time Is Now.  Assuming I can also write the prompt from this week over the weekend, I am officially (hallelujah!) caught up.  Now….staying caught up will be the next challenge.  Here’s hoping

P&W Prompt: Spring After Winter

As Matthew McConaughey  might say….

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!  I’m just two poems away from being caught up with Poets & Writers’ weekly series, The Time is Now.  Here’s the prompt from March 21:

“There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after win...

P&W Prompt: Poem in Pink

Moving right along, here’s the prompt from March 14:

A salt lake in Melbourne, Australia recently turned pink due to the growth of algae “in response to very high salt levels, high temperatures, sunlight, and lack of rainfall.” The phenomenon transformed the lake from its natural blue tone to an unusually bright flamingo color. Write a poem that begins by evoking the sensations of one color, and then—gradually or abruptly—turns a strikingly different color, perhaps even pink. How will you man...

P&W Prompt: Golden Shovel

Shhhhh….don’t say it too loudly, but I think I’ve actually just caught up with Poets & Writers Magazine’s weekly prompt series, The Time is Now.  Let’s hurry up and get to it before they send me an email with yet another prompt.

Ahem.  CLEARLY I wrote that several weeks ago (when I thought I was going to actually catch up) and then promptly traipsed off in the direction of spring break and forgot all about it.  Nonetheless, poetry marches on.  Here’s the prompt from March 7th:

If you read, i...