Are We Having Fun Yet? I don’t know about you, but I desperately needed a break from the fuss and furor of the life that seems to be unfolding in this Spring of 2023. I’ve been hiding out some of the time in my kitchen, making soup and other comfort foods like rice pudding and grilled cheese sandwiches, and some of the time in the comfort of … you guessed it … poetry. I let myself sink into some old favorites and then experimented with using their lines as writing prompts. I thought you might like to join me.
I also wanted to invite you again to this Sunday’s 4pm (pdt) Zoomcast of Conversation With Friends, featuring Oregon’s recent Poet Laureate Emerita, Paulann Petersen. Her latest poetry collection, My Kindred, will be available everywhere next month, but we have the distinct pleasure and privilege of a preview Reading and time to engage in conversation with her about our mutual love interest … poetry. I hope you will join us. If you can’t, take heart. The session will be recorded and posted next week.
Also (fair warning) our Words this week will conclude with a bit of ‘shameless rascality’. Now, that being said, let’s look at some writing prompts … or ‘springboards’ as Paulann likes to call them.
Here’s how this works. I’m only going to give you the title of the poem the lines are from, and their author. If you want to see the whole thing, they are easily googled. Consider the words or cast them aside. Your choice. Write whatever you are moved to write … a line, a list, a paragraph, a poem, a song.
Tap your sleepy imagination on the shoulder and invite it to run wild. And if you’d like to share, you are welcome to join us in the Zoom Room.
Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things / Naomi Shihab Nye
She is carrying a book past the fire station
and the five and dime.
What this town has not given her
the book will provide; a sheep,
a wilderness of new solutions.
The book has already lived through its troubles.
The book has a calm cover, a straight spine.
Dark Charms / Dorianne Laux
We continue to speak, if only in whispers,
to something inside us that longs to be named.
We name it the past and drag it behind us
For the Young Who Want To / Marge Piercy
The real writer is one
who really writes. ….
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
Kindness / Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
Now That Anything Could Happen / Joyce Sutphen
You know now that you are not safe,
you know you live in fragile skin and bones,
that even steel and concrete can melt away,
and that the earth itself can come unhinged
Poem That Leaves Behind the Ocean / Jim Moore
After all, clinging to life
is what we have always done best.
We are still trying to hide
from the truth of things and who
can blame us.
Proclamation at a Birth / Linda Pastan
Let the guns sweep out
their chambers
and the criminals doze
dreaming themselves
back to infancy.
School Prayer / Diane Ackerman
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it ….
I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.
The Cure For It All / Julia Farenbacher
Go gently today, don’t hurry
or think about the next thing ….
Praise fresh air
clean water, good dogs. Spin
something from joy. Open
a window, even if
it’s cold outside.
Bloodline / Paulann Petersen
Long ago, the moon decided
on a pathway against the route
stars take. No one else
would dare to walk
the black sky backward.
The Solitude of an Apricot / Carl Adamshick
Beyond the sleepy
origin of sadness. Back, back into
the ingrown room. The place where
everything loved is placed, assembled
for memory. The delicate hold
and tender rearrangement of what is missing
The Great Poem / Lawrence Raab
What I’m writing now is not
the great poem. After a few lines
I could tell. It may not even be
a particularly good poem, although
it’s too early to decide about that.
Keep going, I say. See what happens.
Next to last, but not least, here’s that shameless rascality I mentioned earlier.
May 21st marks the one-year-anniversary of my Arms Filled With Bittersweet book launch. If you were there, you may remember the fabulous cake my daughter made to celebrate the occasion, along with my 83rd birthday. Now, in celebration of my 84th birthday (April 26) and the soon-to-be-one-year anniversary of the Bittersweet launch, my books will start showing up on Amazon early in May.
Here’s the ‘shameless rascal’ part … A ‘time-limited pre-order promotion’ will be offering the eBook version (kindle included) of Arms Filled With Bittersweet for just 84 cents.(direct link next week). It would help me a lot if you and others you know would purchase the book during the promo, AND it would help even more if those of you who have read it, would be so kind as to leave a brief review between May 19th and May 21st, the official ebook launch date, which also marks the end of the promotional period. This is how Amazon knows that people are interested in my book and it keeps them interested in me.
While I will deeply appreciate your kind and thoughtful words, your review doesn’t need to be elaborate. “I liked it!” counts. I will give you the link when we are closer to the date, but you can email me now if you can help.
I wouldn’t be here today without your support. Thank You All So Very Much!
And Thank You, Simone de Beauvoir, for your guiding words.
There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work… In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.
