Category: Wax Poetic

Are you following our Write it…! board on Pinterest? This images is all inspiration and puddles, perfect for February poetry.

Take a rainy day walk (imagine weather if climate does not permit) around your neck of the woods. Go people watching like this artist did. Write about a particular person or group you come across. What do you think that person’s backstory might be? Who are his/her friends? Where is he/she going? What does he/she hope for? What is he/she afraid of? Does that person call to mind certain memories, either childhood memories or recent experiences? Weave those memories into your narrative!

Example:

Bagpipes and Pajamas

Perhaps my craziest memory

is that of the man who sat in the quad

sometimes, playing bagpipes in his pajamas.

I don’t remember why he would do that—

perhaps I never knew. Perhaps

he was a transfer from Scotland,

and missed home while walking in the tangle

of graffitied metal of downtown warehouses.

Perhaps he always wanted to travel abroad,

and spent his nights drinking in the sound

of shafts of sunlight breaking through grey clouds

onto green hills: all I can recollect is his music

wafting around town at midnight some nights,

hearing those sweetly broken bagpipe

notes float out into the night,

starless with impenetrable smog.

-Constance

What do Man with a hoe, by Jean-François Millet and Starbucks have in common?

Being an avid follower of Van Gogh (who created a drawing inspired by Millet's Man with a Hoe), I recognized at once Starbuck's nod to these great artists. Brilliant.

Millet was a thoughtful artist who cared deeply about the dignity of the commoner. As I stood in line waiting for my pumpkin-spiced latte, I whipped out my phone to consider Millet's wisdom via Google and consider why in the world Starbucks would echo his painting (a painting that I've stood before on many a trip to the Getty). This is what I discovered:

This: "Sometimes, in places where the land is sterile, you see figures hoeing and digging." "From time to time one raises himself and straightens his back, …wiping his forehead with the back of his hand." 'Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow.'"

And this: "Is this the jovial work some people would have us believe in?" "But nevertheless, to me it is true humanity and great poetry."

And this: "To tell the truth, the peasant subjects suit my temperament best; for I must confess, that the human side of art is what touches me most."

And then Van Gogh's voice chimed in: "I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

And I thought: Persona Poem, yes, yes, yes!

Personae, in Latin, this form of poetry is a terrific opportunity for pretending on the page. Several years ago, when I was teaching the feudal system and medieval art, I had children pretend to be stationed in various social roles and to create persona poems to help them explore daily life in medieval times. The persona poems were brought to life in a collection of short films.      

So, what do Man with a hoe, by Jean-François Millet and Starbucks have in common?

For me, two words come to mind: Important Work.

This year at the Guild our persona poems will be inspired by Millet, Van Gogh, and yes, by Starbucks.

Stay tuned.

-Kim 

Write a small story that describes the parts of an object or characteristics and memories of a person, in order to tell a story or reach a conclusion about a certain character, just as the fading parts of this rose imply a history of aging and weather without words—by showing, not telling. The House on Mango Street, Esperanza vicariously describes her family by describing her house.

Example:

Red Tennis Shoes

Every month, my mother tells me to throw out my red tennis shoes. 

They’re about two sizes too small (left over from tenth grade, because tenth grade was the best year, this liminal space where you weren’t the school baby and you didn’t have to worry about WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS because God knows that’s too much responsibility, and all you need to worry about is whether you’ll get an A or a B, or whether you look better with a red or pink lip.)

One shoe’s lacings have been torn into frayed ribbons (because of my brother’s dog who mistook my shoes for his red ball, and I would say that it was stupid except for the fact that he often couldn’t recognize one thing from another, like my handwriting from my mom’s or fun from fulfilling, and yet you know she still loved both of them for their eyes)

They’re still covered in dirt stains (from the time we went camping in the Appalachians and I saw trees burst into photosynthetic flame for the first time, and the image of a ring of massive trees blossoming into red around a stagnant lake is still so sharp)

Every night I go to the trash to throw them out, I turning back to the house in the distance with its laughing yellow light, dangling their relieved weight from my hands.

-Constance