An image from THE TREE OF LIFE

I’ve seen two fascinating films recently, both of whose images and underlying attitudes have seeped (mysteriously, inexplicably) into my work.  The first is The Tree of Life, whose cosmic interludes (and I mean this literally: one minute you’re observing a family at a dinner table and the next you’re panning across sunspots and galaxies… or maybe a child’s conception?) and drifting trajectories through time make you feel like you’re living inside a Jorie Graham poem.  The second is Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, a lush, sometimes perplexing film whose primary effect was to draw me back into the sounds and mythologies of my childhood in Southeast Asia.

What I found after watching these films, Uncle Boonmee in particular, was that certain scenes began to haunt me, such that while drafting entirely unrelated poems I would start stitching lines together from the perspective of a character in a movie, or with an emotional pitch keyed to a particularly memorable scene.  Weirdly enough, I found this productive; elements of the poems derived, however indirectly, from these films turned out to be not at all foreign to the impulses of the overall piece.

I’ve watched documentary films to fuel my poetry before, mostly to capture a sense of the figures who populate historical moments I’m fascinated by (and removed from), but this was different.  This was a less linear process, because rather than engaging film as a purely communicative medium, I had allowed myself to stew, so to speak, in the visual rhythms and narrative dynamics of a piece, then emerged to transmute these impressions into writing.

Prompt: 

Think back on a film you’ve seen recently (or watch one of the two I’ve mentioned here) and recall some of your dominant feelings and impressions.  Which elements of the film now haunt you?  Was it the quality of the light in a particular scene, or the look on a character’s face as they came to realize something?  Think about particular moments or images that have “lodged,” so to speak, in the sticky web of your poetic sensibility, then start writing—from within the world of the filmmaker’s art.

It’s not what you think… if this is what you’re thinking:

Courtesy of Wikipedia (Postcard c. 1900)

…or this:

Courtesy of The Daily Green

Your “holiday postcard” can be written on anything, no Santas, Christmas sweaters or antlers required.  Just find a festive-looking piece of cardstock or a regular postcard, and jot down a few lines of a poetry that you’d like to send to someone as a holiday greeting.  These can be  meditations on what you wish for them in the new year, a set of images informed by the motif of illumination as discussed by Iris in last Friday’s prompt, even a few descriptive lines of verse about family gatherings or spiritual traditions centered around the holidays.

Most people send Christmas cards, family newsletters or photos of their family — but you?  This year, try sending lines of poetry.  (And don’t even get us started on giving poems as gifts!)

Image courtesy of dwellingintheword.wordpress.com

It was about a year ago that I posted this prompt on Allen Ginsberg’s American Sentences, thanks to former classmate Jessica Tyson; this week’s Friday Prompt is courtesy of another recent UW MFA graduate, Talia Shalev.  She’s derived the exercise from a chapter in the anthology Contemporary American Poetry: Behind the Scenes (Longman, 2002), edited by Ryan Van Cleave, and writes:

Spend an hour in an urban setting that’s somewhat foreign to you.  A Laundromat.  A bus terminal.  A French pastry shop.  Record your observations and thoughts.  Spend another hour in a more rural setting, such as a chicken farm, an apple orchard, or a fishing hole.  At the very least, find a garden or park!  Record your observations and thoughts.

Write a poem about the urban setting that uses words, ideas, and images exclusively from your rural setting, and then write a poem about the rural setting that uses words, ideas, and images exclusively from your urban setting.  Does forcing yourself into using unusual vocabulary choices allow you greater freedom?  Does it make intuitive leaps easier?  How might this translate into your other poems?

What I find compelling about this prompt is the way it forces the “translation” or “transmutation” of observational detail from one context to another—a gesture that can be taken in a number of directions.  The same process can be used to navigate not only the in-betweens of rural and urban settings, but also the private and the public, the mainstream and the “minority,” the high and the low.  While I think it’s important that the prompt remain grounded in specific locales (ie. places that can be physically inhabited by the poet), it seems totally possible that a person could make the same linguistic leap from, say, one part of town to another—and in the process, cast light upon new ways of constructing difference, culture and place.

Structure and Surprise, ed. Michael Theune (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2007)

This week’s prompt is less of a prompt and more of an invitation to check out this book on poetic structure published by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative.  Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns is a collection of essays by noteworthy poets like D.A. Powell and Prageeta Sharma, which discusses the use of “the turn” in poetry writing; that is, the energetic leap or shift that occurs as the mind works through form to create dynamic patterns of thought.  In his introduction to the essays, Michael Theune says:

Poetic structure is, simply, the pattern of a poem’s turning.  As such, poetic structure identifies a vital feature of poems: the best poems very often include convincing, surprising turns… [I]n a lecture called “Levels and Opposites: Structure in Poetry,” Randall Jarrell claims that “a successful poem starts from one position and ends at a very different one, often a contradictory or opposite one; yet there has been no break in the unity of the poem.”

One of the structures discussed in Structure & Surprise is the retrospective-prospective structure, a two-part structure that begins with a retrospective discussion of the past and then moves toward a future orientation that shows, as the essay’s author, Mark Yakich, puts it, how “inconstant and dizzying” time really is.  While you’re welcome to browse the list of structures on the book’s extraordinarily helpful website to find one that might work better for whichever writing/revision process you’re currently in, I’d recommend trying this particular approach for starters.

Prompt: write a two-part poem that uses the retrospective-prospective structure to narrate a past event or memory.  Midway through the poem, shift to the present tense to “acknowledge some kind of change” (p. 72) that allows the speaker to either look prospectively into the future, or reconsider the past through a different lens.

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For a list of additional structures and supplemental materials, check out the Structure & Surprise website .

For more writing prompts on structure, take a look at Iris’ Ordering, Reordering, Reversing or last October’s prompt, Complicating Narrative Structure.

Rainbow trout from Silver Lake

Some families hike, some families play board games, some families get together to roll dumplings.  My family goes fishing.  And we always have.  My dad fishes with gear inherited from his dad, whose rod and net have been mended and re-mended so many times I wouldn’t be surprised if they were passed on from his dad’s dad.  Certainly, the rhythm of baiting the hook, casting the line and settling back to wait for a bite is something passed through generations.

My brother and I remarked on our last fishing trip that, when waiting behind a cast line on the side of a lake somewhere, it’s as if we sit waiting not only with each other and our dad, but with his dad as well—who passed on many years ago.  There’s a kind of comfort in this ritual, as if when gathering to bait and lure our lines, we gather to join the family members–both passed on and present—who have practiced these same steps through time.

And so our prompt for this week, taken from Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux’s The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (Norton, 1997), is:

Use a family anecdote, or a family ritual, as a leaping-off point for saying something about how your family or the world works.

If it helps, think first about the material reality of the ritual you intend to write about.  If it’s fishing you’re thinking of, research the anatomy of the fish.  Find out how its breathing apparatus works, what it is exactly that lines those “frightening gills.”  Learn the jargon of fisherfolk: the brand names of the bait, the particularities of lures and bobbers and lines.  Think of this as an opportunity not only to, as Laux and Addonizio put it, “sa[y] something about how your family or the world works,” but also to say something about how the ritual itself works.

Don’t enter the poem planning to say something earth-shattering (about your family, or anything).  Enter the poem with respect for the ritual in question, those who have conducted it in the past and the materiality of its “steps” as they unfold.  More often than not, it’s by examining the mechanisms of our lives that we reach fresh insight—but let this come to you through the writing.

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Note: Also see Iris’ February prompt about the family rituals we engage in when “turning the year.”  Though we’re still a ways off from New Year’s, many of us still feel the seasonal “turn” of fall (especially with Daylight Savings approaching!), and have our own private rituals built around welcoming this time of year.

Charles Bernstein | Courtesy of The Poetry Foundation

This week’s prompt is taken from leading Language poetry practitioner and theorist Charles Bernstein‘s “Experiments” (handily compiled by the University of Pennsylvania’s Electronic Poetry Center).  It asks you to venture into uncertain linguistic territory where meaning ceases to guide your composition (or in this case, translation) process and, instead, turns the reins over to sound.

We all know what homophones are, words that mean differently despite their (usually identical) sonic qualities (see/sea, their/there), and this exercise is one that relies almost exclusively on the odd transmutations of meaning that can happen when two words sound the same but signify different things… in different languages.

Though you will be working to translate a piece of poetry from another language into English, because the translation method is based on homophones and sound patterns rather than denotative/connotative meanings, your process will undoubtedly yield some wacky — but wonderful! — results.

If you enjoy the prompt and want to try other OuLiPo-type exercises inspired by Bernstein and others, do check out the EPC’s list of Language-poetry exercises.  Other ideas include taking two pages from a newspaper, magazine or book, and tearing them in half before pasting them together… voila, source material for a poem.  Also, famously, there’s the “n+7″ substitution exercise, where you:

Take a poem or other, possibly well‑known, text and substitute another word for every noun, adjective, adverb, and verb; determine the substitute word by looking up the index word in the dictionary and going 7 up or down, or one more, until you get a syntactically suitable replacement.

These exercises encourage play and experimentation and can also be really generative, something I’ve found hugely beneficial when my work grows dull and predictable.

Careful though: the poet’s disclosure at very bottom of the page reads, “Any profits accrued as a direct or indirect result of the use of these formulas shall be redistributed to the language at large” and “Management assumes no responsibility for damages that may result consequent to the use of this material”!

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Prompt:

Find a poem in a different language (Vietnamese, Urdu or Portugese, for example) and, without considering its literal translation (ie. amour = love, chéri = beloved/darling), translate the sound of the poem into English (ie. amour = a moor, chéri = share heat).  Be sure that you pick a language whose pronunciations you can approximate, but not necessarily understand.  Revise as necessary, but try not to become overly directive of your translation’s meaning, punctuation or narrative; focus instead on the sounds and strangeness of its emergent linguistic texture.

She writes:

I am so lucky to host a poetics radio program (The Blood-Jet Writing Hour) because it allows me to invite poets I am curious about and/or admire.  Although I feature poets of many different backgrounds, I seek to support and promote poetries of the Pacific Islands, Asia and their diasporas.  Summer is also the time for me to catch up on some fantastic Young Adult (YA) literature, poetry blogs/websites, and anthologies (hello, Norton!).

Below is just a small selection from my very long Summer 2011 Reading List.

Books:

*FROM UNINCORPORATED TERRITORY [SAINA]
by Craig Santos Perez
(Omnidawn, 2010)

Innovative, intertextual poetry that disrupts, navigates and de-navigates the histories of Guam (Guahan). I’ve just finished FROM UNINCORPORATED TERRITORY [HACHA] and I am excited to start Perez’s second book.

 

*BOUGH BREAKS
by Tamiko Beyer
(Meritage Press, 2011)

A fellow Kundiman poet who was also featured in LANTERN REVIEW! Her book seeks to interrogate queer motherhood, gender and the politics of adoption. Tamiko will be on the show with another Kundi, Hossannah Asuncion…

*FRAGMENTS OF LOSS
by Hossannah Asuncion
(The Poetry Society of America, 2011)

Winner of The Poetry Society of America’s 2010 Chapbook Fellowship, Asuncion’s chapbook begins with an epigraph by Rachel Cohen: “Walking in cities is an accumulation of small fragments of loss.” Asuncion gives us these heartbreaking, dreamlike fragments in fleeting moments, between New York City intersections and subway rides. There is quiet here amidst the city.

 

*AKATA WITCH
by Nnedi Okorafor
(Viking Juvenile, 2011)

This YA book caught my attention at my local Books Inc. It’s about a young, soccer-playing Nigerian girl named Sunny who is albino. She soon realizes she’s “a free agent” with incredible magical powers and joins a quartet of magic-bearing friends to fight crime. I can’t wait to start this one!

 

Website:

*DOVEGLION PRESS
www.doveglion.com

Named after Filipino poet Jose Garcia Villa, poets Barbara Jane Reyes and Oscar Bermeo co-curate and edit this fantastic website/resource, featuring essays, visual art and poetry by Sesshu Foster, Craig Santos Perez, Kenji Liu, Jean Vengua, Reginald Dwayne Betts and more! Reyes and Bermeo do an incredible job of curating thoughtful, meaningful works on the Internet, amidst the cacophony of viral videos and tweets.

Thanks for the reading recommendations, Rachelle, and good luck with The Blood-Jet Writing Hour!

Rachelle’s poem “I Am Still Alive“was published in Lantern Review, Issue 1.

From Todd:

This is the first summer in a while that I will not be attempting to finish Infinite Jest. I always try but then give up (at about page 200) when the huge time commitment gets in the way of my work. So instead, I just finished How They Were Found by Matt Bell and have started Once the Shore by Paul Yoon. On deck after that are Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Queen of the Ring by Jeff Leen, and Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting. Also, my partner Caitlin Horrocks has a brand new book out, This is Is Not Your City—I’ve read the stories, but it’s exciting to re-experience them in the book.

My poetry reading list is too long and cluttered to convey in full, but I recently read and was transfixed by Ignatz by Monica Youn and If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting by Anna Journey. At the moment, I’m kind of mesmerized with Ardor by Karen An-hwei Lee. Up next are What the Right Hand Knows by Tom Healy, A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood by Allen Braden, Archicembalo by G.C. Waldrep, The Haunted House by Marisa Crawford, Delivered by Sarah Gambito, Spit by Esther Lee, and Before I Came Home Naked by Christina Olson.

I am also planning to play Fallout: New Vegas wherever I can fit it in.

And from JoAnn:

Here are some of the books scattered across my study for Summer 2011 reading:

Practical Water by Brenda Hillman, because these poems help me think about and deal with the assaults on the Gulf Coast waters and ecosystems that I grew up in, and love.

Across State Lines: An American Renga, ed. Carol Muske-Dukes and Ed Holman (a poem by 54 U.S. poets begun as part of the America: Now and Here project), because I too believe that poetry can forge stronger communities by entering “its place in the national dialogue.”

Lit by Mary Karr, because I can read this one on the beach and laugh and cringe.

Reality Hunger by David Shields, because it offers me audacious, intelligent and hilarious ways to think about my displeasure with novels and my hunger for non-fiction and poetry, as well as the contract I offer my readers when I write.

Many piles of little magazines I picked up at AWP: e.g.: Tuesday: An Art Project; Pank; Bateau

W.S.Merwin’s The Shadow of Sirius because his poems are beautiful and meditative.

Nigh-no-place by Jen Hadfield, a poet getting great reviews. I bought this book because I want to hear her take on her trans-oceanic heritage, and learn about the Shetland Isles and Canadian ice – fishing.

Continuum by Nina Cassian, because I need poems of a wise-woman.

Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder, because I need poems of a wise ass.

What is the What by Dave Eggers, to learn about Sudan, Valentino, and feed my reality-hunger.

The Best American Essays 2010, ed. Christopher Hitchens, because reading great essays sustains me in my practice. I put this collection on my list because everyone needs to read John Edgar Wideman’s “Fatheralong, ” a frank and powerful piece on the background of Emmett Till’s murder, and “the myth of separate races” in this country.

Thanks for the wonderful reads, and for your contributions to Lantern Review, Issue 2: “Northwest Poem” by W. Todd Kaneko, and the poems “Winter Pond, with Armando” and “The Great Tree” by JoAnn Balingit.

Michelle writes:

Here’s what I’m hoping to get to this summer:

Atlantis by Mark Doty
The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
Natural History: A Selection by Pliny the Elder
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

Kenji writes:

Here’s my summer reading list so far:

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, by Jane Hirshfield
Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein
Dwellings, by Linda Hogan
One With Others, by C. D. Wright
On Becoming Filipino, by Carlos Bulosan
The Map as Art, by Katharine Harmon

And Gowri adds:

Here are some recommended books that I’ve read in the past couple of years (and LOVE):

Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry
http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org/book/9781557289315

Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings
http://www.amazon.com/Insects-Just-Like-Except-Wings/dp/8190605631

Many thanks to these three contributors—and to read their poems in Lantern Review, Issue 2, click on Michelle’s “Vestige,” Kenji’s “A Son Writes Back” and Gowri’s performance of the collaborative piece “Where are you from?“

She writes:

I’m halfway through the Naropa Summer Writing Program — hello from Boulder to the Lantern Review family!  My reading list relates to the conversations of the past two weeks.  As I was compiling this, I was often tempted to add the line: “and, eventually, all her other books.”

Anselm Berrigan, Notes from Irrelevance (Wave, 2011)

Tisa Bryant, [the curator] (Belladonna, 2009)

kari edwards, iduna (O Books, 2003)

Marcella Durand, Traffic & Weather (Futurepoem, 2008)

Renee Gladman, To After That (Toaf) (Atelos, 2008)

Christine Hume, Alaskaphrenia (New Issues, 2004)

Brenda Iijima, ed., )((eco(lang)(uage (reader)) (Nightboat, 2010)

Myung Mi Kim, Penury (Omnidawn, 2009)

Dawn Lundy Martin, Discipline (Nightboat, 2011)

Farid Matuk, This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine, 2010)

Myriam Moscona, trans. Jen Hofer, Negro Marfil (Les Figues, 2011)

Alice Notley, Culture of One (Penguin, 2011)

Akilah Oliver, A Toast in the House of Friends (Coffee House, 2009)

Charles Olson, Maximus Poems (UC Press, 1960)

Evie Shockley, The New Black (Wesleyan, 2011)

Sei Shonagon, Pillow Book (Columbia UP, 1991)

Jonathan Skinner, Warblers (Albion, 2010)

Brian Teare, Sight Maps (UC Press, 2009)

And I’m so looking forward to:

Hoa Nguyen, As Long as Trees Last (Wave, 2012)

Jai Arun Ravine,  (Tinfish, forthcoming)

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For more, read Kimberly’s poem “translation” in Lantern Review‘s Issue 2.