Weekly Prompt: Poems Using Non-English Words

A favorite prompt of mine from Kenneth Koch’s classic book Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry is an exercise in which he asks his students to compose poems using words from a list of Spanish vocabulary. Writes Koch in his commentary:

“Writing these poems enabled children who knew Spanish to enjoy their knowledge of it and gave those who didn’t a feeling for another language . . . Too often, the non-English language a child knows is regarded in school as something that has to be overcome rather than as an additional source of knowledge and pleasure.” (297).

I love the idea of allowing a language whose rhythms feel natural to one’s ears (whether it is a first or second language) to color and inflect the poetic voice, and so to give it a place in one’s own [English language] writing. A year ago, when I traveled back to my undergraduate institution to co-present a writing workshop at an Asian American activism conference, my collaborators and I tried out Koch’s prompt with the group in attendance, but instead of using Spanish, we challenged ourselves to substitute words from our own families’ native languages. Continue reading “Weekly Prompt: Poems Using Non-English Words” →

Weekly Prompt: “The Right to Inquire”

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Lib. of Congress, via Wikipedia)

Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 81 years old today.  I wanted to do a prompt this week which engaged thoughtfully (in some way) with his legacy—with the work that he began and which continues today—and so I was pleased to stumble upon Laura Gamache’s lesson plan, “The Right to Inquire” (on the Teachers & Writers Collaborative’s web site), in which she uses poetry as a means to link the questions about equality raised by the Civil Rights Movement with contemporary racial injustice for a group of children two generations removed from MLK’s era.  In her three-part exploration, Gamache juxtaposed the big, outspoken rhetoric of the challenges raised in Langston Hughes’ poem, “Let America Be America Again” with the much-quoted rhetoric of Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” and asked her students to write poems that engaged in different ways with questions about the slippery relationship between what we imagine or idealize as “freedom,” and the reality of the matter.

In may ways, I think that Gamache’s title, “The Right to Inquire,” touches a vein at the heart of the struggle for social justice as it continues today.  Who has the right to raise difficult questions, or questions that nobody wants to hear?  And who will have the courage to do so?  In reading Hughes’ poem myself, I was struck not only by the questions that he raises (“Who said the free? Not me? /Surely not me? The millions on relief today? / The millions shot down when we strike? / The millions who have nothing for our pay?”), but also by the broad claims that he lays to the voices of those who (ought to) have the right to freedom, in order to argue that America has not been “itself,” or has not met its own precious standard of liberty, in which the call to equality rings foremost:

“I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.”

Continue reading “Weekly Prompt: “The Right to Inquire”” →

Weekly Prompt: Private Vocabularies

Everyone has a private vocabulary (or vocabularies) to which only they and those that they know are privvy.  Some of these “private” terms are particular to an individual person’s worldview or imagination (I have a friend who refers to internet survey memes as “salsa”), while others develop in the context of relationships with a particular group of people (whenever our 12th grade calculus teacher told us to “put away the Martian,” my classmates and I knew that he meant for us to stop doing other classes’ homework while his back was turned).  A private vocabulary can be deeply personal, and can link us to the awkward idiosyncracies of our families (as Paul Muldoon has reflected in his poem “Quoof”), or it can serve as a fruitful site from which creative production can bloom into entire alternate worlds (as in Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Man-Moth,” or Lewis Carroll’s “The Jabberwocky”).  Private vocabularies can be nonsense-based, or they can be based in mistranslations, in grammatical inconsistencies, or in innovation born of the need to fill linguistic gaps.  This, I think, can be especially poignant for those of us from immigrant families in which a language other than English, a mixture of English and other language(s), or a non-standard version of English, was commonly spoken in the home.

Exercise:
Write a poem that draws on a word or set of words particular to a private vocabulary of your own.

Here’s an excerpt from my attempt, which draws upon the first time that my younger brother (who grew up calling me Jaibo, his variant of the Chinese word for older sister), addressed me by my “real” (legal) name.

Losing the Nickname

My real name
fell from your mouth
so stiffly I thought
perhaps you’d coughed.
“Ah-ris,” the sound
of it seemed to stick
in your gullet, balled up
behind your gums. 
The word clattered
from your tongue,
scratchy, a stale clump
of bread bumping along
through uncombed carpet . . .

As always – if you attempt this – we’d be flattered if you shared an excerpt of your results in the comments.  Happy writing!

Weekly Prompt: “Questions Without Answers”

This week’s prompt is adapted from a writing exercise in Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community (T&W Collaborative, 2005), a writing handbook now on sale on the Teachers & Writers Collaborative website.

Poetry Everywhere by Jack Collum and Sheryl Noethe
Poetry Everywhere by Jack Collum and Sheryl Noethe

What happens when we die?  Where do noises go?  How far is far?  These types of questions without answers are the focus of today’s writing prompt.  According to Collum and Noethe, an unanswerable question is one that causes the mind to “kee[p] on seeking.” Don’t lose sight of this objective!  Allow each question to lead to the next without bothering to consider an answer.  Resist the impulse to know it all.

As it may take a while to get your mind into “seeking” mode, begin with a few practice questions.  Let your thoughts wander.  Stare out the window…  Where do birds sleep at night?  How do they recognize their family members?  Do baby birds ever find their fathers?  Would they want to?  How tall do pine trees grow?  How long would it take for one to grow into outer space?  Unfetter your mind: no question is too whimsical for this exercise.

Continue reading “Weekly Prompt: “Questions Without Answers”” →

Weekly Prompt: Superheroes

A favorite childhood superhero (via Muppet Wiki)
A favorite childhood superhero (via Muppet Wiki)

It’s been a superhero kind of week.  Inspired simultaneously by this song, this NPR story, and by an article (I think from Teachers & Writers’ Collaborative magazine)  in which a writing teacher asked her tentative students to write about their secret superpowers, I developed a prompt about superheroes to use with a group of adult residents at the South Bend Center for the Homeless, where my M.F.A. classmates and I lead a workshop on Wednesday nights.

After opening with an icebreaker about flight vs. invisibility, I shared two poems (“The Flash Reverses Time” by A. Van Jordan, and “Superhero Pregnant Woman” by Jessy Randall) written from the perspectives of different kinds of superheroes with the group, and asked them to choose between three options: 1) to write about an unusual superpower of their own, 2) to write about what their life might be like (how it might be the same or different) as an undercover superhero or villain, and 3) to write from the perspective of a “real” superhero (fictional or living).  The intent was to draw out the class’s imaginations, away from the everyday perspectives of self, and to have them enter into the fantastic realm of the alternative desire – the “what if,” so to speak.  The class responded with a wide range of interpretations – two people wrote about the ability to stop pain, several people inhabited their favorite comic book and movie characters, one young man who says that he normally writes “on the dark side” wrote a very sweet poem about his ‘superhero’ of a mother, and a young woman who was at first hesitant to share her work wrote a hilarious piece about a superhero who could, among other abilities, toast pieces of bread with her built-in laser beams.

Continue reading “Weekly Prompt: Superheroes” →

Weekly Prompt: The Art of Rhetoric

Note: This prompt was first introduced to me by poet and UW professor Andrew Feld, author of  Citizen (Harper Collins, 2004).  Because I found it so helpful to my own writing, I have decided to share it with Lantern Review.

Shakespeare Resources Center

The art of rhetoric, one of the ancient arts of discourse, is the art of persuasion and using language effectively.  Rhetorical devices and figures can prove tremendously useful to the contemporary poet, in the sense that they offer one a variety of syntactical structures that force tighter form and syntax, quicker turns in language, and—at times—more rigorous thought.

In my experience, experimenting with “rhetorical poetry” can allow a poet’s language to move in unexpected ways, thus enabling them to explore territory they wouldn’t normally breach.  Think of rhetoric as a tool than can be applied to language; the use of chiasmus, for example, will structure your thought in such a way that you begin with a word of idea, move to another, and then circle back to the initial one.  Consider the rhetorical effect of this particular construction: the sense of venturing out, circling, and returning is created not by description or narrative, but by the language itself.

The following excerpt from one of my “rhetoric” poems is an example of how using a rhetorical device in your writing can lead to some productive experimentation with voice, tone, and syntactical structure:

Sometime in the nineties, midway through

Her Southeast Asian exile, she directed the Frenchman at the salon

To Do Anything.  Thus began the cropped years.

She came home and cried.  We all cried.

Here the use of epistrophe is demonstrated in the repeated use of the word “cried” at the end of the two sentences in the final line.  Ending both sentences on the beat “cried” affects not only the rhythm of the language, but the manner in which the stanza shapes meaning and tone as well.

To write your own rhetoric poem, refer to this article, entitled “Shakespeare’s Grammar: Rhetorical Devices,” which is a quick glossary of some of the most common rhetorical devices.  Select a few (two or three, to begin) devices from the list and incorporate them into your writing by either (1) revising a previously written poem, or (2) tackling some new material.  It may be easier to begin with a poem you have already written, although starting on a completely new project may afford you a greater degree of freedom.

In short, consider the ways in which rhetoric can take pressure off you as a poet.  Let syntax do the work of poetry—you may be pleased with the results!  We would love to see any experimentation that results from your work with rhetoric, so please consider posting your responses on our blog.

Weekly Prompt: “We Mustn’t ____ Anymore”

First things first: a shout out to Oliver de la Paz, who unwittingly provided the impetus for this week’s prompt.  Mr. de la Paz, we love what you write!

I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter recently in order to keep up with the LR community and last week, I happened to read one of Mr. de la Paz’s Tweets that said:

Oliver_delaPaz mustn’t put two spaces after periods anymore. Oops. Old habits die hard.
11:37 PM Nov 13th from web

The content of the Tweet registered briefly with me (I spent a lot of time this summer having to retrain myself to use one space after periods because my job involved cover copy work), but as the week wore on, I found that the rhythm of that first sentence had, in a strange way, worked itself into my head.  “We mustn’t ____ anymore,” I thought as I washed the dinner dishes.  “We mustn’t_____anymore,” chugged the buses rolling past my apartment on their morning routes.  “We mustn’t ______anymore,” wheezed the teakettle as I brewed my afternoon cup. 

Being haunted by a Tweet (okay, a variation on a phrase from a Tweet) is no easy thing.  It twists itself into your every thought and action, pokes at you until your very footsteps are beating out “We mustn’t_____anymore,” and you feel you must do something with it.  Hence, this week’s prompt.  To Mr. de la Paz: apologies for hijacking your internet musings.  No irreverence was intended. Twitter made me do it!

* * *

This exercise takes its form from both the phrase “We mustn’t ______ anymore” and from Kenneth Koch’s classic poetry exercise for children, in which every line begins with the words “I Wish.”

Prompt:
Write a list poem composed of sentences that begin with “We mustn’t . . . ” and that end with ” . . . anymore.”

Continue reading “Weekly Prompt: “We Mustn’t ____ Anymore”” →

Weekly Prompt: Directions to My Childhood

In 2008, Florida-based poet Nick Carbo published the poem “Directions to My Imaginary Childhood” in the Norton anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (eds. Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar).  “Directions” sweeps the reader through the bustling streets of Manila and then, in an eerily meta-textual moment, onto the page itself (“open the door and enter/ this page and look me in the eye”).  It also offers a set of instructions, directions, and pithy observations on the people and places of the speaker’s childhood; this, for me, was an access point into writing some childhood directions of my own.

As, in a sense, all homelands are a kind of fiction (for more, see Chapter One of Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands), write a poem exploring the sights, smells, and idiosyncrasies of your childhood homeland, whatever your conception of that that space/time may be.  Frame your exploration as a set of instructions: tips, insights, observations on how to best navigate the tricky terms of not only childhood in general, but your childhood in particular.

Here is an excerpt from my version of “Directions to My Childhood.”

If the meat lady catches you lingering by the catfish,

Goggle-eying the eels, she’ll pinch; better to watch

From behind mother’s grocery bag.

Watch for the sacred beam when you enter.

You may think Buddha is in tranquil meditation

But a careless foot will cost you.

A crumpled owl found at the bottom of the cage

Fits perfectly in my palm.  The backyard fills with parrots,

Slow lorises, spotted turtledoves, and the cold forms

Of a rabbit and her progeny.

A can is not a good place to bury a bird.

You may think a lid will preserve it from decay

But when you see the sodden remains—

Though a “Directions” poem will generally operate in the instructional mode, you are of course welcome to explore alternative ways of framing your narrative.  Take seriously the notion that all homelands are–or quickly become–imagined spaces, and allow this to authorize creative moves you might not otherwise consider in a poem.  Have fun with this, and good luck!  Please consider posting an excerpt or entire poem here for the Lantern Review blog community to read–we would love to see your responses.