After Years - Ted Kooser

After Years
Ted Kooser

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

---

Here, the author takes an experience (seeing "you" after years) and creates a feeling by directing our attention to believable concurring images. And finally, after leading us on a journey of images, the author brings us back to himself and somehow the images he has woven together create a feeling in us that allows us to empathize with his experience. 

While keeping this poem in mind, it's messages and techniques, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. Find a moment in your life where a change occurred or a memory resurfaced and imagine concurring images that help both mimic your feelings and also add up to give us a greater understanding of you as a person. Use the final image as a tie in back to you.
2. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
3. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.

Tracks - Tomas Tranströmer

Tracks 
Tomas Tranströmer
(Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)

Night, two o’clock: moonlight. The train has stopped
in the middle of the plain. Distant bright points of a town
twinkle cold on the horizon.

As when someone has gone into a dream so far
that he’ll never remember he was there
when he comes back to his room.

And as when someone goes into a sickness so deep
that all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,
cold and feeble on the horizon.

The train stands perfectly still.
Two o’clock: full moonlight, few stars.

---

Wow. This poem captures the essence of a single moment. We do not know why this event is important, and yet the power of the event comes across to us in two seemingly simple metaphors. Poetry doesn't need to be complicated to contain and convey truth. Every time I read this poem, I can feel myself there on the train and I believe the strangeness of it like a dream as well as the timelessness.

While keeping this poem in mind, it's messages and techniques, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. Find a single moment in your life that is meaningful to you and use two short metaphors to try to explain to us, the reader, why the moment was important.
2. This poem contains two metaphors that are seemingly contradictory (the ephemeral qualities of a dream mixed with the eternal qualities of a sickness), yet work together to accurately explain an experience. Find two qualities that are seemingly contradictory and find metaphors for them. Then, use those metaphors to talk about a single experience or moment.
3. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
4. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.

Oranges - Gary Soto

Oranges
Gary Soto

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

---

What I love about this poem is how he lets the images do the work. Each person, place, and thing in this poem is connected to an image. The girl doesn't just come out, she comes out "pulling at her gloves, face bright with rouge." The tiny bell doesn't just ring, it "[brings] a saleslady down a narrow isle of goods." These images add up to the feeling of innocent love conveyed in the poem. It creates the feeling of warmth that it shows in the final image. Not once does he say how he loves the girl or what she might feel about it. In truth, this is very much like a silent film.

While keeping this poem in mind, its techniques and its messages, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. What is an experience with a girl that you remember from your childhood. What did you do together? Use images to show everything that happened. Have a beginning and an end, similar to a narrative.
2. Have you ever had a silent understanding with someone? What led up to that experience and what followed it? Use images to show everything that happened.  Have a beginning and an end, similar to a narrative.
3. What was your first experience with someone you love or loved. How did it pan out? What was the season and weather like around you? How did the things around you show the feelings that you felt? Describe.
4. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
5. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.

Poor Angels - Edward Hirsch

Poor Angels
Edward Hirsch

At this hour the soul floats weightlessly
through the city streets, speechless and invisible,
astonished by the smoky blend of grays and golds
seeping out of the air, the dark half-tones

of dusk suddenly filling the urban sky
while the body sits listlessly by the window
sullen and heavy, too exhausted to move,
too weary to stand up or to lie down.

At this hour the soul is like a yellow wing
slipping through the treetops, a little ecstatic
cloud hovering over the sidewalks, calling out
to the approaching night, “Amaze me, amaze me,”

while the body sits glumly by the window
listening to the clear summons of the dead
transparent as glass, clairvoyant as crystal.
Some nights it is almost ready to join them.

Oh, this is a strange, unlikely tethering,
a furious grafting of the quick and the slow:
when the soul flies up, the body sinks down
and all night—locked in the same cramped room—

they go on quarreling, stubbornly threatening
to leave each other, wordlessly filling the air
with the sound of a low internal burning.
How long can this bewildering marriage last?

At midnight the soul dreams of a small fire
of stars flaming on the other side of the sky,
but the body stares into an empty night sheen,
a hollow-eyed darkness. Poor luckless angels,

feverish old loves: don’t separate yet.
Let what rises live with what descends.

---

Here, the author describes the difference between intangible part of ourselves, the soul, and the physical body. There are sets of contrasting images, some discussing the desires of the soul, while others show the view of the body. My father has often said "My mind tells my body what to do and my body says 'Forget it.'" So also here, there is friction detailed between the body and the soul. Both pull us in different directions and yet they are an integral part of who we are. There is a magic and a wonder that two things so seemingly opposite are together in one. 

While keeping this poem in mind, its techniques and its messages, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. What are two things that are inseparably connected? What does each do or desire? In what ways are they alike and in what ways do their functions/viewpoints conflict? What is the purpose of their togetherness? Describe.
2. Similarly, pick two things that cannot be connected. What does each do or desire? In what ways are they alike and in what ways do their functions/viewpoints conflict? What is the purpose of their separation? Describe.
3. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
4. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.

Happiness - Stephen Dunn

Happiness
Stephen Dunn

A state you must dare not enter
   with hopes of staying,
quicksand in the marshes, and all

the roads leading to a castle
   that doesn't exist.
But there it is, as promised,

with its perfect bridge above
   the crocodiles,
and its doors forever open.

---

Here the author takes a more nebulous word, "happiness," and talks to us about it using images. He takes a single image – that of a fantasy castle – and compares it to happiness. In this he assumes that we already know the definition of the word and then gives us counsel about it through the metaphor.

While keeping this poem in mind, its techniques and its messages, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. Take a non-concrete word (such as happiness) and compare it to a single image. Be consistent with the details you provide such that they are true to both the image and the chosen word. Use the metaphor to provide insight into the word - both its good connotations while being wary of potential pitfalls.
2. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
3. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.

What Work Is - Philip Levine

What Work Is

Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.

---

The author here takes a word, "work", and tries to define it using an experience, in this case that of your imagined brother. What does it mean to work? Really work? Is it the physical labor of people in a factory or waiting around in a line to find labor? Is it the late night shifts or the study of subjects? Or is it something more emotional - showing someone that you care for them? Through images and short narratives, the author presents to us a much more powerful definition of the word "work." It isn't a definition we could repeat with words, but we feel it nonetheless. That is the power behind this poem.

While keeping this poem in mind, its techniques and its messages, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. Search for a word, any word, that reminds you of an experience that you or someone near you has had. What is the simple definition of that word and how well does that definition actually fit the experience? Describe the experience keeping the word in mind, maybe even trying to define the word afresh in terms of the experience.
2. The opposite can also be done: think of an experience and then write down words that can be associated with that experience. Do any of the words come close to defining the experience. Describe the experience keeping that word in mind, maybe even trying to define the word afresh in terms of the experience.
3. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
4. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.

Ursa Minor - Jody Barnes

Ursa Minor

Jody Barnes

They want to trap you in the flatness of their paper charts
They lay snares of straight lines and sharp corners

Because you are different
they name you with short, sharp words
autistic, A.D.D., hyper

They say something's wrong
He won't speak when spoken to
He won't count to five or say his ABCs
or play with other kids his age

With pens poised above graphs they wait
"What color is the umbrella, Alex?"
You look through them
past the picture of the yellow umbrella
past the calm beige walls
through time and space

Tattooed behind your cautious eyes is the path
through the Milky Way
In the dark of your room when I lean down to kiss you
I can still see how the stars laid themselves out
and guided you down to nestle under my ribs

When you were born I didn't count fingers and toes
Instead, like momma bear, I nuzzled you
and breathed in your familiar scent
You smelled like new clothes and cedar
and the water from the river behind my grandfather's house

I touched the oblong scar on your belly
knowing then you were a gift from the spirits
What had made that mark?
Musket ball?
Arrowhead?
Spear?

The woman with the clip board calls you "cute" and "precious"
She can sense the agenda stamped on your soul
But she doesn't have the words to articulate
so she speaks in baby talk, thinking it's you
who doesn't understand

The nurse bends down to peer into your eyes
I want to ask her if she can see it too
But she turns away without comment
maybe the bright reason in the room has nullified the answers
that I find there
the same way the blinding lights of the city
wash away the path through the stars at night

---

The author here has a social commentary to make about judgement and how we have the tendency to group people together with labels and stereotypes. The situation is clearly laid out to the reader as is the viewpoint of the author. She, as the mother, can see a whole lot more in the life of her child than "the agenda stamped on [his] soul." There is also a cultural viewpoint established in this poem - the author is Native American and has a distinct viewpoint on the way things are handled in our "scientific" community. There are other ways to view children with disabilities than to "trap [them] in the flatness of their paper charts." Instead, it seems that the possibilities for this child extend to the stars.

While keeping this poem in mind, its techniques and its messages, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. Do you know anyone who is different from you? What makes them different (it could be a disability or anything else)? What are society's views on that person? What are your views on this person? Describe.
2. What is the relationship like between you and your mother? How does she view you as opposed to how others view you? Write a poem from her perspective.
3. Think of someone (a friend, a relative, or other) and their relationship to nature. How do they interact with nature? How does nature interact with them? Using imagery from nature, write a poem about that person.
4. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
5. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.

Waxwings - Robert Francis

Waxwings
Robert Francis

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berrybush
in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety––
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk––
was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together––for this I have abandoned
all my other lives.

---

The author compares himself a bird and, in the comparison, discovers a life that is worth more than "all [his] other lives." While at first the topic seemed fanciful, it appears that the author convinces himself, and us, that there is importance to this new way of being and then shocks us a little in the end with his declaration.

While keeping this poem in mind, its techniques and its messages, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. If you could be a creature, flora, or an element in nature, what would you be? Be specific. What does it do? Where can you find it? Describe what it would mean to be this creature and your reaction to it.
2. Think of yourself in a situation, or you and a group of others. What are you doing and what is around you? What animals, flora, or elements are you similar to? Describe this relation.
3. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
4. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.

Living - Denise Levertov

Living
Denise Levertov

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

---

Here the author brings a strong sense of transience to nature through images, first of vegetation, then of the salamander, and then even brings herself into the poem, thereby also drawing us in and making us feel the last line more strongly - Each minute the last minute.

While keeping this poem in mind, its techniques and its messages, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. What elements in nature do you associate with transience? Describe one or a collection of them.
2. What interactions have you had with frail things in nature? Describe that interaction and its impact on you.
3. What does a season mean to you? A day? A minute? What images can represent these meanings to you?
4. Take a line from this poem and you that as your title or your first line. Write.
5. What else comes to mind as you read this poem? Write.