Prompt: Really see the world

 

 

For this exercise, I invite you to get out in nature and observe the world close up.

Once I watched a butterfly very closely as it did its work, moving from blossom to blossom. But then it took off and flew straight up, higher and higher until it became a mere speck, and then, after, an imagined speck. I'm pretty sure I kept tracking it long after I actually lost it in the sky.

I was surprised that butterflies could go so high. Maybe something in your world will surprise you if you look at it long enough and study it closely enough.

That's your assignment, then: Observe something longer than you ever have before, and then tell us about it in a poem.

Prompt: Gardening

 

 

It's the time of year when a lot of people start to think about gardening. I don't know the first thing about the topic, aside from the fact that I've tried tomatoes year after year, only to have some unknown critter eat each ripening bulb shortly before I might pick it.

In this exercise, write about planting your own garden. What would you include, and why? Please feel free to be either practical or fanciful. You should plant the things you're hungriest for.

Prompt: Road trip

 

 

Wouldn't you love a road trip right about now?

Imagine you can drive anywhere you want. There are no limits to how you take off or where you go. You can take any companion you wish, or you can enjoy blissful solitude.

Write a poem in which you drive somewhere. How does it feel to be moving in a direction of your own choosing? What is the first thing you will do when you arrive in Memphis, in Kathmandu, on the moon?

Prompt: Party time

 

 

This exercise invites you to throw a dinner party.

Obviously, you shouldn't invite a half-dozen friends over for an actual meal, but there is no stay-at-home order in poetry. We can invite anyone we wish to the resplendent table of our imagination.

Choose as many guests as you wish. They can be living or dead. You can be alone with Ryan Reynolds, or you can pull up a chair at the Last Supper. 

 

Write a poem about a conversation overheard at your table. What do you have to say to Amelia Earhart, and what does she tell you? What joke does Grandma Moses tell Aristophanes? What recipe does Abraham Lincoln share with Gloria Steinem? There is no limit to the number of poems you can get out of this exercise, and as a bonus, you get to expand your conversations beyond your own all-too-familiar quarantine companions.

Prompt: Make a record

I write a lot about my own life. Often, my topic is the unusual, meaning something out-of-the-ordinary that has happened to me. But as many of us spend time in our homes, maybe this is a good occasion to celebrate ordinary days.

For this exercise, pinpoint an ordinary, unremarkable, often repeated part of your day. Make it something like peeling potatoes or washing a dish or sitting on your back porch for a quiet cup of coffee.

Pay exquisitely close attention to that dish — the circular motion the hand makes, the slickness of the suds, the way you work at a stubborn spot with your thumbnail. Record the washing of that dish as if future generations are fully dependent upon your record. Tell what it meant to be a person, alive, washing a dish in the pandemic of 2020.