Piggyback Poetry

Put a petal pie on page.
Picture puppy paragraphs at play.
Pierce the present pink with purple.
Plot prisoner prawns to power-over 
pasta and pesto and pound polenta 
into porcelain and proud perfume.
Plant peaches with prosciutto and peace 
and poison. Protect all passions 
all prostitutes perhaps but
no parents no puppets 
and above all
no poets. 


That is howl you
piggyback poetry.


PROMPT: Magnetic word tiles selected on the basis of what appealed to me that day. (I have LOTS!) with a focus on "P" words.

Mistakes Count for More Than You Know

PROMPT: Write about a mistake made that turned out for the best.

I began this blog and the poem-a-day experiment with just the basic set of magnetic word and letter tiles. After only a week I started seeing a lot of the same words show up again and again. The wordie in me longed for greater variety! That's when I pointed my browser to the Magnetic Poetry website and ordered more.

What I meant to order was The Poet's Kit, Writers Remedy, Book Lover, Foodie and Bird Lover. But when the much-anticipated box arrived a few days later, Fatherhood appeared in place of Bird Lover. I dug from my files the receipt I printed at the time I ordered, fully expecting to find the supplier in error. But there it was, plain as day: Fatherhood.

I tried to think back to the day I placed the order. Did I have a last-minute attack of weirdness? I carry a lot of angst in the fatherhood department. I've written about it, but it's hard. It hurts a lot and doesn't seem to accomplish much. It ends up being way too personal and just sounds angry, which is probably because I am still angry over it. Did I think this might help me approach it in a new way? Or did the scroll wheel on my mouse simply change what I ordered when I wasn't paying attention?

Either way, I decided to keep the kit. I've learned mistakes happen sometimes for a reason, but still I unpacked this kit last. Somehow I just wasn't ready to get into those words. And when I did, I spent a couple days obsessing over how sappy they were. Yet each day when I came to my desk to write, I opened the box again and looked at a few more, until today, when I pulled them out and started to arrange and compose with them.

Last week after the new kits arrived, I bought some stuff to help me organize my new wealth of words for easy access. There's a cupcake tin for sorting the bigger words alphabetically and a cake pan with a snap-on lid for storing everything. I also bought a half-dozen or so personal-size pizza pans to separate out the prefixes and suffixes, along with all the "glue" words. I have pans for conjunctions, articles, helping verbs, prepositions--well, you get the idea.

There's also a pan where I tossed glue words I haven't organized yet. Among the words it holds are negatives--no, not and never. As I read the Fatherhood words I thought how they were not what I experienced, and I ended up writing the poem displayed in the post below this one, Not-Father. The process of working with the magnetic words helped me to stand back from my own experience and universalize it in a way that it wasn't just about me anymore. But it still holds the sense of loss I want to convey.

Writers--and people in all walks of life--need to pay close attention to their mistakes. Not because they necessarily need to "make up" for them or correct anything, but because the mistake may be the breadcrumb they follow to a new place. It may be the "new thing" that solves pollution or world hunger. Just think about the origins of post it notes, for goodness sake!

In Tarot--which I admittedly know next-to-nothing about--the Fool card is considered an advantageous one to draw. The image on the card is of a young man blithely walking along, a little dog at his heels, unaware of the cliff he is about to walk over.

Of course, this could be disastrous too. But if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got, right? I say try something new. Shake things up. Make a few really incredible mistakes.

If you get a poem out of it, so much the better.

Not-Father

Not-Father grumps through parenting 

not breathing the smoke he spanks at the girl   

not happy  not funny   not wise   

not watching what he gives her 

to not remember


PROMPT: Magnetic word tiles selected on the basis of what appealed to me that day. (I have LOTS!) "Not" and what I could pair with it presented itself as a theme early in my selection process.

Yorktown

The wild onion writes its poetry on the summer breeze--

hair a howl of purple and blue star
heart a blaze of garlic history
prisoner only to the salt
that is fiction and sea

PROMPT: Magnetic word tiles selected on the basis of what appealed to me that day. (I have LOTS!) But you could also have people select a place to write about and have them draw so many words from a jar, with the understanding they used them to describe the place.

Writing Alone and With Others

by Pat Schneider 

Pat Schneider is the founder of Amherst Writers & Artists, an organization that trains leaders in a particular method of leading writing groups. I found my way to her book through someone I met by chance at another workshop, and reading her book encouraged me to sign up for the training. This book details the methods I use in my workshops, and the week of training I shared with 14 other leaders-to-be and three staff members in an old farmhouse in Connecticut changed my life.

Lots of people have written writing books about a lone journey, and much of what's in the first half of this book--the writing alone part--is on par with it. Schneider's particular genius comes through in the chapter on voice: finding all the parts of your own voice, learning to use them, then learning to try out other voices. She says, "Writers often ask me, 'How do I find my voice?' It is a sad question--as sad as if the question were, 'How do I find my face?' The answer is so clear, so transparent, we can easily miss it altogether. Listen. Listen to yourself. Listen to your own voice telling your own stories to the listener you most trust...You have a voice, just as surely as you have a face, and it is already full of character, passionate and nuanced and beautiful."

This is an interesting passage to me because while it is in the "writing alone" part of the book, the discovery of how the voice sounds needs the help of someone else--a person we trust. The "writing together" part of the book attempts to describe how to create a writing group or workshop where the members, who may not know each other well or at all--can become people we trust. I don't know of any other book that deals at all with the "writing together" portion.

Schneider's plan for a supportive writing community is a democratic one where teacher and pupil are equal and interchangeable. The leader writes along with the group members, reads, and listens as others in the group discuss her work. And the leader learns from that process just as surely as the group members learn from the leader. This I can tell you as someone who has led Amherst-style groups for going on five years.

The other democratic aspect to Schneider's method is she brushes aside all ideas of rank or class. There is no insider/outsider dynamic going on. Writers write; it's as simple as that. If you come to a writing workshop, it must be to write; so go ahead and call yourself a writer. What happens in Amherst groups is that the leader gives the group a creative prompt to write to, sets a time limit, lets everyone know when time is up, then asks for volunteers to read. No one is forced or goaded into reading if they don't want to.

The other principle, which is inviolate in an Amherst group and discussed in great detail in the "writing together" section, is that there can be absolutely no criticism of someone's work during the response portion of the meeting, after the writer has read. People are trying to be brave in what they write, trying to learn to trust, but they won't manage either if they fear they'll be criticized. They will never write in their own voice, or hear it loud and clear when they read, or learn how it affects other people if they're afraid someone's going to tell them what's wrong with it.

And that's just one person's opinion anyway. Pat says so, and I agree.

The book is absolutely full of creative writing prompts. If you've ever been to one (or more) of my workshops, you'll recognize some. But there are plenty more here I've yet to try that you may find fun for your "writing alone" practice. And once you get going on the writing-prompt thing, you start making up many on your own. So I may never get back to ones in this book!

There is a companion DVD to this book which is also excellent. Its central feature is a 20-minute documentary-style film that shows Schneider in action leading the group she is most famous for: the one for low-income women in western Massachusetts' ailing mill towns in the 1980s. Many of these women hadn't finished high school, some were in abusive relationships, one was living in her car with her three children. Writing helped them all change their lives because it gave them a voice. That much is clear. All of them--yes, all--went on to get educations. The one who was living in her car was named Social Worker of the Year in Massachusetts in 2005. Many of these women lead writing groups of their own now.

Also in the DVD--if you can get your hands on it--are interviews with other long-time Amherst leaders discussing the various shapes a writing group can take and what these many people have done with Pat's original model. There's also a terrific one-on-one with Pat that works as a video workshop. She delivers the prompt, then you hit the pause button, and the group (or individual) writes. I've yet to use it with a group, but I think it would work well, particularly, in a class to teach others how to be Amherst leaders.

My Pockets are Full of All Good Things

The adoration of cats and the respect of birds.

Gourmet meals, complex wines and good conversation.

The image of myself in the eyes of one who loves me.

The tag team of wind and sunshine.

Rain on the roof at night.

Snow muffling traffic sounds at dusk.

Missed cabs and voices on a dark train 

and you beside me, sleeping.

PROMPT: What's in your pockets? Literally, this could be a simple list poem that would tell us something about the speaker. Women could substitute "purse" for "pocket," or you could change it to a desk drawer or something similar. Or, do as I did and tell them to choose figurative, imaginative things.

Love Apples

I love you in tomatoes, honey.

Good times grow when you dig down down in dirt: 

Passion, which is another kind of poetry,

and Respect, which is the seed paragraph 

in the language of Like. 

You are as savory cooked  and laughed over pasta 

as you are raw. 

Here's to my sweet-on-the-tongue hero of the garden epic! 

My ripe red-headed coach of mesclun desire! 

My soul sauce of summer wisdom! 

You are the  sure taste of  the tendered story 

beneath my uncertain voice.

PROMPT: Magnetic word tiles selected on the basis of what appealed to me that day. (I have LOTS!)