Prompt # 4: What the fire reveals

Writing into love

I see Catherine’s leaving it up to me to surface all the unflattering pictures of us. That’s fine. Leave all the work to the little sister. Thankfully it’s not hard. 

I wanted to share some lines from poems you all have shared over the past few weeks (thank you!). Rachel’s “earthquakes & sunsets,” in response to our first prompt (“Looking Off-Camera”) makes note of physical details associated with a specific time in life: “when i think of high school, i think of white cabinets / staring dully into winking eyes of gold.” I love how the physical details map the speaker’s emotional state. And in response to last week’s prompt (“Poetry as necessity”), Ryan shared a piece that questions the idea of necessity itself: “‘Nobody can tell me what to do’ / is the phrase that has been playing over and over again in my mind. / I wish that were true.” Thank you for sharing your pieces, and as always, we encourage you to post your responses to prompts in the comments if you feel comfortable. :) 

With that, let’s get into the prompt.

I couldn’t resist. Happy Vday, courtesy of JC Penney Studios circa 2014

As you can see, I’m having some fun leaning into the Love theme in honor of Valentine’s Day.  This week, I want to explore how beginning a poem in love can take us somewhere entirely different, or teach us something new about what love is, or often both. T.R. Hummer’s “Where You Go When She Sleeps,” one of my all-time favorite poems, does this exceptionally well. The poem begins with a question: “What is it when a woman sleeps, her head bright / In your lap,” leading us through the color of the woman’s hair, the speaker’s gentle questioning, until we are a boy balanced at the edge of a silo of oats, and the way he falls has entirely to do with love, but is also its own disorienting, terrifying feeling. I don’t want to say too much; you must read it to know what I mean. Read it here.

Even poems that are ostensibly about capital-L Love captivate us by teaching us something we never expected to learn, the way Li-Young Li’s “Adore” gets away with this line: “We cannot look upon Love’s face without dying.” Where can love lead us if we let it? Where will we find ourselves if we lean into the silo of oats, even to death, without fear?

This week, write a poem that begins in love but is transformed into something else, perhaps something unrecognizable. On a recent call with a friend I said “I love the ocean so much it hurts.” What is it then? Love, or hurt? Where’s the threshold between my love for the sea and my deep longing, and ultimately disappointment, that I am not the mermaid my child self always dreamed of being?

Write into love, and let it transform. Follow it as it changes into something else entirely. The glass turns from orange to white if you hold it in the fire long enough. So hold it there. Tell us what the fire reveals.

Things to try:

1. Write about love without once using the word “love.”

2. Write a poem that is not about love but uses the word “love” at least five times.

Until next time,

Steph