Today’s writing prompt is based on an excerpt from the poem “Trouble in Paradise” As humans, many of us are deeply touched by visuals and events in the natural world, whether in times of sorrow or joy. Write a poem in which you point to some kind of loss—of something or someone important to you. […]
Day 22: Never Want to Stop
Today’s writing prompt is based on the poem At the end of the Sound Today’s poem explores natural beauty and raises the twin issues of abundance and an unstoppable response to it. Write a poem about some aspect of our natural, constructed, or processed surroundings that is so beautiful you never want to stop experiencing […]
At the end of the Sound…
At the end of the Sound, where the pines have been pushed back by an unrelenting salt wind, you will find that jingle-shell beach— where little cups of pearly lemon peach stretch out endlessly. Put your hands to them and you will not know where to stop. […]
Night
Night Stars over snow, And in the west a planet Swinging below a star— Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, It is not far— It will never be far. —Sara Teasdale, featured in The Joy of Poetry
Day 21: Looking for Loveliness
Today’s writing prompt is based on the poem Night In the poem “Night,” Sara Teasdale urges us to “look for a lovely thing and you will find it.” Teasdale looked and she found “stars over snow,” as well as “in the west a planet/swinging below a star.” When we begin a deeper journey into earth […]
Day 20: Technology’s Surprise Side
Today’s writing prompt is based on the poem Immolation In “Immolation” there’s a delicate balance between constructed technology and natural forces. Each takes turns challenging the other, though it is Icarus who eventually suffers loss. Complex issues of the hope for recognition and adulation, the desire for identity affirmation and love, enter the picture. “Immolation” […]
Immolation
Immolation As the horizon looms, flips over to present an endless span of waves, I give up, surrender. My fate’s the fate of falling. I guess I hoped for recognition, that when I pushed my arms into the hostile sun he would look up and see my face, the frame of limb so like his […]
Day 19: Making Buttonholes
Today’s writing prompt is based on the poem Hawksbill Crag Write a poem that lends human or godlike aspects and implements to things in our environment. In today’s poem reading, for instance, the poet expresses the surroundings on a hike in god- and human-related metaphors. The timber line is thin as “a pencil streak.” The […]
Hawksbill Crag
Hawksbill Crag By gravel road we rise four miles into Ozark bluff. Our truck hugs the slant of timber line thin as a pencil streak. At Hawksbill Crag, we tramp thousands of feet above shaggy pine and the thumb of Jehovah. I clutch a walking stick, while you slide to the edge of the bluff […]
Day 18: Every Morning
Today’s writing prompt is based on the poem Li Po In “Li Po,” the poem looks back in history to a poet who sometimes wrote about tea. It then pairs the narrator of the poem with Li Po, saying “every morning I am Li Po.” Humankind has a long history with agriculture or the harvesting […]
Li Po
A poem about being a poet, based on Li Po and how he knew “the tea bushes flush with leaves, / sweet scent rising / from snow-petaled earth…”
Day 17: Reclamation
Today’s writing prompt is based on the poem Resort One philosophical standpoint about our environment is that we are simply part of it, and all that we build is basically like the things that all other species build; they are constructed according to our species’ knowledge, our latest technologies and stylistic preferences, and our needs […]
