Happy Sunday! I did a ton of cleaning and decluttering yesterday, and my brain is much better for it.
Today I thought we’d do some writing starting with the opening line of a poem I loved recently, Cecily Parks’s Sunday.
(A slight aside about reading and magic: Parks’s first book, Field Folly Snow, found me in graduate school and buried itself deep in my heart. It was a book, along with Sabrina Orah Marks’s first two books, The Babies and Tsim Tsum, that cracked open everything I thought about poetry. Like, oh, you could do that? Do you have books like that—books that showed you a whole new way of thinking about writing? I’d love to know.)
today’s exercise
Start with Cecily Parks’s opening line—“so this is Sunday evening”—and see where it takes you. One of the beautiful things about her poem is its close observation to the natural world, all the small actions and activity happening right around her. You might start your writing by being still for a moment and seeing what you can notice. What do you hear? What’s moving? If you have a front porch or a balcony or a stoop, it might help to sit for a moment and see what you can notice.
An important note: we’re not writing an imitation. You won’t write your poem about the Rose of Sharon, or the persimmons, or the squirrels running up a live oak, of course; part of the goal, in starting this way, is to eventually shake the initial poem off entirely. But sometimes a phrase or image you like can give you a place to start, a way to write your way into something new.
And an option: you can switch up the opening line, of course! You might make it Sunday morning, or Tuesday, or spring, or April. And if that line doesn’t work for you, pick an opening line from a different poem and see where you go. Make it your own.
Are there books you turn to for writing inspiration? I’d love to hear from you. You can always reply to this email, comment below, or find me on twitter (@nancy_reddy) and instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).
My favorite book for reinventing possibilities is Jeanette Winterson's "Lighthousekeeping"