I'm so glad! I always find craft-focused prompts more exciting than ones about content--but maybe that's just because I don't like feeling like I'm being told *what* to write.
Great poem! I used your prompt to look at a prose poem I recently wrote, and realized it hardly had any verbs!! It was more like a list. I added some verbs and it came alive!! Thank you! I live near Madison and I've heard Cynthia read here and there. Love her poetry.
oh yay! I'm so impressed you've already used the prompt! and that makes me really happy that you also know Cynthia--she's such a great poet, and a really good reader.
I am a complete poetry novice, but even just the fragmented two word lines from the shuffle (using nouns and verbs from the wonderful "Notes on A Silencing" by Lacy Crawford) seem either poetic and/or like an ad of some kind:
Thank you for this... here’s my response to the prompt... and that gorgeous piece by Cynthia Marie Hoffman... wow!
“Seven Brightnesses”
But then, we weren’t meant to live in total light either. Slam lids against sun, otherwise risk retina as overflow spills from pupil, cornea, lens. Night reaches with sweet dark salvation, graciously distant stars. Here, a small brightness might jump to your thigh and settle where you can pet it while it purrs a slight warmth. Unending day time would claw you raw, isn't safe for your softest underbelly. Place any love under a lit microscope and it swiftly disappears. You see, what I'm trying to say is this. Just this. Earth knew precisely what she was doing in giving us both, bioluminescent squid in the pelagic zone and inky black mushrooms in the drenched forest. It's late. Pull them in. Open your hunger. Pull the darkness in, closer to your bodied self, as you might do with a best friend or a child at midnight. Now wish upon that one distant streak through the sky.
Love the technical writing prompts! Gets the juices flowing ❤️
I'm so glad! I always find craft-focused prompts more exciting than ones about content--but maybe that's just because I don't like feeling like I'm being told *what* to write.
Great poem! I used your prompt to look at a prose poem I recently wrote, and realized it hardly had any verbs!! It was more like a list. I added some verbs and it came alive!! Thank you! I live near Madison and I've heard Cynthia read here and there. Love her poetry.
oh yay! I'm so impressed you've already used the prompt! and that makes me really happy that you also know Cynthia--she's such a great poet, and a really good reader.
Wow, this poem knocked my socks off. Thank you for this on a hard-to-get-started Monday morning. 🙏💫🦇
isn't it amazing??? and she's got a whole book like that! (a bunch of them have truly unsettling angels in them.)
I am a complete poetry novice, but even just the fragmented two word lines from the shuffle (using nouns and verbs from the wonderful "Notes on A Silencing" by Lacy Crawford) seem either poetic and/or like an ad of some kind:
'Imagine summer
Behold choice
Fly New England
Fail victim
Freeze innocence
Affect relation
Elect sincerity
Fight indifference
Read leaves
Rush party
Choose kiss
Invoke awareness
Settle sky '
Oh that's great -- there's a lot of energy in those fragments. Thank you for sharing ❤️
Thank you for this... here’s my response to the prompt... and that gorgeous piece by Cynthia Marie Hoffman... wow!
“Seven Brightnesses”
But then, we weren’t meant to live in total light either. Slam lids against sun, otherwise risk retina as overflow spills from pupil, cornea, lens. Night reaches with sweet dark salvation, graciously distant stars. Here, a small brightness might jump to your thigh and settle where you can pet it while it purrs a slight warmth. Unending day time would claw you raw, isn't safe for your softest underbelly. Place any love under a lit microscope and it swiftly disappears. You see, what I'm trying to say is this. Just this. Earth knew precisely what she was doing in giving us both, bioluminescent squid in the pelagic zone and inky black mushrooms in the drenched forest. It's late. Pull them in. Open your hunger. Pull the darkness in, closer to your bodied self, as you might do with a best friend or a child at midnight. Now wish upon that one distant streak through the sky.
ooh thanks for sharing! this is so rich and vivid--especially love the imperatives here, like "place any love under a lit microscope"