Respond to this…
We Write Poems:
Here’s the meat.
You’re standing alone on a stage. Think poet/actor audition or workshop. The director and writer are sitting in the empty theatre before you. The director reads to you,
As the Great War drew to a close, a young Englishwoman wrote wearily in her diary, By the end of 1916, every boy I had ever danced with was dead.
Your instruction: respond to that sentence!
Respond means simply that – your immediate and intimate personal response. It doesn’t need to be literal, not “about” war or boys or loss or death, but rather take the energy of that one perfect sentence – and respond in whatever mode or focus as you choose to do.
Here’s the potatoes.
I was reading the paper while eating breakfast, and here’s this article, “Why scale Mount Everest? It’s complicated”, a review of a new book, Into the Silence. And as given above, that was the beginning of the leading paragraph. And what an incredible perfect sentence that diary expressed! What you might call a perfect prompt as well. So this prompt is not about climbing a mountain, or why this was one response to that great and tragic war, not about those sorts of details. Good writing can be poetry, can be prose; in the end the result is the same. Notice the emotional range and energy of this one single sentence. That’s what we invite you this week to consider and reflect from your own experience as a writer. Take this as your emotional seed.
Challenging? Perhaps. But just look to your own feelings and respond. No right or wrong way to respond, but look to the feelings, let that guide you here.
(Credit to Gaylord Doid, Witchita Eagle, for this article.)
Come back next Wednesday when you see, “It’s Post Your Poems Day!” and leave a link to the poem on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, then please, post your poem in the comment itself. *** You are invited to respond to the prompt given here, but if you have something else you’re just itching to share, please feel welcome in doing that. Our first desire here is to encourage you to write and learn and share. *** When leaving comments to other’s poems, please be appreciative and encouraging. We are not a poem “critique” site (unless someone specifically asks for that). Be kind with each other (and yourself!). *** Please consider including a link with your blog poem back to the prompt response here at We Write Poems so that others may see and join our community. More participants do make better soup!
