The Time Is Now

Write a poem inspired by a natural park, area, or cultural monument in your region. Search through the National Park Service’s system of sites by state, or browse through photos of the parks for inspiration. The National Park Service, which celebrated its one hundredth anniversary last summer, may be most known for its large national parks like Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, but also oversees hundreds of smaller outdoor monuments, scenic areas, and scientifically important sites that span the entire United States. Imagine the textures and sounds present in your chosen spot or site, and incorporate them into your poem’s rhythm and imagery. 

Only sixty-nine copies of a book are published by Icelandic micro press Tunglið, and only on the night of a full moon. Any copies not sold that same night are then burned by founders Dagur Hjartarson and Ragnar Helgi Ólafsson. In the spirit of the poetic logic behind the press (named after the Icelandic word for the moon), think of something in your life that feels particularly ephemeral and write a letter to yourself exploring your perspective on its fleeting nature. What makes it feel impermanent? In contrast, what elements—relationships, objects, emotional truths—feel everlasting to you?

The life-size blue whale model displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City—nearly one hundred feet long and over twenty thousand pounds—recently had its annual cleaning. Write a short story with a scene in the museum during this two-day long process, perhaps describing some of the images taken of the huge animal model being vacuumed by the exhibition maintenance manager in a cherry picker. Does this scene act as a backdrop to the main drama of the story, or have metaphorical significance? Are your characters directly impacted or involved with the unusual cleaning process?

Something beginning with the letter D. Something metallic. Something green. Something winding. Write a poem inspired by I Spy, the guessing game popular with kids during car rides and other long periods of downtime, in which the spy offers descriptive clues that hint at a visible object for other players to guess. Use this as an exercise to expand your vocabulary and the way you observe and perceive an emotion, person, situation or an object.

“Of course, everyone’s parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory,” Neil Gaiman wrote in Anansi Boys (William Morrow, 2005), a novel about two brothers who are brought together after the death of their father. Think back to an embarrassing parent-child event from your past in which you were either the child or the parent or guardian figure. Write a personal essay that uses this incident as a pivotal point from which to explore the “territory” of your relationship during that particular time. Did this incident have further repercussions? Does the point of view you’ve chosen allow you to sympathize with or find humor in the innocence of youth or the wisdom of age? What does the situation reveal about your specific parent-child relationship and about parent-child relationships more generally?

One of the elements that makes David Lynch’s TV show Twin Peaks, which returns with a third season this spring, so unusual is its dreamlike combination of melodrama, horror, humor, and cast of idiosyncratic characters. Its surrealism is emphasized by the repeated appearance of mundane yet mysterious visuals—cherry pie, coffee, logs, and owls—which take on motif-like significance in the series. In literature, authors such as Haruki Murakami and Roberto Bolaño have also mixed the odd with the everyday to similar hallucinatory effect in their books. Jot down a list of objects that have had some sort of resonance in your life, even if they may seem like unexceptional items. Write a short story in which you insert these images throughout the text. Is there an intuitive dream logic that can help guide their placement? Do they have metaphorical potential?

“Renga for Obama” is an ongoing project edited by Major Jackson and published by the Harvard Review in which each linked segment is written by a pair of poets, creating a chain of verse meditating on Barack Obama’s presidency. Renga, a traditional Japanese collaborative form, consists of alternating three- and two-line stanzas: a haiku (5-7-5 syllables) followed by a couplet, each line of which consists of seven syllables, that responds to the haiku. This pattern can be repeated up to a few dozen or even hundreds of lines. Choose a current theme that you are interested in probing further with words and imagery—it could be political, aesthetic, domestic, environmental, or pop culture–related. Spend some time discussing, sharing reflections, and expressing gratitude or feelings about the topic with a friend, family member, or colleague. Write a renga together, and pass it on to others with an invitation to contribute to the chain, thereby initiating a continuing exploration.

What do Ancient Rome, Western Civilization, the History of China, Early Middle Ages, the Civil Rights Movement, U.S. Constitutional History, and Dolly Parton have in common? They’re all the subjects of courses offered this past year at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “Dolly Parton’s America: From Sevierville to the World” is a history class that uses Parton’s life as a lens through which to view pop culture in the twentieth century, cultural politics, and the history of the Appalachian region. Choose a local celebrity from your city, region, or state, and write a personal essay that explores the intersection of the pop icon’s cultural context and your own memories of time spent in this locale.

In Fijian legend, a young girl falls in love with a boy from a neighboring village to the disapproval of her parents, and her tears of despair transform into red and white flowers. The hanging clusters of the elusive tagimoucia blossoms—only found regularly on one specific mountain ridge on the island of Taveuni—are the subject of a number of local Taveuni stories, several of which involve young women whose tears turn into the petals of the flower. Write a short story that revolves around an imaginary legend or folk tale about local flora. How does the story gain significance as it’s transmitted among peers and between generations? What sort of unexpected ramifications does the legend have on your characters? Who falls under its spell, and who remains immune to its powers?

“’It wasn’t a rhyme time,’” said Gwendolyn Brooks in 1968, as quoted in Major Jackson’s essay “Anatomy of a Pulitzer Prize Letter” in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Brooks was speaking about her decision to move away from the sonnet and other traditional verse forms in favor of allying more closely to the Black community and politically conscious poetry. Do you consider the contemporary moment a “rhyme time?” Why or why not? How might you transform the style and/or meter of your poetry to reflect your own evolving creative interests, priorities, and influences? Write a poem that marks some sort of departure from your typical work, in spirit and purpose.