The Time Is Now

“In colonial times, gardens were utilitarian. A cross between a grocery store and a pharmacy. In the gilded age, they became an entrance to high society, a place of conspicuous display,” narrates the main character in Paul Schrader’s 2022 film Master Gardener, a man with a secret past who works as the horticulturalist of an estate owned by a wealthy dowager. This week write a poem about a garden, perhaps a large and well-known one visited by tourists, a seasonal garden tended by family members that you frequented as a child, or one you pass occasionally on a neighborhood walk. You might explore the functions of the garden; list colors, shapes, textures, and smells; or make conjectures about its guiding aesthetics. What can a garden reveal about its gardener and the space in which it resides?

“When I say I have written from the beginning, I mean that all real writers write from the beginning, that the vocation, the obsession, is already there, and that the obsession derives from an intensity of feeling which normal life cannot accommodate,” said the late Irish author Edna O’Brien in a 1984 interview for the Paris Review’s Art of Fiction series. O’Brien, who died last Saturday at the age of ninety-three, was the author of a series of novels beginning with The Country Girls, which were internationally acclaimed but banned in Ireland. Her work included memoirs, biographies, and plays, many of which revolved around intimate stories of women’s experiences of love and loss. Write a lyric essay that responds to O’Brien’s sentiment about being drawn to writing from “an intensity of feeling.” Does writing serve in some sense as an outlet for expressing something that seemingly can’t fit into the strictures of normal life?

In 1996, scientists created the first clone of a mammal, a sheep named Dolly. Since 2015, a company based in Texas called ViaGen Pets has cloned hundreds of dogs, cats, and horses for tens of thousands of dollars each. Scientists have warned of the ethical issues of cloning—both in the ways in which the process requires the use of multiple animals (an egg donor and a surrogate carrier), and in the precedence it sets for humans. Write a short story in which a cloned animal plays an integral role in a plot twist. Is the animal’s cloned history kept hidden for some reason? What made this animal so exceptional to be cloned? Consider the complexity and emotions involved with your characters’ values and ethics in this decision.

In Divya Victor’s poem “Blood / Soil,” which appears in her collection Curb (Nightboat Books, 2021), she writes about Sureshbhai Patel, a man who had traveled from India to visit his son and infant grandson in Alabama and was assaulted by police for alleged suspicious behavior while taking a neighborhood stroll. As she describes the physical encounter, Victor includes Newton’s laws of motion and experiments with the visuals of typography and spacing in her incorporation of quotations to draw attention to movement and a sense of confrontation between bodies and language. Write a poem inspired by a news incident that feels resonant to you and provokes a strong emotion. Consider adding bits of science, research, or reported dialogue that might help create a more expansive, interpretive angle.

Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker, who made her feature film directorial debut with the coming-of-age drama Janet Planet, recently shared her inspirations for the film with the New York Times through a mood board. The artistic influences included fin-de-siècle painter Édouard Vuillard’s portraits of his mother; Maurice Pialat’s 1968 film about a foster child, L’enfance Nue; literature by Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke; and an album by Canadian jazz musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Write a lyric essay composed of short descriptions of creative works—perhaps similarly spanning visual and performing arts, music, and literature—that have served as inspiration to you over the years. What is special about each one, and what are the elements that draw them together?

This week, in preparation for the upcoming opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, consider the Olympic creed: “The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight; the essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.” Write a short story that revolves around a competition of some sort—whether between friends, enemies, strangers, or within a liminal relationship of some kind. Decide between a contest of mental or physical abilities, or a battle of wills. Are there high stakes or is the contest seemingly inconsequential? Does all go as planned or is there a surprising upset? Think about your characters’ respective perspectives on the spirit of competition, and what constitutes as fighting fairly.

In the twentieth anniversary edition of Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine writes in the preface about her use of the first-person voice “to bear witness to the witness” and provide emotion while maintaining an intimacy within the text. “Anybody could embody the first person and be our guide through the text,” writes Rankine. “For me, at the time, this was a liberating mechanism for getting at the ineffable affective disorder of the moment without disconnecting from the people affected by it.” Write a poem about an event currently unfolding in the world, either locally or on a global scale. Deploy the first-person “I” as a tool to guide the reader through what’s being witnessed. Are there multiple emotional truths at play? How can you give them shape?

“I have known brilliant writers who could size people up in minutes with alarming accuracy.... And yet for all their ability to understand people, to see them, to capture them as characters, these writers could not see themselves,” writes Literary Hub editor-in-chief Jonny Diamond in a piece reflecting on a recent op-ed written by the daughter of Nobel laureate Alice Munro, Andrea Skinner, about her mother’s failure to protect her from sexual abuse by her stepfather. Write a personal essay that traces your self-awareness through several phases of your life, contemplating on how your understanding and perception of yourself has transformed through the years. Can you reconcile the differing points of view that various people in your life hold about you? Are there blind spots that, even if you can’t or don’t want to articulate, you wish to acknowledge?

Ghosting, the social practice of suddenly cutting off communication without explanation by no longer accepting or responding to calls or messages, is often associated with dating but can also extend to other arenas of interpersonal communication and socializing, such as the interview process for a new job or with friends and family. Write a short story that revolves around two people, one of whom ghosts the other. What are the dynamics of communication that lead up to the ghosting, and what is the fallout? Are excuses made or is hindsight twenty-twenty? Consider how much of each party’s point of view to reveal prior to and after the ghosting.

In medieval European cathedrals, some of the panes of the beautiful stained glass windows are thicker at the bottom than at the top, creating misconceptions that the seemingly solid glass has melted over time. According to an article published in Scientific American, glass is an amorphous solid, a state that is neither solid nor liquid but something in between disproving the theory of melted glass. The differences in thickness of old glass windows is merely a product of the manufacturing process, giving them a melted look. This week write a poem inspired by the idea of something, or even someone, existing in an in-between state. Consider playing with the line breaks and white space of your page to mirror or contrast with your chosen subject.