The Time Is Now

Aracelis Girmay’s poem “Elegy,” from her second poetry collection, Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), begins with a question: “What to do with this knowledge that our living is not guaranteed?” The poem’s speaker finds hope in the natural world as a way of answering this existential question: “Perhaps one day you touch the young branch / of something beautiful. & it grows & grows.” Write a poem that seeks to answer what it means to be impermanent. What do you wish to leave behind?

In “Blood, Sweat, Turmeric,” an essay published in Guernica, Shilpi Suneja writes about getting her first period while on a train ride to visit her grandmother in Bombay and being shamed by her family for staying out in public during her “dirty days.” This story begins a personal and historical study of the myths behind cleanliness and dirtiness in Indian culture and the way these forces intersect with gender, culture, and class. “I must’ve copied the phrase ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’ in my cursive-writing exercise books at least a thousand times as a child,” she writes. Write an essay about a family value that was imposed on you as a child. How did upholding this value affect you later as an adult?

In his iconic, postmodern short story “Borges and I,” Jorge Luis Borges recounts living alongside a second version of himself, to whom he is slowly “giving over everything.” The story is known for its brevity—at about one page long—and its sense of compression, as Borges describes this struggle between self and persona. “I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor,” he writes. Write a story about the push and pull between the self you present to the world and the self you know. Is there conflict or cooperation?

“The name means ‘odd.’ / The name means ‘queer.’ / It can denote an ‘odd fish,’” writes Mark Wunderlich in his poem “Wunderlich.” The poem serves as an exploration of the poet’s last name, interlacing a historical overview of his family’s ancestry with suggestive definitions that compound and contradict. “The name means ‘electric organ maestro.’ / The name means ‘famous botanical illustrator.’” This week write a poem inspired by your last name. Allow yourself to get carried away with fact and fable, letting your imagination spin a new history for your family name.

“Traveling in this way, and trading in stories, is inevitably a journey of selection—it was not lost on me that for each voice I heard, many others would be left out,” writes Jordan Salama in Every Day the River Changes: Four Weeks Down the Magdalena (Catapult, 2021), an exhaustive travelogue in which the author follows the 950-mile length of the Magdalena River, from its source in the Andean highlands to the Caribbean coast, and recounts the legends and stories of the people he meets along the way. Write an essay about a river, or body of water, that is significant to you. How does its history intersect with your own?

In this week’s Craft Capsule essay, Julia Sanches discusses using Google Maps as a resource while translating books set in places far from her home in Providence, and how this research has opened up her exploration. “Working on these translations hasn’t exactly given me wings, as the cliché goes, though it has forced me to navigate the geographical makeup of real places I’d never laid eyes on before, whose streets I’d never felt beneath my feet,” she writes. This week, use Google Maps to explore a city or place you’re never physically visited, perhaps the setting from one of your favorite books. Write down details from your research as a starting point for a short story.

“It is December and we must be brave,” writes Natalie Diaz in “Manhattan is a Lenape Word,” a poem from her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020). Diaz sets the scene by describing the sounds and colors of New York City: “The ambulance’s rose of light / blooming against the window.” Then she moves from the exterior to the interior: “I’m the only Native American / on the 8th floor of this hotel or any...” Inspired by Diaz, and the onset of winter, write a poem that starts with the line: “It is December and we must be brave.” Let this first line carry you into sensuous descriptions about the world outside, as well as inside.

In Marie Howe’s 2017 poetry collection, Magdalene, she engages with the perspective of Mary Magdalene through a variety of persona poems—some closely resemble the biblical story while others are more contemporary interpretations of the figure. Through poems such as “Before the Beginning,” in which the speaker asks, “Was I ever a virgin?” or in “On Men, Their Bodies,” in which the speaker explores sexual encounters one penis at a time, there is a link between the story of Magdalene and the lives of contemporary women. This week, write an essay about a historical, religious, or mythical figure that you feel a close connection to, whether it is their story or image that inspires you.

“Now you’re fourteen, standing in awesome slacks and looking at an ungainly body in the mirror,” writes Lana Bastašić in “Bread,” a short story translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth and published in Freeman’s issue on change. “In the mirror is a mutilated body, and inside that body is you.” The story follows a fourteen-year-old girl going through puberty and engages the reader through a second-person perspective in which the “you” makes the awkwardness of the prepubescent body more visceral. This week, write a story from the perspective of an adolescent in the second person. How will you build intimacy in this voice? What are some thoughts only the speaker knows?

“The Greeks / had it wrong: / catastrophe // is not a downturn, / not a fall / from grace,” writes Monica Youn in her poem “Portrait of a Hanged Woman” from her third collection, Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016). The poem begins with a reference to the etymology of the word “catastrophe,” which comes from two Greek words meaning “down” and “turning.” Youn uses this starting point to depict the emotional turmoil behind a time when one’s life unravels. This week, write a poem that begins by breaking down the etymological root of a word. Is there a contrast between what the word means to you and its origins? For further inspiration, watch a video of Youn reading this poem in a conversation with Robert Pinsky.