The Time Is Now

The “Don’t have a bookmark?” meme began as a brand marketing tool on Twitter showing photos of objects—including Chex Mix, Oreo cookies and milk, and Vitaminwater—poured into the pages of books to use as bookmarks, which quickly ignited a storm of retorts. In one response, a librarian posted a photo depicting a soft taco that had actually been flattened into the pages of an edition of Edward Lear’s 1871 book, Nonsense Songs and Stories, found at her library in Indiana. This week write a poem inspired by this literal mash-up of food and words. How can you play with diction, line breaks, spacing, and typography to express humor, dissonance, and a mix of themes?

The summer season is always ripe for trends that pair with warm weather like beaded necklaces, tie-dye T-shirts, and the bright orange Aperol Spritz cocktail. Some might revel in what’s in vogue, and others might scoff at the buzz. Now that the fall equinox is just around the corner, reflect on what’s been all the rage and pen a humorous essay declaring a controversial opinion about something trivial but trendy. Consider the reasons behind the proliferation of the fad of your choosing—Cronuts, standing desks, axe throwing bars—and then discuss why you find the craze overrated, absurd, or downright dangerous while interjecting personal history and experiences.

“It was like a plot from one of her own novels: On the evening of Dec. 4, Agatha Christie, carrying nothing but an attaché case, kissed her daughter good night and sped away from the home in England that she shared with her husband, Col. Archibald Christie.” In the New York Times, Tina Jordan writes about mystery author Agatha Christie’s unexplained eleven-day disappearance in the winter of 1926. Jordan’s article unfolds through a series of excerpts and news clippings detailing the incident. This week write a short story that similarly uses fragments from news reports or photographs to slowly reveal information over a period of time.

“I focused on myself all this time because that’s what I thought poetry was—personal narrative,” says poet Jake Skeets in an interview about his debut collection, Eyes Bottle Dark With a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed Editions, 2019), in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. It was during his time with mentors at Santa Fe’s Institute for American Indian Arts that Sheets began to see the intersections between his personal life and broader explorations of the New Mexico reservation where he grew up. Jot down a short list of seemingly disparate topics you’ve written about in different pieces or projects, and write a poem that combines two or more of these themes. Consider both the natural intersections you land on initially, and perhaps some distant connections that require more of an imaginative stretch. 

In Marguerite Duras’s 1985 essay, “Reading on the Train,” from the collection Me & Other Writing (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2019), translated from the French by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan, Duras writes about reading the first half of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace while on a train and feeling that in speeding through the story, she’d sacrificed a more intense, less narrative-driven understanding of the book. “I had realized that day and forever after that a book was contained between two layers superimposed with writing, the legible layer that I had read that day as I traveled and the other, inaccessible.” Write an essay about a beloved piece of literature in which you discuss both the legible layer and attempt to decipher or articulate a deeper resonance of the writing. What can you glimpse—in the story and in yourself—when you delve beyond the literal reading?

“When you’re in boarding school you imagine how grand and fine the world is, and when you leave you’d sometimes like to hear the sound of the school bell again.” In Fleur Jaeggy’s 1989 novel, Sweet Days of Discipline, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks and recently rereleased by New Directions, the adult narrator recounts her experiences as a fourteen-year-old boarding school student in postwar Switzerland, a time of conflicting desires and emotions, repetitive routines, and confusing power dynamics. Write a story that takes place in a school, inspired by memories of your own school days. Aside from the knowledge gained from textbooks, what were some of the lessons you learned about relationships and social dynamics? You might choose to integrate narration from an older, more removed character with scenes from an adolescent’s perspective.

In “Sisters,” from Brian Evenson’s story collection Song for the Unraveling of the World (Coffee House Press, 2019), the narrator recounts her sister’s observations of an unfamiliar holiday: Halloween. “The carving of pumpkins into the shapes of those rejected by both heaven and hell, the donning of costumes (by which she meant a sort of substitute skin affixed over the real skin, though in this locale they used an artificial rather than, as we were prone to do, an actual skin), and the ‘doorstep challenge.’” For the family of ghosts new to the neighborhood, the contemporary customs of scary costumes and trick-or-treating are defamiliarized, and the reader is presented with parallels between humans wearing costumes—“artificial” skins—and the ghosts’ tendency to inhabit real human bodies, or “actual” skin. Write a poem in the first person that explores the idea of slipping into another’s skin. Invoke both horror and humor as you consider what might become unfamiliar once you experience the world through someone else’s eyes.

“I saw the book as another kind of house. How did I want the reader to pass through it? What room would they enter first, and how should that room feel?” writes Sarah M. Broom about the structure of her debut memoir, The Yellow House (Grove Press, 2019), in “The New Nonfiction 2019” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Write a memoiristic piece, or revisit one already in progress, and work on constructing it like a house that the reader must pass through. Plan out the points of entry and exit, and organize different sections or vignettes to be experienced as rooms visited one after another.

How does the atmosphere of a cathedral change when a carnival slide is installed inside of it? A recent New York Times article reported that in an attempt to engage people into visiting and attending their services, a number of ancient churches and cathedrals in England have incorporated installations such as a four-story-tall winding carnival slide, a space-themed exhibit with a reproduction of the moon’s surface, and a mini golf course. Write a story that takes place in a cathedral that has incorporated some untraditional elements. Does the incongruity offer a different perspective of the space? Are the new features considered a disruption or are they welcomed?

How many people does it take to make a community? At Station Nord, a Danish military outpost and research facility located in Greenland just over five hundred miles from the North Pole, only six people and two dogs live there year-round. Even with such a limited population, isolated locale, and frigid temperatures, inhabitants establish a convivial sense of home and community with shared meals, silly rules, pig roasts, and game nights. Write a poem about a group of people who provided you with a warm sense of community. What small, perhaps mundane, moments do you recall that have helped create a sense of belonging, support, and bonding?