Genre: Poetry

In storytelling, the narrative strategy of beginning in medias res is to launch into the middle of a plot. Frequently applied to the composition of contemporary novels and films, such as Fight Club, Forrest Gump, and Raging Bull, the storytelling device can be traced back to Homer’s Greek epic poem The Iliad, which opens at the tail end of the Trojan War. This week write a poem that begins in medias res. Think of a story you’d like to recount in narrative verse and then select a starting point that may be much later than the logical or conventional beginning of the action. Sprinkle in flashbacks and recollections of memory to fill in any necessary pieces of context that allude to earlier events.

On her website, The Marginalian, Maria Popova writes about her admiration for Marie Howe’s poem “The Maples,” which appears in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2024), and describes it as “spare and stunning.” The poem begins by asking a question that has fueled philosophical discussions for centuries: “How should I live my life?” The speaker poses this question to nearby maple trees to which they respond, “shhh shhh shhh,” and their leaves “ripple and gleam.” Compose your own poem that attempts to ask and even embody this big life question, situating a speaker in a setting in which their connection to the surrounding environment is incorporated into the answer. Do you find yourself drawn toward nature or somewhere else?

Diane Seuss’s poem “Romantic Poet,” which appears in her collection Modern Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2024), is a reference to John Keats and his famous poem “Ode to a Nightingale.” Seuss writes: “You would not have loved him, / my friend the scholar / decried. He brushed his teeth, / if at all, with salt. He lied, / and rarely washed / his hair.” This week write a poem about someone or something you love that takes inspiration from Seuss’s poem and the ways in which her verse spans the universe of mundane actions and the sublime. Consider how to apportion the profane and the profound with alternations. How can the rhythm, pacing, and sound of your lines introduce a tension between what you love and the reality of what you love?