Of late I’ve been lamenting about being stuck in a rut as far as my essays go.  I’m starting to get a voice going that I feel mildly successful at, but at the same time I fear being pigeon-holed.  Will I always have to write in this semi-humorous, gently curmudgeonly voice for the rest of my life?  Is my greatest aspiration to become E.B. White?  Well, yes, probably.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to write both Once More To the Lake and Charlotte’s Web?  Salutations!  But still, there’s a part of me that wants to shake things up a bit – to do something that essayists don’t typically do (at least the ones that get paid) and maybe write something that is a little more fun to write.  You know, something with lots of exclamation points!!! (more…)

In Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays,” the repetition in the penultimate line (”What did I know, what did I know?” goes a long way in giving the poem its rueful, mysterious, reflective tone. Write a poem in whose tone or sense hinges on repetition in some way.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress.
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Hi All!  This week’s prompt comes after reading Mallarme. His work influenced Verlaine, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and many more.

For more on a definition of symbolism (squint and avoid the annoying ads on this website) visit this link.

Prompt: Write a poem using 5 symbols that derive meaning in different ways.  As a bonus, try to incorporate an image from pop culture that has significant resonance today.