Guest Prompt #4 from Matthew Zapruder
October 12th, 2009
His poems, essays and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in many publications, including Open City, Bomb, Harvard Review, Paris Review, The New Republic, The Boston Review, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Believer and The Los Angeles Times. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in many anthologies, including Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll, Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, and Best American Poetry 2009. In Fall 2007 he was a Lannan Literary Fellow in Marfa Texas, and he was a recipient in 2008 of a May Sarton prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His collaborative book with painter Chris Uphues, For You in Full Bloom, was recently published by Pilot Books in 2009 and his third book of poems, Come on All You Ghosts, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2010. He lives in San Francisco, where he teaches poetry as a member of the permanent faculty of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and works as an editor for Wave Books. In fall 2008 he taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the MFA Program at the University of Houston. Currently he is a member of the core faculty of the low residency MFA program at UC Riverside-Palm Desert.
PROMPT:
One easy way to get started on a poem is the following. First, pick a sentence from a book at random. Then, figure out the action or principle underlying the sentence, and begin the poem by saying you (or someone) is NOT doing that action or doesn’t believe in that principle, thereby negating the premise. The book isn’t important, though probably it’s best if it’s not a book of poems. Prose is better. Here are three examples:
1. “Mrs. Kim, busy dusting the vases in the corner, stopped and stared at Ted as he walked in the store” (from Everything Asian, by Sung J. Woo, a book which happened to be in the office I am working in).
2. “Did you see the article in the Sunday Times about testosterone?” (from The Importance of Being Iceland, by Eileen Myles, a book I am greatly enjoying)
3. “As I walked up the steps, the glass doors in front of me parted automatically” (from The Ramen King and I, by Andy Raskin, whose office I am working in)
And here are the three examples of how one could negate the sentence and begin the poem:
1.
Never once in my life have I dusted a vase. Never have I sat in the sun,
absentmindedly doing exactly what is necessary not to drop it, thinking ….
2.
For once she decided to put down the Sunday Times
and walk out into the morning. She didn’t want to know
what had happened or was going to, about testosterone
in pandas or what was making Congress sad.
3.
For a long time I stood in front of the automatic doors,
waiting for them to open. A whole day passed,
then a decade, a couple of eclipses. I grew very dusty,
but also peaceful, like a statue built on an island
no one will ever rediscover.
Those are of course just beginnings, and probably I would write for a while and then go back and find the most interesting place to begin, which might or might not be at the original beginning. But it’s a good way to start. The reason this can be interesting is because saying what is not there, what we don’t care about, what we haven’t done, etc., gets us out of our preoccupations and concerns and allows our imagination and impulses to make up cool stuff take over the poem. As long as you follow those instincts you will go very interesting and new places.
“I never know whether my partner is going to think I am the best or worst person in the world.” -from ‘Baseline Domestic Violence Survey’
Following:
Given two options, I know
exactly whether my partner thinks
I am the best or worst person in the world
and also by some subtle cues-
she hurls commemorative plates and begs to know
how I can waste so much time on a computer
when she’s so mad at me.
Comment by A — 01/22/2010 @ 12:40 PM