Till There Is No Night: W.S. Merwin’s Writing Prompt For You

Here is how a tongue becomes a bell.

Below is the text of a post post-script in a letter W.S. Merwin set to John Crowe Ransom in 1953.  The occasion for the letter was both disappointment and business; Merwin was responding to the news that he had not received a fellowship from KR (he would receive it when he reapplied for the fellowship in 1954, along with a fiction writer named Flannery O’Connor.)

The business was about a poem that Ransom had accepted for The Kenyon Reviewentitled “Canso.”  You can find the published version in Autumn 1953 issue of KR, which has been scanned and is available via the KR archives on JSTOR.

But enough factual context.  Here’s another truth: Below, in an ancient script, on brittle parchment, W.S. Merwin had given a writing prompt FOR YOU!  Could you make a poem that follows the changes he’s specified here?  Permission granted to skip the page/strophe/line directions he makes,  but bonus points if you can make a poem that follows these changes exactly.

Post results!–either full poems, or just bits that could collaboratively complete the task with other’s help.

(Materials reprinted with permission of the Greenslade Special Collections and Archives at Kenyon College.  Special thanks to Ethan Henderson.)

 

a quote..for monday

“Put down everything that comes into your head, then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, & destroy most of it.” – Colette

Cinthia P.

Carry a Notebook, or a Journal Wherever you go

Carry a notebook or a journal wherever you go. Wherever!!! When you have ideas or inspiration, make notes and/or write out first drafts. Never show anyone this journal. It is only for you. Keep this for yourself, that way you will be honest in your use of language and description.

Osvaldo Sees, Osvaldo Says

This writers group has been meeting at the same table in the Cafe Variete Osvaldo Pugliese for over a year now. July 25 is the 14th anniversary of the death of this 90 year old tango musician. The writing exercise was to give a summary of the year of meetings (in some form) from the perspective of the drawing of Osvaldo observing us from the wall beside our table.

***

They come and go – like words on a page hanging together for over a year now – sitting around the table at the back where I can keep a good eye on them – hear their words. There’s a glue yet periodically a character will appear and shortly thereafter spin off into another world like an oddly inserted word in a story that hangs in your memory, disturbing the equilibrium for a time until the dust settles and the foundation is left standing. A place to spring from, a place to come back to. This table holds them down and together, like the page, the words imprinted, pages inserted, held in place, bound, closed book.

Maraya

***

Thin lipped, sly smile, Pugliese stared out of the picture frame at the group of foreigners gathered for their writers group. Brits, Australians, Irish, Americans, Canadians. They sat weekly with pens, hearts, minds, and sometimes smiles. He watched as they read stories, articles, poetry, bits and pieces of ideas. All wanting something, wanting, waiting, wondering, “What next?” The look was in their eyes.

“I’ve lived 90 years, a dancer, a man, a lover of life and there’s one thing I would say to these foreigners.”

Take off, rise up.
Listen, I hear the words of the tango song. Mucho amor, mas amor, quiero vivir la vida. Y vos? (much love, more love, I want to live life, and you?)

One sits with infiniteness at the ready, feet that want to move with the rhythm.

He observed the group and heard their questions.
“But how does it work?” they asked.
“I hear you asking before you get a chance to see for yourself,” he answered.

“Oh!”

Karla

***

I imagine Osvaldo  smile knowingly down at us as we gather around the table every Wednesday. He would say “just like tango, each person has his own story” and that the people in our writers group, dance to a difference beat. Then at 1 PM he would applauded at the end our are weekly performance, waiting till the next time, the next improvisation, the next act.

Antoinette

***

adverbial strife
positioning the editorial knife
the million medialuna novel
word stuffed empanada dream
coffee humming critics
striving for caffeine perfection
i don’t understand a word
it’s all english to me

Henry

Read Any Good Books Lately?

I like writing that pulls me in so hard and far that I get lost and have to climb my way out wondering what day it is and what I forgot to do. I like writing that eases me forward, throws me back, carries me to the top of the roller coaster and suspends me there for a moment before catapulting me back down, screaming, hanging on for dear life. I like writing that washes down over me like a warm spring rain from heaven and growls and gurgles up from the depths of hell. I want the intrigue of a Rubik’s cube that – in the end – pulls itself together in such a way that I have to take it all apart again to find out what happened and how. I want writing to chew on like a blue rare steak and for dessert – slides down my throat like silky warm fudge sauce with whipped cream. I want writing to surround me like a warm bath, then, pull the blankets up around my shoulders, tuck me in and sing me to sleep.

Maraya Loza Koxahn

Story Seeking

This came out of a writing exercise. Choose to work with a quote that you have memorized. Choose a title – before or after you write it. Write for about 10 minutes on what this quote means to you and how it might apply to others.

Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story

Story Seeking

As a truth-seeker I know that ‘the truth’ can only ever be sought and never found. I’ve realized that the best one can do is to tell a good story. In an effort to tell that story one begins with something resembling the truth as they know it and begins to weave in the imaginings of a demented mind.

We are a tribe that grew up on stories. We hunger for them still – never sated. We yearn to be moved by words, by the actions, thoughts and worlds of others – ‘real’ or imagined.

There is no one ‘truth’. There is only mine and yours, ours and theirs. Many realities, many perceptions, many stories. So, although I thought I had to ‘know’ to write – I don’t. I only have to string the words together in an electrifying fashion (and not profess them to be true).

I don’t want what I think I need to know get in the way of telling a good story. So, don’t get stuck in what you think you know to be true. The truth is – you don’t ‘know’. Just tell your story.

Maraya Loza Koxahn

Cry of the Poet

If I put these words to music
would you listen
to my lyrical seduction?

If I make them rhyme
would you take the the time
to comprehend my meaning?

If I use a word
you’ve never heard
could I ignite your curiosity,
fuel your expansion?
Would you turn to Webster
Or would you walk away?

If I serve them a a metaphor
would you peer through the facade
into the depths that dwell in me
or would you think me odd?

If I produce a hit,
strike a chord in you,
would you resonate
with my inner vibration?
Seek personal salvation?
Perhaps together we’ll save a nation?

I take a stand upon this page
potentially, your teacher, prophet, sage
filled with passion
love and rage
and supplicate to you:
A poet’s is a lonely life
so much to share
and few to hear the words

When I’m gone think of me
naked on this page
and you can say you
‘knew me when . . . ‘
but know me now -
Engage

Maraya Loza Koxahn

from Metamorphosis of a Narcissist

Poetry Is Dead. Long Live Poetry!

This poem is unexecutable!

Words are stuck in the web
of my grey matter
prisoners in this writer’s blockhead
unable to leap the chasm
between axon and dendrite

Maybe a coffee enema
will relieve the constipation
restore the situation
to a modicum of mediocrity
and I’ll appear erudite

I’d line those soldiers up
march them to a hyperbolic beat
but they’d fall back
unable to maintain rhythm
weary of regurgitation
People talk too much, they’d say
anxious to establish significance
used and used and silenced
so confused

Don’t believe a word I say
for I have been incarcerated far too long
with all the other vowels
warm wind whistles through our jowls
so much hot air blown here and there
bouncing off the backs of consonants
landing freely where we will
lack of discipline opens up
so many other possibilities

Rhythm method having failed
this poem is inconceivable!

So, without the seed of just one letter
planted in my pen
this poem will never see the light of day
this poem will never have a life
no matter what I say
and for the deed of having lied
I fear this poem will never die
It will only fade away.

Maraya Loza Koxahn
from Metamorphosis of a Narcissist