Napowrimo PROMPT 14
Wow, has it been two weeks of Na/GloPoWriMo already?
Today’s featured participant is Scrambled, Not Fried, where Day Thirteen’s theft-inspired prompt resulted in an ode to the joys of the illicit.
Our poetry resource for the day is “Dr. Williams’ Heiresses,” a chapbook published by Alice Notley in 1980. In it, she weaves strange and discursive creation-myth for American poetry, and her own work, as influenced by the work of the poet William Carlos Williams.
Today’s optional prompt asks you, like Alice Notley, to think about your own inspirations and forebears (whether literary or otherwise). Specifically, I challenge you today to write a poem that deals with the poems, poets, and other people who inspired you to write poems. These could be poems/poets/poepl that you strive to be like, or even poems, poets, and people that you strive not to be like. There are as many ways to go with this prompt as there are ways to be inspired.
Happy writing!Daddy, you have to see this Prompt 14
Every time I
write something,
a yearning, almost a burning
erupts from deep inside,
Daddy, you have to see this.
Every time, I close my eyes,
I see dad leaning against the window,
overlooking the Jhelum dotted with tired houseboats
and shikaras, in that renovated ancestral house , renamed The Relic,
where a book -lined room qualified as his study,
where I read every book that I possibly could,
while dad stood near the window, twirling his pen.
Sometimes explaining Browning and Dramatic Monologue,
oft becoming the Pied Piper, booming away through every room.
a yearning, almost a burning
erupts from deep inside,
Daddy, you have to see this.
Every time, I close my eyes,
I see dad leaning against the window,
overlooking the Jhelum dotted with tired houseboats
and shikaras, in that renovated ancestral house , renamed The Relic,
where a book -lined room qualified as his study,
where I read every book that I possibly could,
while dad stood near the window, twirling his pen.
Sometimes explaining Browning and Dramatic Monologue,
oft becoming the Pied Piper, booming away through every room.
Dad, I still shiver, recalling the way you recited Porphyria’s Lover
“in one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she.”
You would suddenly change gears and say,
“Have fun, throw back your head and laugh,
having fun is not indicative of latent insanity,
do I look mad to you? Wait, I will just write a poem on this.”
I watched you scribbling away,
unconsciously imbibing your words,
your passion and your wacky sense of humour.
The way you helped me, dad, to write a critical analysis
of Sylvia Plath’s Daddy, which I never could do.
Never could do – without you.
Life for the foreseeable future looked very bright.
And then it didn’t.
But, since that sudden darkness one afternoon in June ,
I have often imagined you giving me the thumbs up
from up there, with that merry twinkle in your eyes,
with a slight tilt of your Shaffer pen.
then even my silence will feverishly seek
validation from you,
Daddy.
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