Affairs of the Heart / Katherine Edgren
Tag: Poetry Society of Michigan
A Matter of Measure / Carla Dodd
Last Night’s Visitations from Grandma / Kathlene Barrett
Blue / Sherrill Alesiak
Wishes / Roberta Brown
The Blight / Iris Lee Underwood
Stupid / Elizabeth Kerlikowske
From the Spring 2024 Peninsula Poets
My Mother the Morning After / Jill Doster Marcusse
From the spring 2024 issue of Peninsula Poets.
MID-WINTER WRITING PROMPT
MID-WINTER WRITING IDEA
When nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want, what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?
~Charles Bukowski (from The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories)
Make an argument for any opposite—that love is actually hate; that freedom is loneliness; that grief is happiness; that success is failure; or that dying is living, or vice versa. The possibilities are endless!
David James
Letting Go
As we begin winter in earnest, I’d like to share some writing exercises that use psychological and philosophical writing to inspire us. Read the excerpt and use its tone, message or phrasing as a seed in writing your poem.
“There is a beauty in the letting go, in the surrender to the unknown, to the inevitable. It is a beauty that is often overlooked, overshadowed by the fear of loss, of change. But it is a beauty that is nonetheless real, and it is a beauty that is worth embracing. When we hold on too tightly, we choke the life out of what we love. We become like the vines that strangle the trees, the weeds that suffocate the flowers. We must learn to loosen our grip, to allow things to flow, to change, to be.” ~Heidi Priebe (Book: This Is Me Letting You Go)
Write a poem in which you LET GO of someone or something you love, something you want to keep forever. Surrender in your writing “to the unknown.”
Good luck and have fun! Please stay warm, too.
David James
Poetry Society of Michigan 