March 4, 2024

Prompt: The Fragrance of Memory

Kenneth Rexroth's poem, "Proust’s Madeleine" (from his collection The Collected Shorter Poems) alludes to novelist Marcel Proust, the author of the multi-volume novel À la recherche du temps perdu, translated as In Search of Lost Time (and also previously as Remembrance of Things Past).

The "Madeleine Effect" is the sparking of a memory from a related object. For Proust, it was a madeleine cookie and cup of tea, and for Rexroth, poker chips. Though Rexroth's memory of his father comes from an object rather than a fragrance, he includes "His breath smelling richly / Of whiskey and cigars."

I believe that many memories have an attachment to a fragrance, pleasant or not. There is a clear but mysterious connection between fragrance and memory. I don't want to get stuck in the science of it (limbic system, amygdala, and hippocampus) but research has shown that memories associated with smells are more likely to be remembered. Why? Because they are more emotionally evocative and vivid autobiographical memories tend to be the result of emotional events.  

We gathered submissions back in 2005 about memories triggered by objects, but for this call for submissions, we ask for poems about memories triggered by fragrances. I use the more poetic word "fragrance" which suggests something pleasant, but your memory might be better described as an odor or smell.

Click the link if you want to learn a bit more about that Proust cookie connection and read the relevant passage.

The deadline for submissions for the next issue is March 31, 2024



Follow this blog for all things poetry.
To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
visit our website at poetsonline.org

March 3, 2024

Madeleine, Oh Madeleine

Madeleines are little cakelike cookies that are baked in special molds that give them a delicate shell shape. According to one story the name "Madeleine" was given to the cookies by Louis XV to honor his father in-law's cook Madeleine Paulmier. Louis first tasted them at the Chateau Commercy in Lorraine in 1755. Louis' wife, Marie introduced them to the court and they soon became all the rage at Versailles. 


Whatever the true origin, they have become inextricably linked with the author Marcel Proust because of his use of them as a memory device in his In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) published in seven volumes and previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past (1913–1927)
. 

Here is an excerpt from Volume 1 Swann's Way so that you can see the context of the allusion.

Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was... and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.



Follow this blog for all things poetry.
To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
visit our website at poetsonline.org

February 26, 2024

U.S. Poet Laureate Projects

Since the Poet Laureateship was created by an act of Congress in 1985, nearly half of the laureates have taken on a signature project to raise the national appreciation of poetry. The best of them have a life beyond their tenure and some of them have an online presence.

A good example is the American Life in Poetry project by Ted Kooser from 2004-2022 to create a space and a presence for poetry in American culture. American Life in Poetry provided newspapers and online periodicals with a free weekly column by Kooser that featured a poem from a contemporary American poet. The poems and columns remain archived online.

The Favorite Poem Project by Robert Pinsky was the first digital one I experienced. It is a way to celebrate, document, and encourage a public appreciation of poetry as well as acknowledge the role of poetry in the everyday lives of Americans. The project called for Americans to share their favorite poems with the nation.

Billy Collins' Poetry 180 was one I used in my classroom. It was his effort to make poetry an active part in the daily experience of American high school students, giving students a chance to read or listen to a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year. Two anthologies came from the project.

American Conversations: Celebrating Poems in Rural Communities was the 2018 project of Tracy K. Smith who visited rural communities around the country and gave away copies of her anthology, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, to spark conversations about the power of poetry.Living Nations, Living Words was created in 2020 by Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. It gathered a sampling of work by 47 contemporary Native poets from across the nation and features an interactive Story Map and a newly developed audio collection.




Follow this blog for all things poetry.
To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues, visit poetsonline.org

February 16, 2024

Writing a Poem Is Like...



Kurt Vonnegut had written:

Writing a novel is like making a movie: All sorts of accidental things will happen after you’ve set up the cameras. So you get lucky. Something will happen at the edge of the set and perhaps you go with that. You come into it accidentally. You set the story in motion, and as you're watching this thing begin, all these opportunities will show up. So, in order to exploit one thing or another, you may have to do research. You may have to find out more about Chinese immigrants, or you may have to find out about Halley’s Comet, or whatever, where you didn't realize that you were going to have Chinese or Halley’s Comet in the story. So you do research on that, and it implies more, and the deeper you get into the story, the more it implies, the more suggestions it makes on the plot. Toward the end, the ending becomes inevitable.

If we can agree that it is true that writing a novel is like making a movie, does it also apply to writing a poem?

Accidental things happen while writing. Sometimes there is research. 

Your thoughts?



Follow this blog for all things poetry.
To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
visit our website at poetsonline.org