Prompt: Travel

Odysseus on the road

Our June issue will be about travel. It seems appropriate for that time when school ends, and travel and vacations usually increase.

Travel is a very old theme for poets. Ancient writers like Homer didn’t treat travel as leisure or self-improvement in the modern sense. In works like The Odyssey, travel is fate-driven, dangerous, and morally revealing. It is something that happens to you as much as something you choose. Travel was not leisure but an ordeal. Odysseus journeys and longs to return home, facing storms, monsters, and the wrath of Poseidon. It is a test of survival rather than comfort.

Each stop becomes a moral trial because Homer's travel reveals character under pressure. Central to his journey is nostos — the drive to return home. Travel also means entering the unknown. Travel shapes identity, and Odysseus defines himself by recounting his adventures and turning experience into reputation.

In modern poetry, the best travel poems don’t just describe travel but interrogate it from different angles. "Ithaka" by C. P. Cavafy interrogates Odysseus' travels.

"As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery...."

The poem makes me think of a well-worn adage about travel of all kinds: "The journey matters more than the destination."

Perhaps your personal journeys are not as mythic. Perhaps your travel doesn't ead to wisdom. In "Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop, she seems to be asking, "Why do we travel at all?" It is a poem that debates itself.

"...Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there... No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"

"The Journey of the Magi" by T. S. Eliot takes a very famous journey and is somewhere between Cavafy and Bishop. Travel transforms you, but at a cost. It is more about the aftermath than the actual experience of traveling.

"...We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death."

I chose as the main model for this call for submissions "Traveling Through the Dark" by William Stafford, from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems, because our poetic travel does not require going very far from home or for very long. Here, travel forces moral confrontation. In this concrete situation, there is ethical weight. His focus is on a single moment rather than the whole trip. This travel is grounded in a specific, dramatic action, not abstraction.

You might begin by selecting one trip and asking: Why did I go? What did it do to me? What did I face there? Was it worth it?

Your travel poem can contain the breadth of an Odyssey or be as specific as a stop on a drive not far from home.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: May 31, 2026

William Stafford (1914–1993) was an American poet known for his quiet, contemplative voice and his belief that writing should be a daily, attentive practice.

Born in Hutchinson, Kansas, he grew up during the Great Depression, an experience that shaped his sensitivity to ordinary lives and moral choices. A committed pacifist, he declared himself a conscientious objector during World War II, working in civilian public service camps. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and spent most of his career teaching at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon.

He published his first major collection, Traveling Through the Dark (1962), at age 48. The book won the National Book Award and established his reputation for spare, plainspoken poems that carry ethical weight. The title poem, one of his most anthologized, reflects his characteristic blend of narrative clarity and moral tension. His essays on writing are collected in Writing the Australian Crawl (1978). He was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate (then titled Consultant in Poetry) in 1970.

Stafford continued publishing until his death in 1993, famously writing a poem the morning he passed away.

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Senryu and Haiku Compared

Senryū (pronounced, sen-ryoo)  are 3-line, 17-syllable (5-7-5) Japanese poems. I know that sounds like haiku, but, unlike haiku, these poems focus on human nature, irony, and humor rather than nature. They often highlight life's daily foibles with wit. 

Senryū comment on aspects of everyday life, often in a humorous or ribald fashion. These were usually composed by townsfolk and submitted to poetry competitions run by professional judges or tenja. The best would be awarded prizes and compiled in anthologies. The most famous tenja was Karai Senryū (1718-1790), and it is from him that the poems take their name.

Two senryu by Karai Senyru

I grab the robber
and find I’ve caught
my own son.

As a man fond of both
loose women and senryu —
please remember me.

Some masters of haiku also wrote senryū.

A woman showing
a charcoal-seller his face,
in a mirror
  -  Buson

In those three lines, you should expect the occassional surprise.

The stone saint
is kissed on the mouth
by a slug.

Haiku is described as “17 syllables” in English because English speakers substituted syllables for the Japanese unit on (also called mora), which is the actual building block of Japanese. A haiku is traditionally 17 morae, not 17 syllables. 

In comparison, senryu uses the same 3-line 5/7/5 pattern, but it does not include a seasonal word (kigo) and uses a more colloquial language. The last line holds the meaning of the poem and is funny or surprising, a bit like the punchline of a joke. 

A butterfly
that goes straight
has free time.

No matter how
sorry you are,
the teacup is broken.

Ecstatic at being
set free,
the bird collides with a tree.

Watching a plane
the kid playing third base
misses the ball
     — Sandy J. Anderson

combing my hair—
the face in the mirror
is my mother's
  - Sharon Peeples

I’m told I look young
That’s how I know
I’m not young anymore

It is difficult for an English speaker to "see" the morae. Take the Japanese word for book: “hon.” This word has one syllable for us but two morae, the “ho” and the “n.”

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Absinthe and the Muse

Absinthe is an alcoholic drink that gained a reputation for being a drink for poets and artists. Absinthe rose to popularity in late‑19th‑century France, especially in the cafés of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter — the same places where poets, painters, and musicians gathered. 

Some of the most famous absinthe‑drinking poets were Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and later Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. Absinthe became associated with poets because it was cheap, strong, ritualistic, and mythologized as a way to summon "the Muse." 

That Muse was la fée verte, the Green Fairy, a muse who whispered inspiration to drinkers. Absinthe was high-proof and relatively cheap, and it became the drink of choice for the "Green Hour" (L'Heure Verte), a daily ritual in cafes.  

There was a ritual connected to absinthe that seemed almost alchemical and added to the mystery and myth. You would drip iced water over a sugar cube perched on a slotted spoon over the absinthe-filled glass. This turned the green drink a cloudy white. This also lowered the alcholic hit and bitterness but brought forward floral notes. This theatricality made it feel more like a potion than a beverage. Artists embraced the idea that it opened the mind to visions, even though its supposed hallucinogenic effects were much exaggerated. 

Charles Baudelaire is one of the earliest literary figures linked to absinthe. Although he didn’t write poems about absinthe directly, his fascination with altered states, decadence, and artificial paradises made the drink a natural part of his mythos. His prose work Les Paradis Artificiels explores intoxication and creativity.

In "Le Poison" (The Poison) by Baudelaire from his Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), he compares the mind-altering effects of wine and opium before introducing a third intoxicating power. While he does not say the word "absinthe" explicitly, it is widely accepted by literary scholars that the third verse is an ode to it, playing on its signature color and its nickname as a liquid lake of dreams.

All this is nothing to the poison that spills
From your eyes, from your green eyes
Lakes where my soul trembles and is turned upside down...

Paul Verlaine was a heavy absinthe drinker whose turbulent life — including his relationship with Rimbaud — became part of the Green Fairy legend. Absinthe appears in his letters and memoirs, and its haze fits the languor and melancholy of his Symbolist style.

Arthur Rimbaud drank absinthe with Verlaine during their infamous Paris and London years. His visionary, hallucinatory poetic style helped cement the idea that absinthe unlocked new modes of perception.

In the prose poem "Absinthia Taetra" by Ernest Dowson, a central figure in the English Decadent movement, he captures the aesthetic, sensory experience of preparing the drink.

Green changed to white, emerald to opal; nothing was changed. The man let the water trickle gently into his glass, and as the green clouded, a mist fell from his mind.

Ernest Hemingway is one of the 20th‑century devotees who helped revive absinthe’s mystique. He wrote about it in For Whom the Bell Tolls and drank it in Paris and Spain. His “Death in the Afternoon” cocktail was absinthe mixed with champagne.

James Joyce also drank absinthe in Paris during his early years. While not central to his writing or the mythology, it was part of the bohemian café culture that shaped Modernism.  

Read further about the science and mythology of absinthe

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Petrarch Meets Laura

It was on this day, April 6, in 1327, that Italian poet Petrarch first set eyes on “Laura,” the ethereal woman he would use as his muse for more than 300 sonnets. 

He met Laura on a Good Friday at St. Clare Church in Avignon. Some historians think she was a woman named Laura de Noves, a married mother, and most agree that she never responded to Petrarch’s overtures. 

The first 263 poems Petrarch wrote for her are known as the Rime in Vita Laura. She died during the Black Death of 1348. After she died, the remaining poems were known as Rime in Morte Laura.

Petrarch’s works for Laura laid the groundwork for the sonnets of the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare without Petrarch.

About his unconsummated love for Laura, Petrarch wrote:

“In my younger days, I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair — my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.”

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