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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