Prompt: Rereading and Rewriting

In the poem "Rereading Frost" by Linda Pastan, she confronts a problem that many poets probably confront at some point. Is there anything left to write about or has everything been written?

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

This is not a problem only for poets. All writers, inventors, scientists, painters, filmmakers, and other creators are faced with this problem. Is there anything new and original to create?

Of course, the answer is that there are always new things. The world changes. We change.

But the more poetry you read, the more likely you are to realize that a lot of topics have been covered already. The real problem might be that you may feel that someone else has already written a better poem than you could ever write.

Billy Collins' poem "The Trouble with Poetry" addresses this issue too.

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

We hope you won't close your notebook (or laptop) and sit back and stop writing. Collins didn't stop. In fact, he continues:

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others

Like Pastan, we read and reread poems and poets and we are inspired to write our own. Our poem may complement the original or go against it. It might update the topic of the poem. William Shakespeare writes about love and you do a 21st-century update on his approach.

Like Collins, we might steal a bit from the other poet - a line, a title, an image, the idea for the poem itself.

In Pastan's poem, she has more of a mixed response to rereading Frost's poem.

And I decide not to stop trying,
at least not for a while, though in truth
I'd rather just sit here reading
how someone else has been acquainted
with the night already, and perfectly.

For this month's prompt, we ask you to reread and rewrite - a poem that begins in response to rereading some favorite poem. It might be one you know you can't do any better. It might be one that you can rewrite in a new way. Let the reader in on the poem or poet that inspired you.

Submission Deadline: December 31, 2019

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Linda Pastan: When will I be most myself?

This month's model poem for our prompt is Linda Pastan's "Something About the Trees." It's a pantoum and I know from doing Poets Online for ten years that form of any kind scares off poets and limits submissions. (From an editing point of view, limiting submissions has its advantages!)

There is a lot more about the pantoum form on my previous post, but we are going to suggest that your submission be a pantoum, but only require a few rules of the form. You'll see that some poems are often described as "imperfect pantoums" and I can live with that.

Pastan's poem talks about her parents and her childhood belief that her father would "always be the surgeon" and that her mother would remain "the perfect surgeon's wife." She had frozen them in time at a place where they seemed just right. She thought that "they both would live forever."

She recalls that her father told her that:

There is an age when you are most yourself.
He was just past fifty then,

Is the father recalling an earlier time? Pastan recalls them at age 30 being perfect. Would they agree with their daughter?

Because the poem is a pantoum, she needs some strong lines that will repeat and possibly carry changed meanings. Two of those are "I used to think" and "I thought they both would live forever."

Pantoums are sometimes described as musical because of the refrains. I think that they also have a circling, lullaby feel because of the interlocking lines.

I had some trouble with the line, "Was it something about the trees that make him speak?" I imagine the poem's setting as winter. The trees are bare. Her father is 50 - hardly old enough to suggest death, but perhaps old enough to be past autumn and into the early part of the winter of life. Is that why the trees made him speak?

She asks, "When will I be most myself?" and that is the line our prompt focuses on. Write a poem that addresses the age in which you, or the voice of your poem, were, or will be, most yourself. Not an easy question.

As far as the form, you certainly could try a pantoum, but otherwise follow these 3 imperfect rules:

1. You must use quatrains (4 line stanzas)
2. The first 4 lines must reappear in exactly the same format in some subsequent stanzas at least once more, and
3. the poem's first line must also be its last.
   

If you decide to try a true pantoum, take a look at this How-To page - you might find it easier to number your lines, for example.

Our prompts almost always give a print version of the poem, but for this month I really would suggest listening to Pastan read the poem. I think the musicality is much clearer.

There are actually 3 (not 2) poems on the video clip. I recommend that you watch all three. First is the funny "Notes from the Delivery Room," followed by "A Short History of Judaic Thought in the 20th Century" and then the pantoum "Something About the Trees."

To see the poem in print, try this site.

Warren County Poetry Festival 2007

The Fifth Biennial Warren County Poetry Festival

FREE event
Saturday, September 29th
10 am-10pm

Blair Academy, Blairstown, New Jersey



Featured Poets

Linda Pastan (Poets Online writing prompts featuring Pastan poems prompt#1 prompt#2)
Eleanor Wilner
Kurtis Lamkin (writing prompt featuring Lamkin)

With readings by: Ron Block, Jean LeBlanc, Judith Michaels and Susanna Rich


Unofficial festival website

Kurtis Lamkin (left) with Sekou Sundiata at the 2006 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.