Mini-Prompt: Birds and Wildlife Watching

We're into the final days of our "official" March prompt at Poets Online which is about "lost and found." I saw in the past week several submissions that address the current COVID-19 pandemic. One was a lost and found poem but the others were just about the pandemic in general. I understand the need for poets to write about what's happening, even if that's not what the prompt asked them to write.

I'm writing more than usual. I'm also continuing my daily walks which are often in my local woods but sometimes just suburban sidewalks where people give each other a wide (at least 6 feet) buffer now. But people are waving, nodding and saying hello more than usual.

Today's poem on The Writer's Almanac is "Look It Over" by Wendell Berry which fits in very nicely with my own walks.

I leave behind even
my walking stick. My knife
is in my pocket, but that
I have forgot. I bring
no car, no cell phone,
no computer, no camera,
no CD player, no fax, no
TV, not even a book. I go
into the woods...

I like watching the chickadees at my feeder. They seem so hyperactive, flitting to and from the feeder while others like the little finches and bully jays hang around and keep eating. The video above finally gave me an explanation of why they feed in that manner.

Poets and Writers sent out its weekly newsletter which always contains writing prompt or poets and prose writers. Their current poetry prompt suggestion is "animal watching," particularly birds, which exist in even the most urban environments. They might be visible from your nearby window or at a bird feeder.

There's a poem by Billy Collins ("Christmas Sparrow") about a bird that gets trapped in his house that he included in a beautifully illustrated anthology of bird poems that he edited, Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds.

...Then a noise in the throat of the cat
who was hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in the cold night
through the flap of a basement door...

He is able to capture the sparrow in a shirt and gently carry it outside and free it, but

...For the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms...

If you have written your "lost and found" poem (or that prompt isn't inspiring you) and want to try the Poets and Writers prompt on animal watching, please do so - and if you'd like to share the result - please post it as a comment to this post. (*NOTE* All comments to the blog need admin approval. Don't panic and post again.)

I will keep posting occasional prompts in the upcoming month besides our official April prompt. April is National Poetry Month and though events will be few, I think we need things like poetry more than ever right now.

Be well, write, and share your words.

         

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Prompt: Pets of the Famous

Statue of Jeanne D Arc
at the Place des Pyramides, Paris
by Emmanuel Frémiet (1874)

Linda McCarriston's powerful poem, "Le Coursier de Jeanne D'Arc" (from Eva-Mary), about the imagined burning of the horse of Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) is a painful poem. 

I heard her read it years ago and it still haunts me. She uses Joan's horse as a way to explore not only the cruelty and tyranny of Joan's death but also her own abusive childhood and the treatment of her mother. And, of course, it reaches beyond all that to ourselves.

I think the idea of using someone famous that we know, but describing them through an animal they loved is an interesting idea for our April 2010 writing prompt.

There are some famous pets of the famous. Margate, a stray black kitten, who showed up on the doorstep of No. 10 Downing St. where Winston Churchill was heading out for a speech to be given in the town of Margate, was seen by him as a good luck sign and a show of support. Churchill adopted the kitten after giving the successful speech and named her Margate, and she ended up sleeping in Churchill's bedroom thereafter. General Robert E. Lee's horse that carried him through the Civil War was Traveller. I'm sure Traveller could tell a story of that bloody war.

But, I think McCarriston's poem may be intimidating as a model.

As serious as McCarriston's poem is, the result of using this prompt does not have to be all that serious.

TV cowboy Roy Roger's horse, Trigger, who was stuffed and placed in Rogers' home after he died, could not generate the same kind of poem.

Perhaps, you should think of the famous person and imagine the animal companion.

I searched famous pets a bit and found out that Sigmund Freud was known to include his dog as an assistant in his psychoanalysis. He believed that dogs had a special sense that allows them to judge a person's character accurately. His favorite Chow-Chow, Jo-Fi, attended all of his therapy sessions and he thought the dog could alert him to any stress or tension in a patient. The dog lay relatively close to calm some patients, but would stay across the room if the patient was tense, and would unfailingly move toward the office door when the hour was up, according to What Do Dogs Know? 

You could give Freud an imagined schnauzer (I'll call him Moustache) as a point of entry into a poem about the man or about psychoanalysis or your own therapy and analysis.

How about Alexander the Great's cat, or Hamlet's falcon? Choose any famous person's real or imagined animal companion to start your writing.

BOOKS BY LINDA McCARRISTON