{"id":1106,"date":"2010-02-26T17:59:21","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T22:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=1106"},"modified":"2010-02-26T17:59:21","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T22:59:21","slug":"weekly-prompt-winter-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/26\/weekly-prompt-winter-weather\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Prompt: Winter Weather"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Sun rising over snow in New Jersey <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The deep of winter can be a particularly difficult time, especially for those who (like me) are affected by short, dark days and perpetual gray skies.\u00a0 El Nino has wrought some particularly freakish incidences of heavy snow this year on the East Coast and some has dumped some uncharacteristically heavy bouts of rain on parts of the West Coast, but even here in the Midwest, where the storms have been much milder than usual (last year at this point, we were in the middle of a deep freeze in which the moisture in my nostrils would turn to ice each time I stepped outside), the weather’s inability to make up its mind in favor of clear skies has made my artificial sunlamp my new best friend.<\/p>\n

Winter weather (and in particular, the alien quality of harsh winter storms) has always been a popular subject of poetry, it seems.\u00a0 Robert Frost fixed winter in the national imagination forever with his “Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening.<\/a>”\u00a0 William Carlos Williams captured the human viciousness we often project onto driving snow and ice in his poem “Blizzard<\/a>.”\u00a0 And Cathy Song’s “Leaving<\/a>” deftly embodies the feeling of being under siege that can result when one is housebound by winter rainstorms:<\/p>\n

\n
The mildew grew in rings<\/div>\n
around the sink<\/div>\n
where centipedes came<\/div>\n
swimming up the pipes<\/div>\n
on multiple feet<\/div>\n
and the mold grew<\/div>\n
around our small fingers<\/div>\n
making everything slippery<\/div>\n
to touch.<\/div>\n
We were squeamish and pale.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This week’s exercise asks you to follow in this tradition of writing the winter blues.<\/p>\n

Prompt: Write about an experience of extreme winter weather<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt from my own attempt:<\/p>\n

February Brown<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ground liver-spotted
\nwith half-receded ice scales
\ntakes up fresh powder<\/p>\n

with swift muddy gulps.\u00a0 Snow
\nmageddon<\/em> is what the weathermen
\nback home are calling it,<\/p>\n

and yet here, we are stuck
\nbetween ice storm and thaw.
\nLet there be less of this<\/p>\n

frozen monochrome, more
\nof the acid sun slanting off<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

the glazed drifts . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As usual, we’d be thrilled if you shared a portion of your own attempt with us in the comments below.\u00a0 Happy writing — and for those of you who are snow or rain bound, hang in there!\u00a0 May spring come very, very soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The deep of winter can be a particularly difficult time, especially for those who (like me) are affected by short, dark days and perpetual gray skies.\u00a0 El Nino has wrought some particularly freakish incidences of heavy snow this year on the East Coast and some has dumped some uncharacteristically heavy bouts of rain on parts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[13],"tags":[72,234,71],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1112,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions\/1112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}