{"id":3365,"date":"2011-03-18T17:00:08","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T21:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=3365"},"modified":"2011-03-18T14:05:48","modified_gmt":"2011-03-18T18:05:48","slug":"weekly-prompt-directional-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/18\/weekly-prompt-directional-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Prompt: Directional Force"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Crow in Flight (Image via Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve been thinking a lot about force lately (in the Newtonian sense) as I’ve been working on revising a poem that had become too static for its own good.\u00a0 How, I’ve been asking myself, might one use a directional force (a push or a pull) as a central device by which to drive a poem’s internal motion (imagistically, rhythmically, and otherwise)?\u00a0 It’s an interesting challenge, to allow the arc of one’s language (which is, ultimately, abstract) to be driven by the idea of a physical (concrete) force.\u00a0 Cornelius Eady’s poem “Crows in a Strong Wind<\/a>” provides some insight into how this may be done:<\/p>\n

Off go the crows from the roof.
\nThe crows can\u2019t hold on.
\nThey might as well
\nBe perched on an oil slick.<\/p>\n

Such an awkward dance,
\nThese gentlemen
\nIn their spottled-black coats.
\nSuch a tipsy dance,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The thrust of his lyric takes off (or is blown off) its perch as suddenly as the crows are blown from the roof, only to return again as both the speaker’s thoughts and the crows themselves attempt to recreate the scene that served as the poem’s genesis.\u00a0 This pattern\u2014of being blown off course, and then returning, only to be blown off, and to return again\u2014creates a sense of disorientation that makes the poem feel dizzily, and wonderfully, surprising.\u00a0 The force of the wind drives the poem forward and back, forward and back, just as it\u00a0 disturbs the crows from their perch, resulting in a kind of sampling that causes the original image to be made new again and again.<\/p>\n

Prompt: write a poem whose arc, and imagery, is driven by a single, physical motion (a push, a pull, a twist, a parabolic descent).
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been thinking a lot about force lately (in the Newtonian sense) as I’ve been working on revising a poem that had become too static for its own good.\u00a0 How, I’ve been asking myself, might one use a directional force (a push or a pull) as a central device by which to drive a poem’s […]<\/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},"categories":[13],"tags":[291,72,71],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365"}],"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=3365"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3380,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions\/3380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}