Oh my - what a delicious prompt! I opened the dictionary to E and what a treasure trove of possibility - here goes but I will want to tweak and refine and that will take time and tending but wanted to put my starting point out there. My Ode to E.
Ever eager to elicit exacting essence from existence.
Sharing in a society of selflessness as opposed to selfishness would either make me soar or realize it’s just a symbolic sense of the dreamer within my soul.
Good day, I feel so blessed that I found ‘The Isolation Journals’,. You are such a talented and brave young woman. The storytelling is emotional, complex, and humorous. As I am reading- I am smiling with tears in my eyes-really spiritually moving. Thank you and I am definitely getting your book!
I resonated with this: reminds me that you can make connections out of anything: there are far more ways to be alike than different. Will try creating a poem from the letter s. Should be interesting. Thank you
For the past week or so, a bird has been pecking at our sliding glass doors in our sunroom . . . he came to mind when I read this week's prompt. My grammar & vocabulary are not the best but I will join in on the fun!
Robin red-breast, radiant amongst raindrops repelling on rapid raptor wings, recklessly and repetitively rapping and rat-a-tat-tating at your relentlessly ribbing, never retreating reflection. Unreasonably roiling and riling, ruthlessly raiding your rival again and again, repeatedly you return, rudely resolute, you refuse to relinquish your range. Rage on, dear Robin, we revere your unremitting resolve!
Two letters came to me, "E and N" so I decided to go for it:
Everywhere and Nowhere
Evening and Night
Escalating nightmares
Escaping the dark
Okay, so the last line SHOULD have read "Narc" but that would have ruined the message/tone of what flowed through me. Damn, I am such a rule bender. I really enjoyed this writing stretch-it made me have "Yoga Mind" and I needed it!
The word between has always fascinated me. When you used that particular word in the title of your book I immediately wanted to read your story. That space between. Where everything happens.
I am listening to you read Between Two Kingdoms in the audiobook version, and I just heard you describe your visit with Max at his home in LA (I was so relieved when you decided to go see him! :) So I am very happy to see Max mentioned in this week’s newsletter as a reminder to myself to check out some of his poetry.
I really love these story threads that pull through and extend the experience for your readers, making it more intimate and immediate. I am very grateful to you, Suleika. Thank you.
What a great prompt! I’m loving reading all the poems Claire has linked for us, even signed up for a poem a day email. I appreciate now how poetry slows you down a bit....I will get out my collection of dictionaries! I have three family volumes that my children actually asked me recently why I was keeping🤷♀️. Not sure what letter to focus on...
This may be one of the best poetry prompts I've ever worked with! I echo what Jeanne wrote and can't wait to get to work later today (after I've finished organizing my tax info for my accountant -- it's that time of year.)
I love your writing, Suleika! I keep a big antique dictionary just under my perch on the couch and my encylopedia of Folkore, Mythology, and Legend on the side table just in reach. J'aime bien le Franglais aussi! (Pardon my French!)
I feel badly because I kind of skipped todays prompt. I started writing words but my brain is all over the place today. Also I need to use a real dictionary it internet so I can rifle through pages. It’s a great prompt and I need to just let the words take me. Hopefully out of my comfort zone. I need to get unstuck. When I get something in writing and it’s not ghastly I’ll share.
Thank you Claire and Suleika. Reading this week’s prompt has taken me across time to when I worked in pre-press at our family’s print shop. My dad was a master of turning a phrase, and also making up nonsense words for everyday things. He called peanut butter Op-e-nopiter. My name is Peggy, but I go by Peg, and more often than not, he called me Gep Gep, which was Peg spelled backwards.
Suleika, I love that you have other languages with which to express yourself. That sounds like such a gift to me. The loss of two dear friends in the face of catastrophic illness elevates those profound friendships into the cosmos, to my way of thinking.
Thank you to everyone who replied here, and to you, Claire, for the encouragement of writing a poem from words that begin with one letter. I’m going to try that. And to you, Suleika, for your brutal, beautiful honesty in what you write. I love you, girl. ♥️
And finally, to realize everything in today’s prompt, and all of the responses were written with just the 26 letters of the alphabet. Incredible.
I'm not sure if this is a place to pose a question rather than just comment but as I read the prompt about shaping the words into a poem, I wondered how you would define a poem? It seems to be such a broad area involving so many diverse forms of writing.
So true! And gets even more confusing when there's a form called a "prose poem"! I've heard a few different opinions on this, but one I like best was from a lecture by the poet Craig Morgan Teicher, who was quoting one of his teachers Richard Howard: "Verse reverses, prose proceeds." The idea is that prose just wants to march striaght forward, but that poetry makes you do a double take: when you get to the end of a poem, something makes you want to go back and re-read it—like the music in it, or the surprising metaphors or striking imagery, or that the meaning seems mysterious (or maybe that there seem to be multiple meanings). But it's become a very useful new shorthand for me. If I want to immediately go back and reread, that's poetry.
Delicious prompt, and loved the examples from Claire. I am reminded of the book review my daughter wrote in high school, responding to V is for Vendetta. She used the same idea, sprinkling her essay with as many V words as she could. The teacher didn't even comment, but the writer (and her mom) were amused.
I too love words. What a timely prompt! I happen to be reading “The Dictionary of Lost Words” by Pip Williams. The book is a novel set in the early twentieth century during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and outlines the fascinating process used to develop the first complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The idea germinated in 1857, the first volume (of 12) “A and B” was published in 1888, and the final volume “V to Z” in 1928! My three-year old grandson and I are delighting in reading “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” over and over again. This week’s prompt is enticing!
Oh my - what a delicious prompt! I opened the dictionary to E and what a treasure trove of possibility - here goes but I will want to tweak and refine and that will take time and tending but wanted to put my starting point out there. My Ode to E.
Ever eager to elicit exacting essence from existence.
Can I eke out the erstwhile exhilaration?
Is equilibrium enough?
Endless entrapment.
The eventual ease of eventide .
Love this ♥️♥️♥️
Every week you offer a gentle nudge to help shape my thoughts and be part of something outside of me - I am ever grateful to you.
Sharing in a society of selflessness as opposed to selfishness would either make me soar or realize it’s just a symbolic sense of the dreamer within my soul.
I love this idea of picking a letter and constructing a poem around it. I've been mulling over this idea for a while - using the letter zee:
With zeal
Zelda admired her garden
of purple and pink azaleas.
Would Hemingway
consider gifting her
a zebra from his next safari?
♥️♥️♥️
Good day, I feel so blessed that I found ‘The Isolation Journals’,. You are such a talented and brave young woman. The storytelling is emotional, complex, and humorous. As I am reading- I am smiling with tears in my eyes-really spiritually moving. Thank you and I am definitely getting your book!
So glad you're here Diane! And Between Two Kingdoms is astonishing—can't wait for you to read it ❤️
I resonated with this: reminds me that you can make connections out of anything: there are far more ways to be alike than different. Will try creating a poem from the letter s. Should be interesting. Thank you
“far more ways to be alike than different” ♥️
For the past week or so, a bird has been pecking at our sliding glass doors in our sunroom . . . he came to mind when I read this week's prompt. My grammar & vocabulary are not the best but I will join in on the fun!
Robin red-breast, radiant amongst raindrops repelling on rapid raptor wings, recklessly and repetitively rapping and rat-a-tat-tating at your relentlessly ribbing, never retreating reflection. Unreasonably roiling and riling, ruthlessly raiding your rival again and again, repeatedly you return, rudely resolute, you refuse to relinquish your range. Rage on, dear Robin, we revere your unremitting resolve!
Two letters came to me, "E and N" so I decided to go for it:
Everywhere and Nowhere
Evening and Night
Escalating nightmares
Escaping the dark
Okay, so the last line SHOULD have read "Narc" but that would have ruined the message/tone of what flowed through me. Damn, I am such a rule bender. I really enjoyed this writing stretch-it made me have "Yoga Mind" and I needed it!
The word between has always fascinated me. When you used that particular word in the title of your book I immediately wanted to read your story. That space between. Where everything happens.
Where everything happens ♥️
On the page, where everything is possible.
I am listening to you read Between Two Kingdoms in the audiobook version, and I just heard you describe your visit with Max at his home in LA (I was so relieved when you decided to go see him! :) So I am very happy to see Max mentioned in this week’s newsletter as a reminder to myself to check out some of his poetry.
I really love these story threads that pull through and extend the experience for your readers, making it more intimate and immediate. I am very grateful to you, Suleika. Thank you.
♥️♥️♥️
What a great prompt! I’m loving reading all the poems Claire has linked for us, even signed up for a poem a day email. I appreciate now how poetry slows you down a bit....I will get out my collection of dictionaries! I have three family volumes that my children actually asked me recently why I was keeping🤷♀️. Not sure what letter to focus on...
Aren't the poems fascinating? I can't wait to hear which you choose! ❤️
Choosing J ... have written a page of J words - piecing it together later tonight 🤞
So love the idea of you pulling out those old volumes ♥️
This may be one of the best poetry prompts I've ever worked with! I echo what Jeanne wrote and can't wait to get to work later today (after I've finished organizing my tax info for my accountant -- it's that time of year.)
I love your writing, Suleika! I keep a big antique dictionary just under my perch on the couch and my encylopedia of Folkore, Mythology, and Legend on the side table just in reach. J'aime bien le Franglais aussi! (Pardon my French!)
♥️♥️♥️
I feel badly because I kind of skipped todays prompt. I started writing words but my brain is all over the place today. Also I need to use a real dictionary it internet so I can rifle through pages. It’s a great prompt and I need to just let the words take me. Hopefully out of my comfort zone. I need to get unstuck. When I get something in writing and it’s not ghastly I’ll share.
Thank you Claire and Suleika. Reading this week’s prompt has taken me across time to when I worked in pre-press at our family’s print shop. My dad was a master of turning a phrase, and also making up nonsense words for everyday things. He called peanut butter Op-e-nopiter. My name is Peggy, but I go by Peg, and more often than not, he called me Gep Gep, which was Peg spelled backwards.
Suleika, I love that you have other languages with which to express yourself. That sounds like such a gift to me. The loss of two dear friends in the face of catastrophic illness elevates those profound friendships into the cosmos, to my way of thinking.
Thank you to everyone who replied here, and to you, Claire, for the encouragement of writing a poem from words that begin with one letter. I’m going to try that. And to you, Suleika, for your brutal, beautiful honesty in what you write. I love you, girl. ♥️
And finally, to realize everything in today’s prompt, and all of the responses were written with just the 26 letters of the alphabet. Incredible.
I'm not sure if this is a place to pose a question rather than just comment but as I read the prompt about shaping the words into a poem, I wondered how you would define a poem? It seems to be such a broad area involving so many diverse forms of writing.
So true! And gets even more confusing when there's a form called a "prose poem"! I've heard a few different opinions on this, but one I like best was from a lecture by the poet Craig Morgan Teicher, who was quoting one of his teachers Richard Howard: "Verse reverses, prose proceeds." The idea is that prose just wants to march striaght forward, but that poetry makes you do a double take: when you get to the end of a poem, something makes you want to go back and re-read it—like the music in it, or the surprising metaphors or striking imagery, or that the meaning seems mysterious (or maybe that there seem to be multiple meanings). But it's become a very useful new shorthand for me. If I want to immediately go back and reread, that's poetry.
That’s a great clarification!
Thank you Carmen for your comment and everyone else who "liked".
Have a lovely Sunday. 💕
Delicious prompt, and loved the examples from Claire. I am reminded of the book review my daughter wrote in high school, responding to V is for Vendetta. She used the same idea, sprinkling her essay with as many V words as she could. The teacher didn't even comment, but the writer (and her mom) were amused.
It is. Great prompt. Can’t wait til I can start this exercise. When it’s quiet and brain decides to play.
I too love words. What a timely prompt! I happen to be reading “The Dictionary of Lost Words” by Pip Williams. The book is a novel set in the early twentieth century during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and outlines the fascinating process used to develop the first complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The idea germinated in 1857, the first volume (of 12) “A and B” was published in 1888, and the final volume “V to Z” in 1928! My three-year old grandson and I are delighting in reading “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” over and over again. This week’s prompt is enticing!