Sunday's Villanelle

A Little Something That Refrains


Let's write a little something that refrains
From trying to be more than poetry.
The language moving in a poem obtains.

For language is an actor, plays and feigns,
And hopes we'll see what it wants us to see.
Let's write a little something that refrains

Itself in lyric and won't grab for gains,
But is content simply to seem and be
The language, moving. In a poem, "obtains"

Can take an object or refuse. The lanes
Of speech form labyrinths. Let's drink some tea.
Let's write a little. Something that refrains

Might well refresh. The mind's eye strains
Relentlessly, desires profundity.
The language moving in a poem obtains:

It's there like creeks and rivulets from rains.
Word-lovers lap up language happily.
Let's write a little something that refrains.
The language moving in a poem obtains.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Promptly Write Poetry

I was cleaning up my computer's "desktop," which is neither a desk nor a top (an uppermost surface), and I ran across a list of "prompts" or "ideas" for poems--each prompt designed to help students start writing a poem.

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Probably, the issue of whether to use prompts in creative-writing classes (or simply in one's own writing) is less contentious now than it was 10-20 years ago. In all the creative-writing courses I took in college, we were given almost no prompts. In one class, however, Karl Shapiro gave us a semester-long task of writing poems about a poet whose worked we liked. I chose Hopkins and wrote a series of poems about him.

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I guess one argument against "assigning" poems or providing prompts is that poetry is supposed to spring purely from inspiration. Of course, a nearby philosopher will immediately order, "Define 'inspiration.'"

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With regard to this issue, I'm terribly biased, so much so that I co-wrote a book, Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively that discusses different aspects of writing poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction but that, in each piece, ends with some ideas for writing. In a way, it's a book full of prompts, topics, tasks, assignments, experiments, triggers, suggestions (choose your favorite term).

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I'm the sort of writer that often likes to be given tasks or challenges, and I actually think many poets fall into (or wander into) this category. To some degree, Shakespeare challenged himself (or maybe one of his friends challenged him) to write a sonnet that disrupted conventions of sonnets when he wrote "Sonnet 18." "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" It's as if he's asking himself more than he's asking the imaginary listener. Much of the poem is taken up with his showing that the comparison isn't a good idea, so Shakespeare is writing a kind of counter-sonnet that refuses to make conventional comparisons. His implicit poetic answer to the question is, "Well, I shall and I shan't--watch this."

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Sometimes the challenge or prompt is as simple as. . . trying to write a villanelle, a sestina, a sonnet, or a pantoum, etc....or trying to write a poem in one long sentence...or trying to write a poem on a topic about which you've written a poem: refrigerator, feet, landfill (e.g.). Often, that is, "inspiration" may spring from a fairly plain task one gives oneself or from an idea or an experiment someone asks you to try. Once the writing is underway, we might find more inspiration, more reasons to keep wanting to write the thing.

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Anyway, here are the prompts I found on my non-existent but nonetheless cluttered "desktop," in the unlikely event your're interested:

Write an homage-poem about a favorite writer. You need not be enthralled by the writer or her/his work, but you should like a lot of the writing, and you should feel a strong connection to it or to her/him (as you imagine her/him—after all, the writer may have died long ago). But it’s fine to have mixed, ambivalent feelings toward the writer and his/her work. (Auden wrote an homage to Yeats; Ginsberg wrote an homage to Whitman.)

Write a poem about a time when you were excluded from a group or, at the very least, when you believed yourself to have been excluded from a group.

Pick an age, more or less arbitrarily: 11, 9, 15, 13 years old. Then write a poem in which you completely make up an “autobiographical” event. But it should seem real, not farcical or over the top. And it might even capture an emotion you might have felt at that age, even if the “facts” of the poem are entirely fictional.

Write a poem that begins, “After you lied to me, . . . .”

Write a poem that begins, “After I lied to you, . . . .”

Write a poem about an animal you have observed closely—but not a pet. It has to be an animal you’ve watched—maybe smelled or heard, too. --You know, like that one horse that slobbered on you, or the spider that lives in your bathroom.

Quickly list ten verbs, in the past tense. Then start a poem that draws heavily on this list of verbs. Let the language pull the subject. Follow the verbs. See where they go.

Write a poem consisting of 10 images you associate with a given topic, thing, subject. You might start by making a list of topics, things, or subjects--or even by asking someone else help you make the list. When you write, make your language precise. Present the images. Then see where the poem takes you.

Think of a strong emotion—fear, love, disgust, outrage. Then write a poem about something neutral—tea, a boulder, being in the library, whatever. Let the emotion drive the poem—but not overtly. Leave the emotion under the poem, like molten but unseen lava.

Write a poem that is somehow concerned with the topic of shame, but be concrete—trust the images.

Villanelle: Cosmic Status

Villanelle: Cosmic Status

If we add up all that we claim to know,
The sum is zero when compared to Mystery.
We are as nothing in the cosmic show.

Or do you disagree? Maybe it's so
That we are in control, can claim to be,
If we add up all that we claim to know.

If Universe is infinite or so,
Then we're about as trivial as can be.
We are as nothing in the cosmic show.

But if God is, well, then: there you go:
Perhaps God made it all and let us see
If we could claim to add up what we know.

Irrelevant or godly? Hard to know--
A or B? And might there be an option C
In which when we discover all we know,
We're more than nothing in this cosmic show?


Hans Ostrom 2008 Hans Ostrom

A Vector of Villanelles

After writing very few villanelles over the last--oh, let's say lots--of years, I've written several lately. I'm not exactly sure why. I am exactly sure they're not perfect. I'm having a good time with them, though. That counts for somethings.

What to call a group of things? That's the premise of a book called AN EXULTATION OF LARKS. A group of crows is called an unkindness of crows. I think that's a bit mean. A gaggle of geese: that's a familiar one. I wonder what a group of academics is called. A tweed of academics? A pedantry of academics?

A group of villanelles, I've decided, should be called a vector of villanelles, because it is a bit like a disease, this itch to write them, even if it's a harmless diseases, and some diseases require a vector, don't they?

Anyway, another villanelle.


I Think I Know


I think I know exactly what you need:
Someone to say you and your work are good.
But generosity is rare indeed.

Thirst needs its quench, hunger its feed.
But no less basic: to be understood.
I think I know exactly what you need.

To live among the petty might well lead
You to conclude you're just no good.
Yes, generosity is rare indeed.

To care, to listen take no special creed.
So tell me how you are. I'm in the mood
To learn about exactly what you need.

Someone who gives a damn: that's a rare breed,
For each self-centered tree thinks it's the woods.
Though generosity is rare indeed,
I think I know exactly what you need.


Hans Ostrom Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008