Note: I'm apologize for being gone for so long. The reasons are many, but most of the reasons aren't that interesting or unique, so I won't bore you with them. It's time to get back on the horse. A while back I won free registration to the Collins Writing Conference in Rock Island, hosted by the Midwest Writing Center. Last week, I attended that conference, which among other things, consisted of 3 days workshops. There were four workshops each day, each covering a different genre (short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and novel editing). I took all four. I thought I'd share some of the work I generated in the workshop here.
This first piece was generated in the Poetry workshop: Obscured Environments with the instructor Sara Lupita Olivares. The prompt for this piece was to pick one of two pieces of art shown (or you could relate to both, but I only picked one). The poem was to focus on what we thought was the center (metaphorical more so than physical center) of the painting. We were to avoid using the word "I" until the last line (or not at all, as I did). We were to start the poem with the phrase, "It wasn't that..." and the last line with "Underneath,"
The painting I chose is "Thistles" by John Singer Sargent. An image of that is below. My eyes focused on the bright spot near the middle in the bottom third of the painting. Below the image is the poem I generated.
A Star in Hiding
It wasn’t that the star was dying in the thicket
It was simply hiding
Tired of the soundless ether
It tucked into the tangled bramble,
Scared not of sharp fingers or dark corners, but
Glad for the respite from the exposed scrutiny of space.
Here things blew and howled.
Here things shivered and cowered.
Here things are and were.
Underneath the thicket, this star is dying.
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