Creativity calls!

     My English homework for this week is to create a writing prompt, post some readings that support said prompt, and then of course, write something based on that same prompt. I decided to pursue found poems, and then proceeded to go overboard. One of the resulting poems was 4 pages long, with another 2 of reference material (because I had to cite where the lines came form; don't want to be accused of plagiarism!) The other poem was only one page, but as I took lines form my much-loved copy of The Dovekeepers (written by the incomparable Alice Hoffman) I had to remind myself that I was only looking up random lines, not reading the whole book.
     My search for poets to include as reading sources led me to Carie Juettner's AMAZING website: https://cariejuettner.com/?s=book+title+poems I didn't make my poems this way, but I intend to give this a try as soon as possible!
     So, without any more preamble, I give you my two found pomes, written last night:


A Requiem for the Dovekeepers
by Nicole Kapise Perkins


 
We went walking through the orchard, toward terraces where ancient olive trees and huge, twisted 
                                                                     grapevines grew.


The birds were cooing. I felt a pulse in my throat, remembering how I had waited for my prey in the wilderness, how they had come to me and how I had destroyed them.


He vowed that the color of my hair was shared by all the most beautiful women in his land and, he added slyly, in mine.


I recognized Ashtoreth, the mother and warrior, whose presence has been long outlawed.


Chayei ‘olam le-‘olam. Eternal life, forever.


Sometimes people imagine I am crying, they believe they’ve spied a tear, but they’re wrong.


I now understood it was our duty as human beings to see behind the veil to the inside of the world, to the heart of things.


I wished to be forgiven.


 


 
Lines taken from The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman,


Pages 83; 92; 130; 157; 220; 242; 289; 377


*********          *********        *********       ********        **********        ********
Lines From Letters
by Nicole Kapise Perkins


 Two lonely cross-roads that themselves cross each other I have walked several times this winter without meeting or overtaking so much as a single person on foot or on runners.


Here we are in the vortex, but this evening snatching a few moments repose in the “Ladies’ Parlor” for domestic life.


We little dreamed when we began this contest, optimistic with the hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women.


If I break a law of state or nation it is the duty of the civil courts to deal with me.


I am so full of misery to-night that I am ridiculous.


Three or four times I have given you the opportunity to make, gaily & good-humouredly, the transition which seems to me inevitable; & you have not chosen to do it.


I am only one, only one, only one; only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour; only one pair of eyes.


Of course we are lone survivors, of course the past that was our lives is at the bottom of an abyss—if the abyss has any bottom; of course too there’s no use talking unless one particularly wants to.


And so we are justified in taking risks.


This gift, like all the others, is characterized by simplicity and thoughtfulness, which I hope each member will make the slogan of their lives.


I am just slowly killing myself.


All’s well, and the twilight is like spring—vague azure and green and silver.


Turn your face to gay, thrilling instruction—the conquest of more & more amazing natural facts.


The photograph is all I have: it is with me from the morning when I think of you and of death at night.


I know there may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead.


A night when I can not sleep—I think the first one since I am out here—bright moonlight on my door—everything so still but for a persistent mocking bird—somewhere out there in the night.


The ideas of man often interfere with natural processes.


I wanted most desperately to live and still do, and I thought about you a 1000 times, and wanted to see you again, and there was the impossible anguish and regret of all the work I had not done, of all the work I had to do.


If so I will make a prophecy—in ten years time no one will work for you for either love or money.


My fingers were on his lips, but no sound came from them for several seconds.


After some thought, I have decided that you are the most valuable person alive, so for God’s sake take care of yourself.


But if my own conscience tells me I’ve done my duty—I will always come back to you in the certainty that you’d understand any fall from the high places, and that my place in your heart would be as big as ever.


You may not approve of it and it may not be the form in which you see the ideal—but I would like you to accept, as my tribute to you, the fact that what I took from you was taken for the figure of my own god.


But I also want to let all of this beauty get into my body.


Now night has come, everything is silent and peaceful.


In the comment on Life’s storage wall, I wrote: “…a pretty good case can be made out for setting fire to it and starting fresh.”


Be comforted, then, that we were serene and understood with the deepest kind of understanding, that civilization had not as yet progressed to the point where life did not have to be lost for the sake of life; and that we were comforted in the sure knowledge that others would carry on after us.


A desire I have had for a long time has overtaken me.


But I have been mentally blocked for a long time, first because I didn’t know just what it was I wanted to say about Life, and also for a reason more difficult to explain.


I’ve written a lot of poems from my heartache of being without you.


When the question is asked “How many lives are you willing to sacrifice:--it tears at my heart.


I am not afraid of Time or lies or losing money or defeat.


I want to make love to the world.


Talk to my poems, and talk to your heart—I’m in both: if you need me.


For the past few weeks I’ve been evaluating + reevaluating everything.


There really is nothing for me there.


I’m beginning to like this fucking case.


 


 
Lines taken from the anthology Letters of the Century: America 1900-1999,


edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler


Letters written by:


20: Elizabeth Cabot


26: Susan B. Anthony


33: Mary Harris “Mother” Jones


49: Wallace Stevens


76: Edith Wharton


81: Robert Frost


84: Arthur Fifield


92: Henry James


99: Woodrow Wilson


151: George Washington Carver


160: “A Mother of Two” writing to Margaret Sanger


171: William Faulkner


202: Theodore Dreiser


203: F. Scott Fitzgerald


204: Amelia Earhart


206: Georgia O’Keeffe


221: George Draper


235: Helen Keller


244: Frank Lloyd Wright


251: Thomas Wolfe


264: Jessie Bernard


269: Dorothea Taylor


273: Alexander Woollcott


290: Dwight Eisenhower


303: Ayn Rand


306: E. B. White


386: Ethel Rosenberg


394: Jonas Salk


407: Rachel Carson


459: Lady Bird Johnson


477: Valerie Solanas


486: Anne Sexton


525: “Pat” writing to her parents


550: Son of Sam


594: Joseph Jamail


597: “Cher” writing to “Chuck,” killed in Vietnam


627: President George H. W. Bush


 


 


 


 


 


 

Comments

  1. Hey Ellie! Thanks so much for the shout-out about my website! I appreciate it and enjoyed reading your found poems. :)

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