As a poet, I enjoy writing exercises just because they reveal a lot about my niche and sensibility; I usually gravitate to certain topics and themes even in a workshop’s most timely manner, which is one of the most promising things of a prompt in that we do not have to organize the over thinking and/or over poeticizing of stuff so therefore, we say things in a stream of consciousness fashion, which ultimately ends up being the most graceful anyway. Oddly enough the perceived disorder is fertile and capacious. One of the most engaging things of the writing prompt is that through learning about our tendencies, we discover our Ars Poetica and take on  developing according to our nature, if and as we wish or choose. Let’s not forget the nurture aspect as well. Most often, these cutout poems end up being our go-to ones for either the start of a chapbook, specific writing contest and/or full-length collection. With that being said, here is the prompt:

Thoughtsmith Writing Prompt #2:

Write a poem in the likeness of a letter using direct address to a person (who is generally absent), an object (present or absent), and/or abstract idea.

I usually enjoy this form because the exercise encourages the poet to establish voice and preoccupations within the onset of the poem, which is not often the case and is quite a challenge because the writer must maintain a sense of intrigue in the trajectory without being overly mystifying in its founding. This is a great opportunity for writers to assess and reconcile declarative language with the allegorical for the sake of complicity and momentum.

Happy writing!

Erienne Rojas

One of the primary objectives of the blog, and Thoughsmith in general, is to encourage interest and participation in the craft of writing.  Inspiration isn’t always easy to come by, and sometimes you just need a little push to get you started.  Everyone loves an assignment, from beginning writers to published and respected poets, novelists, etc.  Writing prompts are always helpful, and often can take your work in a direction outside of your initial thinking.

That being said, we’ve decided that one of the things we’d like to feature on the Thoughtsmith blog is an ongoing series of writing prompts.  The plan is to keep the prompts general, so that they can apply to all genres of writing, however, from time to time there will be a genre specific prompt.  We encourage you to use these prompts for your own personal use, or think of it as a call for submissions, send us what you got out of using the prompt; we’d love to see it.

Without further delay, here is the first of many writing prompts to come.

Thoughtsmith Writing Prompt #1:

Write about something you could never tell.

It sounds deceptively simple, but being that honest can be difficult.  As a poet, I use this prompt often, and enjoy it because I can veil whatever secret I’m divulging in metaphor.  However, an essayist or fiction writer would do just as well to use this exercise.  This is a great prompt for a few reasons, the most obvious being that it simply feels good to get something that you’ve been carrying around with you off your back.  Another excellent reason to use this exercise is the amount of time you’ve probably spent thinking about whatever secret you’ve decided to write about.  If you’ve been thinking about something long enough you could probably come up with several ways to describe how it feels right off the top of your head.  Instant writing material.

So that’s it, the first writing prompt.  Look for future blog posts from Ben and Erienne in which they’ll share some of their favorite writing prompts/exercises as well.

Happy writing, looking forward to your submissions.

-Jonathan

I was born and raised in Brunswick, New York.  It’s a small town just outside of the city of Troy, historically known as The Collar City due to our once flourishing shirt collar industry.  I have always been interested in creative expression, and began my artistic career in the fine arts world as a painter.  I began writing in high school, and have been writing poetry ever since. Somewhere along the way I ditched the brushes and canvas for a fountain pen, but the margins of my school notebooks would suggest that I’m still something of a doodler.

After high school I attended Siena College in Loudonville, NY, where I completed my BA in English Literature in 2007, graduating magna cum laude.  The summer after completing my BA I packed my car with what I deemed to be necessities, (don’t ask me how I rationalized a Pilates reformer as a necessity, or how I managed to fit it into my car, but I did) and I headed West.  After brief stints in Colorado, and San Francisco I found my way to Portland, Oregon and ended up staying for a while.  I returned to upstate New York in 2010 and began work on my MA in English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.

I’m in the last few weeks of my MA program, and am planning on taking the following year to focus on writing and completing the book of poetry on which I’m currently at work.  After that, I predict more school will be in the cards for me.  At this point I’m interested in PhD programs in English and Creative writing.

Although writing poetry is my primary focus, I am also interested in the academic side of things.  I’m deeply interested in Victorian literature, Asian American literature, Women authors, and various branches of the literary theory tree.  Among my favorite theorists are Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, Helene Cixous, and Gloria Anzaldua.

Although I love all poetry, there are a handful of poets whose names deserve honorable mention.  I have always been enamored by the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Edna Millay, Hart Crane, and Emily Dickinson.  And because I love her so so much, Elizabeth Bishop gets her own sentence.

As the newest member of the Thoughtsmith team I’d like to close by saying that I have been enjoying reading all of the work that you submit to us, and look forward to more of it coming in the future.

Thank you all for reading, visiting, and submitting your work! And to leave you with words far lovelier than mine, here is one of my favorite poems by Elizabeth Bishop.

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.  Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Always looking for further intellectual growth and career opportunity, I am now in the process of narrowing down PhD programs in Women Studies.  With the work of my first book in progress, I am particularly interested and fervently researching French Feminism (such includes Hélène Cixous, Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva), Feminist Criticism and Theory, Psychology, Gender Study and Sex. As an aficionado of Women’s Literature and Poetry, I am also an avid reader in areas of British Modernism, Post Colonial Literature and Rhetoric, Victorian Literature and Psychoanalysis.

Another project: I have started translating female poets from Central America, whose work have otherwise not reached English mainstream like Costa Rican poet, Ana Istarú and Salvadorean poet, Claudia Lars.

I live and breathe poetry. Among my favorite poets are Sylvia Plath:

Edge

The woman is perfected.
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

Joan Larkin:

Vagina Sonnet

Is “vagina” suitable for use
In a sonnet? I don’t suppose so.
A famous poet told me, “Vagina’s ugly.”
Meaning, of cour…se, the sound of it. In poems.
Meanwhile, he inserts his penis frequently
into his verse, calling it, seriously, “My
Penis.” It is short, I know, and dignified.
I mean, of course, the sound of it. In poems.
a waste of brains—to be concerned about
this minor issue of my cunt’s good name.

And the late Adrienne Rich (1929–2012), whose long and withstanding dedication to feminist activism and poetry has forever impacted the Women’s movement, collectively and globally. This brings to mind another iconic woman writer way ahead of her time, Virginia Woolf, whose theory of thinking back through our mothers is clearly illustrated here as Rich will always be the mother of our time:

Planetarium
Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750—1848)
astronomer, sister of William; and others.

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman ‘in the snow
… among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’

in her 98 years to discover
8 comets

she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind

An eye,

‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg

encountering the NOVA

every impulse of light exploding

from the core
as life flies out of us

Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’

What we see, we see
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand

I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.

I am also into experimental women’s writing and manifestos like that of Rae Armantrout, Ann Lauterbach, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Bernadette Mayer and Mei Mei Berssenbrugge. Other favorites include post-colonial theorist Gayatri Spivak and feminist writer Elaine Showalter.

Now that you all know more about me, I hope this encourages everyone to submit because as a fellow writer, I am so eager to help artists in all types and mediums contribute their clever and artful skill to the growing slew of contemporary, new-age voices. Thoughtsmith is invested in the idea of community so I feel extremely honored to read all of your work!

Thank you again for your continued readership and support.

Erienne Rojas