Dear SunWinkers:

The other day, Carol found a lump under her armpit the size of a small lime. We thought perhaps it was a swollen lymph node from her recent bout with the flu. Her ob-gyn brought her in post haste for a mammogram. They discovered a lump in her breast, brought her back the next day for a biopsy. Two days later, the result was in. It’s cancer. It’s very early, will probably not require a mastectomy, and will certainly not kill her. She got on Medicare in April, which is the best possible news, insurance-wise. We are also grateful for the state of cancer treatment today. She will go to a sophisticated cancer treatment center literally right around the corner. Finally, we are particularly grateful to that lymph node, and I plan to write a big check to its favorite charity very soon.

Naturally, I wrote a poem. As I’ve mentioned recently, poetry isn’t just a creative outlet; it is a way to work things out, to put words to inchoate thoughts and emotions, to shed light on the unfathomable, to make connections as an anodyne to the randomness of reality.

Poets are also in the business of turning things upside down. Poet Adrienne Rich says: “If the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives, perhaps to the very life you are living at that moment. You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is renaming.”

In his book Why Poetry Matters [New Haven, Ct: Yale Univ. Press, 2008], Jay Parini states, “Poetry, therefore, assists readers subjected to violent realities by opening their minds to fresh ways of thinking. Most famously, [Wallace] Stevens defines poetry as ‘a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.’”

“Lumps” is a straightforward piece, easy to see how it is the imagination “pushing back against reality,” and to that end, an attempt to turn the idea of beauty upside down from the ideal of Hollywood and Madison Avenue with which the culture is so saturated.

 The Prompt

Write a poem about something you don’t understand, can’t get your head around. Try to find some images (think small), or begin by writing down random words that come to mind on the subject. From those notes, perhaps something will emerge that promises to give you some sort of handle or angle on a small piece of the puzzle. Begin to write about that, and don’t try to cover too much ground. If a poem results, fine, otherwise, just tell us about the process and whether it gave you any new insights.

Alternate Prompt

Write a love poem. Begin by writing down a number of interesting things about the object of your love, things that would not ordinarily go into a conventional love poem. Then go from there. Write it in the second person, like an ode, addressing the object of love, as I’ve done in “Lumps.”

Post your response on your blog. If it’s a WordPress blog, tag it WeSun. Or put it in a Note on Facebook or some such functionality, something you can link to.

Then comment to this post with the link to your response.

I reblog this at WritingEssentialGroup.com (you should be following that blog, too) and will list and link to your responses there. I will also comment on all responses.

Love,

Doug

© 2014 Douglas J. Westberg.