The below song was inspired by a poem that Stevie Nicks wrote about an…
…Well, I’m not going to tell you yet. I don’t want to put premptive ideas in your head.
I don’t know about you, but I love imagining a writer at work. Often I picture a silent back bent over paper or a keyboard and white birds overhead and light halos and fingertip fires. I think about that when I listen to this song and see Stevie Nicks at a piano in a room full of angel muses.
SO to bring the creativity loop full circle, I’m now asking you to listen to the song that was begun by a poem and write your own poem inspired by the song. (Got that?)
This exercise is a bit of a double entendre if you believe that creativity comes from the divine.
Which, I believe it does. (How you define divine is entirely up to you.)
First time to PROMPTuesday? Welcome! Read a bit about this weekly writing exercise here.
Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.
poems are hard. but i will write a poem. inspired by the song. because i’m nice like that. and you? make me a better writer.
but i’m not good at understanding poetry. like, what if i totally miss the point? oy.
I broke the rules, I think. Okay, I know I did. But I went all stream of consciousness with it, so it’s still Stevie and still in poem form. That’s cool, right?
here’s my lame-ish attempt. it was pretty fun.
http://katydidnot.blogspot.com/2009/05/but-then-it-sounds-stilted-and-dotty.html
Call to me a gut-filled chortle
not light, no billows
Swallow sobs with dark sponge
not geyser nor prism
There’s drawn faces, two lies
not choices, no dice
Peck and dry, invert its pockets
to receive not buffet nor plume
So grey night abides
all starboard and aft
Wow, Deb. Just…WOW!
The imagery alone is fantastic. Goosebumpy stuff.
Deb: Your poem is beautiful.
Here’s mine:
The Only Secret
the truck driver
who calls his wife
every night
just before seven.
he knows.
the girl who waited
by the swings for a turn
that never came,
who buries her face
in her mother’s lap
and wishes she could
be there forever.
she knows.
and the gentleman
out on a walk
with his collie
who gasps as the dog
runs out into traffic,
who hears the thud and runs
headlong into the street,
who strokes the dying pet —
whose tears consecrate her
as she leaves him.
he knows, too.