The Poetry Magazine Podcast

In the final episode of season 2, Marie Howe invites listeners to find what’s praisable. 

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly— 
it’s late, we’ve miles 
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

Here’s an edited version of Marie Howe’s prompt:

Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that story to find something else in that story—even if the story is a painful one—that’s praisable.

“Attic” from What the Living Do by Marie Howe. Copyright © 1998 by Marie Howe. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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Dawn Lundy Martin invites listeners to notice where the grief resides, then let it go.

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly—
it’s late, we’ve miles
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

Here’s an edited version of Dawn Lundy Martin’s prompt:

Exercise grief from your body by first noticing where it resides. Sit outside in the sun for ten minutes in silent meditation with the phrase “let go” being a return thought if any other language enters. Focus on your breath and on where your body feels grief—not what produced the grief. After, write a list of those parts of the body. Then write for ten minutes toward that vibrational place of beautiful, wet longing. Draft a poem that brings together the parts of the body where grief is held and the language of hunger and unrestrained longing. 
 

Credits: Anne Sexton, “The Truth the Dead Know” from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). Copyright © 1981 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr. Reprinted with the permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.

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Manny Loley invites listeners to make an offering.

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly— 
it’s late, we’ve miles 
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

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Here’s an edited version of Manny Loley’s prompt:

Create a poem in four steps. First: Find a body of water to sit with and listen. Let it connect with the water inside of you. And let the sound that it makes work on your body and your mind and your heart. Second: Build your relationship with the water. Listen for what the water has awakened inside of you. What do you feel? Where do you feel it in your body? What stories are brought to the surface? Third: Follow the reverberations. Write down some of your thoughts, your feelings, your memories. Don't worry about spelling or grammar, or about making things sound writerly or whether they make sense or not. Fourth: Make an offering to the water. Share what the water gave life to in the form of your poem. Touch the water and give thanks.

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The poem “REMEMBERING A CRESCENT MOON/DAH YIITA BEE HANIIH” that Loley reads in the episode was originally published by Arkansas International and can be read in full on their website.

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Maggie Nelson invites listeners to productively disassociate.

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly— 
it's late, we've miles 
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

_____

Here’s an edited version of Maggie Nelson’s prompt:

Write on a piece of paper: “Here is what I did with my body one day:” and tell us an anecdote that the Roland Barthes passage “The Rib Chop” inspired in you from your own body and life. 

(You can read the text of the passage by expanding the transcript for the episode.)

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Nick Makoha invites listeners to build a cocoon, then break free.

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly— 
it’s late, we’ve miles 
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

_____

Here’s an edited version of Nick Makoha’s prompt:

Part one: the cocoon of shelter.

What is the cocoon you are entering? A place of tension? Of hiding? Of gestation? Or of potential? What are you protecting yourself from or preparing yourself for? Can you name the walls of this cocoon? What are they made of? Silk? Sound? Guilt? Waiting? Where do you feel most alive in that space? 

Part two: unfolding into the restlessness. 

Now comes the pressure, the restless, irreversible becoming: what begins to stir inside the cocoon. There will be chaos. Begin writing from that internal movement—this place just before the break. Let that force build in your body. Notice where it lives. Behind your ribs? In your hands? Just under the skin? What is the chaos? Let it press against the limits of the cocoon.

Part three: speak back. 

Break out of the cocoon, become the butterfly. Ask yourself: what part of me wants to speak back? What voice have I silenced? Return to a version of yourself that you might have thought was lost. Let this be your poem.

Part four: speak the piece aloud. 

Notice how your breath feels. If you're by yourself, read what you have written to yourself aloud. If you're in a community, share it with them, and do it as a chorus of voices.

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In the first episode of season 2, Naomi Shihab Nye invites readers to develop a ritual.

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly— 
it's late, we've miles 
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

_____

Here’s an edited version of Naomi Shihab Nye’s prompt:

First, write three “nuggets” of three lines each:

For nugget 1, write three questions that you're carrying.

For nugget 2, write three outstanding details observed or absorbed by the senses within the past twenty-four hours.

For nugget 3, write three lines you've overheard, or three things that are causing you trouble, or three memories you're suddenly carrying, or three things about what's going on in the news, or three overheard quotes you’ve heard within the past day or two. 

Then go away from your page for a minute; read a poem or reread a letter from your old friend.

Come back to your page and reread what you wrote this morning and pick out two or three things that you like best from what you wrote down. Try to write a poem that incorporates those things.

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Credits: Naomi Shihab Nye’s poems “Come With Me” and “For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, age 15” are from Everything Comes Next by Naomi Shihab Nye. Read by: Naomi Shihab Nye. Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems copyright (c) 1994, 1995,1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2018, 2019, 2020 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

The excerpt of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem read in the episode is from Back Roads to Far Places (New Directions, 1971).

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In the sixth and final episode of this season, Saretta Morgan and Bo Hwang invite listeners to create a guided meditation that allows for arrival.

_____

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly— 
it’s late, we've miles 
to go together. 

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

_____

Here’s an edited version of Morgan’s prompt:

Write a guided meditation that’s inspired by two things: one, questions that rise for you in what you’ve been reading lately, and, two, your view of our political moment. Focus on the simplest version of questions that you feel are most critical right now. Determine what kind of language and what kind of containers for silence are necessary alongside your questions. Another way of putting it: what is the language for this moment and what does it need to arrive? 

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In the fifth episode, Amelia Bande invites listeners to play a game.

_____

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly—
it’s late, we’ve miles
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

_____

Here’s an edited version of Bande’s prompt:

Think about a word. Any word. And then write a poetic definition of the word that does not include the word in it. And then you're going to use this poem as lyrics of a song. Once you have your song, you can sing it to someone else or to a group of people. And it's a riddle because then they have to try and guess what the word was.

So, this is one: I wrote the definition. It’s in Spanish but I did a translation so I’m going to read the translation now: You smell it. You perceive it. It activates fugitive instincts of primary protection to fight, flight, freeze, or transform my fear in ways to charm you. What's the word?

(Want to know what word is the answer to Bande’s riddle? It’s also the final word in the title of this poem.)

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In the fourth episode, Pamela Sneed invites listeners to create a protest poem and an antidote.

_____

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly—
it’s late, we’ve miles
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

_____

Here’s an edited version of Sneed’s prompt:

Create a protest poem. It can be based on something that you’ve heard in the news or something that’s really been bothering you in the past few weeks, and you can tie it into a current event. For an added twist, add in an action at the end or something that you think people should or can do to remedy the situation.

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In the third episode, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge invites listeners to observe a plant and receive its messages.

_____

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly—
it’s late, we’ve miles
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

_____

Here’s an edited version of Berssenbrugge’s prompt:

Choose a plant and observe it with care for five minutes and intensity. Now, draw the plant with a pencil, shading from the center of the plant outward rather than outlining the plant. Now sit with the plant again, opening yourself to what the plant says to you. Now put the plant away, and for fifteen minutes write a visual description of your plant. There will be an interweave or seepage between perception, memory, and imagination. Now, as a stream of consciousness, quickly write down all the things that you receive from the plant. If you imagine your plant has said something to you, they did say that. The final part of the exercise is to compose an essay, a song, a piece of prose or poetry combining your written phenomenological description of the plant and your reception of messages from your plant. 

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The poem read in this episode is “Consciousness Self-Learns,” by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, from A Treatise on Stars, copyright ©2020 by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

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