Prompt: Genesis
This man, so great, that all that is, is his, O what a trifle, and poor thing he is! — John Donne
Sometimes I hide from the things I hold most dear, fear, the response to dichotomous, disparate swirlings of my mind? But why should I fear? Baldwin, he spoke in words of exodus, salvation, resurrection Clifton, she spoke in words, fully human and fully divine Maybe I should not hide from who I have been and who I am, in the tradition of the faithful who speak freely not to be understood but to softly approach understanding.
I’m going through a personal transition as I realize I can’t support intellectual gymnastics of segregating my personal and professional and religious and familial and artistic selves. I don’t have enough time or energy to be 5 people at once!
This realization, as depicted in the poem above, came as I read Jimmy’s Blues, a poetry collection by James Baldwin. I am quite certain that faith to Baldwin was not the same faith of the churches where he was raised. Salvation in his poems is a different sort of salvation from that of American evangelicalism. But I am fascinated how he used, fashioned, and repurposed the vocabulary of his past.
Prompt: Genesis
Write an origin story using the vocabulary and stories of your past to interpret your present and future. Create and recreate!
Following are excerpts from several poets. Do click through the links if you have time to explore.
Always, let me know if you would like to be added as a writer.
Karen Lee’s ODE TO THE TINIEST DESSERT SPOON IN ALL CREATION is a perfect example of this exploration, meandering from Genesis to the natural world to present day pain, to a vision of the tiniest desert spoon.
John Donne in An Anatomy of the World wrote a fascinating exploration juxtaposing life and death with the introduction. Nothing understated in his introduction: “Wherein, by occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented.” He contrasts genesis with the unwieldy destruction of man.
Julian Randal speaks of genesis in terms of a broken inheritance, the need to Flex, a survival requirement forced upon him by the world he was born into, a world with.
James Baldwin, for A, an estranged lover using vocabulary of wilderness, resurrection, revelation. Heartbreaking and brilliant.
Hear me — Neglect turned everything to gold Midas touch — I turn the comfortable To the dead — an anti-elegy tho. . .
Hear me — the sun ran like a punk — the sun ran like it owed Not even the gold is trustworthy — why gold? Because it was the color of my love — and by extension The life I buried here — Gold the genesis of one lonely My ancestors were traded mere miles from here — Gold the genesis Of another I know — they are not the same in anything but geography Still it is an act of Flex just to stand anywhere. . .
We’are scarce our fathers’ shadows cast at noon, Only death adds t’our length: nor are we grown But this were light, did our less volume hold All the old text; or had we chang’d to gold Their silver; or dispos’d into less glass Spirits of virtue, which then scatter’d was. But ’tis not so; w’are not retir’d, but damp’d; And as our bodies, so our minds are cramp’d; ’Tis shrinking, not close weaving, that hath thus In mind and body both bedwarfed us.
We seem ambitious, God’s whole work t’undo; Of nothing he made us, and we strive too, To bring our selves to nothing back; and we Do what we can, to do’t so soon as he. With new diseases on our selves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far. Thus man, this world’s vice-emperor, in whom All faculties, all graces are at home (And if in other creatures they appear, They’re but man’s ministers and legates there To work on their rebellions, and reduce Them to civility, and to man’s use);
This man, whom God did woo, and loath t’attend Till man came up, did down to man descend, This man, so great, that all that is, is his, O what a trifle, and poor thing he is!
If man were anything, he’s nothing now; Help, or at least some time to waste, allow T’his other wants, yet when he did depart With her whom we lament, he lost his heart. She, of whom th’ancients seem’d to prophesy, When they call’d virtues by the name of she; She in whom virtue was so much refin’d, That for alloy unto so pure a mind She took the weaker sex; she that could drive The poisonous tincture, and the stain of Eve, Out of her thoughts, and deeds, and purify All, by a true religious alchemy, She, she is dead; she’s dead: when thou knowest this, Thou knowest how poor a trifling thing man is. . .
By Karen Lee
Coyotes do not question the human. Why I’m not married, why childless, howling, and whether we’ve reached the century when God invents a gossamer mousse garnished with absinthe-laced cherries served in hand-fired ceramic espresso cups, a dessert to taste together for the first time after we invent a miniature spoon no larger than a bee hummingbird, tiniest in all creation.
James Baldwin For A. (from Jimmy’s Blues) If I could tell you how, on such a road, where I walked once, I stumbled and fell and howled: how you must walk the road, and not be driven into the great wilderness, by some false dream of heaven! I have been there, and I know. But I know, too, that nothing I say now will get to you. You have your journey now, and I have mine. And all day and all night long I have waited for a sign which will not be given to us now. Love, love has no gifts to give except the revelation that the soul can live: on a coming day, you will hear, from afar, I, your lover, pray. You will hear, then, the prayer that you cannot hear now, and, when you hear that sobbing, boy, rejoice, and know that love is the purpose of the human voice!
Poems from Dreams Prompt — in case you missed
absolutely fantastic work!
Guérin Asante Sylvia Wohlfarth Dennett Anna Rozwadowska Lindsay Lonai Linegar Carver Bain Michelle Muses Aaska Ejaz Chiedza Kikumi LB Blue Fences kurt gasbarra Tre L. Loadholt
Jo Ann Harris FILZA CHAUDHRY Suwimali Bandara Kurt Gasbarra Crystal E.Wild Flower Sarah Book Amy Jo Reynolds antoinette nevitt Dennett Joe Váradi Austin Briggman Dana Sanford Shringi Kumari Anisesh Tracy Aston wimpy af Ashwini Dodani Vaishali Paliwal
