Intro to Poetry
We find it an awful thing to meet people
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people... —William Stafford, “Introduction to Literature”
Look: poetry is no line of work for career-
ists, despite how promising it must appear.
Words are free, but workshops pricey,
and writing as time-consuming as coding,
with a much worse return on investment.
It looks like a form of content creation
but with pretentious line breaks,
even enjambment. But that’s the least
of it. Content is a compliment or at best
a complement to the prevailing discourse;
poetry a correction, admonition,
rebuke. It dares to exist against
the code of conduct. It swerves,
but never for revenue, or security,
or celebrity. It’s a riddle
that lands again and again:
the impulse, the attempt,
the click, the reception,
the next one,
and so on.
~
THE PROMPT
Start with an imperative,
followed by a question.
See what I did there?
Follow up with a vehicle
disguised as a tenor.
Unpack and extend it with a simile;
like a bicycle disguised as a singing messenger,
a Tesla disguised as a Nazi, a pair of hiking boots
disguised as a suicide.
Mention a glowing orb in the night sky
or a symmetrical powdery gauze cloud
in the day; an organ that squirts blood,
fills with love and occasionally murders
its host; or that animating principle
that lives forever, without using the words
m____n, h____t or s___l.
But now it’s time
for that abrupt
yet natural transition
known as the turn:
express your obsessions
freely here, and consider
their shadows. Now
click your contraption
shut or blow it open.
It’s all the same
in the end.
~
Julie Benesh is recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant and graduate of Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers. Her writing can be found in Bestial Noise: A Tin House Fiction Reader, Tin House magazine (print), Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Gulf Stream, Hobart, Cleaver, JMWW Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and many other places. Read more at juliebenesh.com and reach her at juliebnsh@gmail.com.