What Would It Be Like...?

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Table of Contents

• Freewrite

• Poem: “As Bee” by Paula Bohince

• Divinations

• Prompt

• Other News

• Archive

Freewrite

Pick an object of careful study in your life. Something you know a lot about, or pay a lot of attention to. Perhaps you are the world's foremost scholar of sidewalk cracks, or you find yourself paying careful attention to old ornate grandfather clocks. Maybe you do want to be a fly on the wall, or one of those freaky looking fish at the bottom of the ocean.

Once you choose something, freewrite for 8-10 minutes about what it would be like to be that object. Explore what it means to be this thing, or tell a story from its persona.

Poem: “As Bee” by Paula Bohince

Forgive my trespass, I mistook for work a crown
of raspberries and custard. Thank you, tartlet, thank you,
Miss, for arranging it on a doily on a saucer, thank you, Nature
for these hypnotizing concentrics. My mother
(did I have one?) was likewise hypnotic. My queen,
she used and tossed me, thoughtless, from the palace.
But this isn’t a poem of woe. I’m illiterate
to that emotion. Spackled with sugar,
I’ve swum through dispassionate debris. I’m ready
to lie, freakish and freezing, in a berry.
This is my first and only spring on earth. I get it.
I’m free as an orphan who’s aged out of a baffling system.
Still, the snowfall mornings. Still, the rosy sometimes.
To be alone in this world is fatal. I accept that.
It was all a blur, anyway. No biography. A complicated coin
paid my passage. Thank you. I won’t be returning.

Divinations

Isn't this such a charming little poem? I had to read it a few times—first to even understand that the poem was, in fact, from the perspective of a bee, and then another to really connect the poem's images to its voice.

And what an interesting voice it is. I mean, the opening lines have so many careful decisions:

Mistook for work?? Thank you, tartlet?? I love this bee!!

I'm always amazed by poetry's capacity to generate insight, and this poem does so not just by discovering the voice of this bee, but by discovering the bee's story. 

On the craft-side of things, this poem makes those discoveries by asking questions about the bee's perspective. What does it mean to be a bee exiled from the hive?

What does a bee think of its own surviving?

What does it mean to live such a short life?

Somehow, I've lived the full life of a bee by the end of this poem, and it makes my actual human life seem more precious, knowing how ephemeral it is for all the Earth's creatures. 

And then, again, there's this poem's spectacular voice. A few descriptions that excite me include:

• thank you, Nature / for these hypnotizing concentrics. → I think the bee is referring to the shape of a raspberry, which, actually, is kind of hypnotizing. Certainly from a bee's size and perspective.

• this isn’t a poem of woe. I’m illiterate / to that emotion. → So much meaning to mine here. Why no woe? Perhaps there is no time for lament in a bee's life. And why "illiterate?" I like to imagine a bee with literacy, and also to think about feelings as vocabularies, which they basically are.

• I’m ready / to lie, freakish and freezing, in a berry. → Me too.

• I’m free as an orphan who’s aged out of a baffling system. → This moment in particular really connects the bee's life to my own. The hive's hierarchies are just as baffling as mankind's, and there's a terrifying and delightful freedom in being exiled from it.

• A complicated coin / paid my passage. → I think this is a reference to Charon, the psychopomp ferryman of the Greek underworld. "Complicated coin" is an unexpected phrase, but then, the tolls we pay through our own lives are rather complicated, so again, I feel myself really understanding the bee's life as my own.

In your own work, think about what kind of voice your subject speaks from, and how its voice can find unity with your own struggles and experiences.

Prompt

Write a persona poem from the vantage of your freewritten subject, answering somehow the question, what would it be like to be a ____?

Other News

Poets in NYC—and anywhere! I'm running a generative 6-week class with Poets House on writing monsters in poetry, complete with a dive into Monster Theory and an interrogation of identity and otherness. The course is hybrid and open to both in-person and Zoom participants. I would love to have you!

https://poetshouse.org/event/6-week-workshop-sean-glatch-writing-monstrous-poetry/ 

Archive

Check out our full archive of prompts at the Poemancer website!