The Devil's In the Details, #TeacherPoets Challenge 3 - Write About An Object

We were asked to write about one object, taking in all the details, then create poetry from it.

I actually started and re-started this challenge a number of times, not finding the right object.  I'm sure if I'd really worked at it, any object would do. Chris Lehman used a strawberry - something passionate and organic and beautiful in its own right.  He always makes it look so easy.  But any object SHOULD do, right?

Wrong. Poetry works from a wellspring of passion, like all writing.  Heck - like all learning - like all art.

No matter how many times I wanted to write odes to my Starbucks cup, the well was dry (well, except for the coffee - but that didn't last long.)

After much hemming and hawing and false starts, I started looking at what I was writing with and what I was writing on.  The fountain pens I use are a relatively new fixation for me.  I have only been using them consistently for the last two years.  However, I have long had an affinity for yellow lined notepads - standard sized, not legal.  I have always found them the most pleasing to write on.  I wrote my first play and a good portion of my first novel on those yellow pads.

So, here it is.  My poem about an object (Not a Red Wheelbarrow):

Yellow Writing Notepads

By Jessica Wisniewski

It is not a sunny yellow.

It is a serious, post-it note yellow,

business-like, but still welcoming.

The “best” ones have thick, slick pages,

like stationery for stodgy lawyers

but I prefer the cheap ones.

The pages are softer, more cloth-like

They drink in the ink of my fountain pen

their thirst blurs the edges of my marks

So that the letters of my words bleed slightly

Into the serious field of yellow

Just like the 28 inkpen blue lines

Marching down the page, left to right, in tight formation

Like rows of soldiers, waiting for their orders

They leave a window of open field at the top

For titles

For doodles

For notes

For names

The platoon of precision is interrupted, bisected

By dangerous double lines of red, a barrier

Set to the left margin; top to bottom, unbroken,

But breaking the page to protect that left space

What lives there to protect?

My afterthoughts?

My asides?

My corrections?

My additions?

There are no holes to mar this first, but secondary column

No expectation of attachment to other pages in a binder

My thoughts can flow together – or not – with the lifting

Of this finished, filled, fully realized page

Sliding against itself to reveal the ghosts

Of my previous thoughts through the translucent sunlight

Of the paper, revealing a new, clean field to sow

Awaiting the plow of my pen

The seeds of my thoughts

Bleeding

Weaving

Growing together

Tangling and Tumbling across the page.