Writing prompt #31: POLITICS & POETRY

Hi Everyone,

For me, the best writing is richly grounded in its times—whether contemporary, historical, or futuristic. Our characters don’t live in a vacuum and neither should our stories. This applies to realistic, surrealist, as well as speculative work. What suspends disbelief for any form are the quality of our details and observations.

Over the years, I’ve learned that poets are often the best messengers of their times. They convey what’s going on around them into distilled, gorgeous imagery and give us sensory, crenellated, often heartbreaking accounts of what’s happening in their worlds.

Russian poet Anna Akhmatova’s “Requiem” is a testament to the brutal years of Stalinism and her beloved son’s imprisonment. This excerpt is from the section sub-titled “Instead of a Preface”:

“In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. Standing behind me was a women with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):

“Can you describe this?”

And I said: “I can.”

Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.”

The best anthology for poetry of witness is still Carolyn Forché’s AGAINST FORGETTING (1993). It’s an extraordinary compendium of 20th century testimony from every corner of the world.

https://poets.org/book/against-forgetting-twentieth-century-poetry-witness

YOUR PROMPT: Please use either (or both) of the following quotes as jumping off points to explore and expound the world beyond your characters’ front doors.

1) “There’s never been equality for me/ nor freedom in this ‘homeland for the free.’” —Langston Hughes

2) “I am a cemetery,/ I have no country/ and they are too many to bury.” —Claribel Alegría

Abrazos,

Cristina

PS: I’ll be sending out the link for our Sunday Zoom meeting with Marisel Vera tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you there!