Writing After James Schuyler’s “Hymn to Life”
You can find this poem online at the Poetry Foundation:
A writing prompt toward the present tense, a meditation in everyday language, that makes room for small noticing and our most spacious perceptions.
The recording of Schuyler reading his long-lined, long poem measures thirty-four minutes. As is my method with my poetics workshops, it is most generative if you listen to the reading of the poem while also reading the text (you will find “Hymn to Life” on page 214 of the Collected Poems). You can listen to Schuyler read it to you or you may choose read it aloud to yourself or with group of friends.
Next, for writing: please see the following suggestions and have them ready for a free write, selecting and using those that further your present tense engagement. Write for at least twenty minutes. You can return to this prompt and write through it numerous more times, to infinity.
Bring your perspective and verbs back to the present tense, even when addressing memory
Seek the “unforced flow of words”
Introduce all of the things that you might ordinarily deem incidental or too small for consideration
Include quoted speech (overheard, announced, in dialogue, as song lyrics)
Build your lines with associative accumulation (parataxis), move with your attentions
Introduce a swerve or observation that serves as interjection, non-sequitur
Include at least four colours
Animate the landscape or nearby object, imbue it with expressiveness of action or address
Include perceptions of the weather without, perceptions of weather within
Use a noun as verb that is typically not used that way (anthimeria): “white freaked with red”
Introduce the occasional 3- and 4-word sentence.
“Let’s make a list”: include a list of things you love
Did you remember to ask questions?
Include a hemistich line: a line made-up of two halves, of equivalent beats, hinged on a silent beat (caesura): “The world is all cut-outs then—and slip or step steadily down”
Keep writing: if you get stuck, begin again by penning a sentence that begins with the word “And…”
Keep writing: if you get stuck, repeat a word or phrase you wrote earlier and build
Keep writing: if you get stuck, perform an instant acrostic—look up and find a short word and use the letters from seeds to generate language (ex.: I performed an instant acrostic on the word “sky” to arrive at the phrase “said ‘Kill yesterday’”; see fragment of the poem drawn from “Mulberry Mess” in Red Juice below.
The hill offers a sky bowl
We are wow but I’m thinking
the planet turns & there was a was
He said “Kill yesterday” when
he was
tall and laughing and cruelly