In Memoriam - Write an Elegy or a Short Story About a Death

“At the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves--the dead come back and live with us.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Memorial Day Speech, 1884

The longer we live, the more ghosts we collect. Death being inevitable in this mortal coil, let’s acknowledge our dead and celebrate time spent together. Let’s examine those feelings of nostalgia etc. that creep up through our memories and explore our impulses to eulogize. 

Writing a eulogy “is, above all, the simple and elegant search for small truths,” Tom Chiarell advises in Esquire, “How to Give a Eulogy.” While eulogies often praise and rarely roast their subjects, it’s valuable to remember (especially since our efforts are literary) moral fallibility. Nobody is perfect, yet everyone ought to be remembered. Even villains get epitaphs. 

We usually deliver eulogies at funerals. They’re designed to ease us through our grief. Elegies are a little different. They are more formal for one thing, designed to be read by strangers, and they also do not have to be about people we love personally.

Derived from Greek, “elegy” describes a song of lament for the dead. Elegies are often short poems, written in verse in three parts, mirroring the stages of sorrow: first lament, then praise, and finally solace. They often evoke a general, metaphysical sense of loss while commemorating the life of a specific person. 

An elegy doesn’t need to be serious (on the Truman in 2007 I wrote one for a pink pen I lost), but good elegies are about real people. They generally hurt to write, and reading your own aloud can get salty, but honoring grief adds value to life. By writing something when nothing can be done, we make what’s past matter. 

This week, for Memorial Day, write an elegy or a short story to commemorate a death. It can be about someone close to you who died, or someone who died close to you. It can be about an historical figure, or envisioning a historic tragedy through the eyes of someone who died in it. You can write anything about death you desire, just be honest and try not to get hysterical.

Here are a few examples: 

“Anabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe 

“O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman

Catch 22, the death of Snowden, by Joseph Heller

Write Your Troubles in High and Low Language, prompt by Kevin Bowen

At the workshop yesterday, at Longfellow's house in Cambridge, Kevin Bowen led a discussion on two poems by poets who wrote during the Troubles in Ireland, when north and south were split in a bitter feud.

One poem deals with violence directly, using regular language, metered with more attention to the way it’s read aloud than to the way it looks on paper. “Dresden” by Ciaran Carson winds around a domestic scene into a story about an attempted bombing in Derry and a memory of the bombing of Dresden: http://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/carson/Dresden.html

The other poem uses refined meter and economic language for an indirect and subtle approach to discussing The Troubles in the context of Japanese isolationism. It conjures a tea party with the 16th century Japanese poet, Basho, in Nagoya. “The Snow Party” by Derek Mahon deals more abstractly with violence and terror setting itself off in a remote home in the hills: http://thepoeticquotidian.blogspot.com/2007/02/derek-mahon-snow-party.html?_sm_au_=iVVqqSjLLRbDZwR2

Kevin’s writing prompt for us is to take one of the poems, and turn it into the other one. So take the tea party with Basho and make it into a poem like “Dresden,” with rambling language and minute focus on scenery. Or condense Mule’s story with attention to meter and rhyme, into a carefully constructed poem.

Write a Snake Poem

Poetry touches on ethics and public policy while dealing in fables and falsehoods. Plato wrote, “there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (Republic, 607b5-6). We see poetry at play in some of humanity’s oldest recorded political and philosophical discourses. Poets helped to convict Socrates of corrupting the youth. Poetry is an eccentric cousin to rhetoric, and it’s a powerful tool in politics.

Donald Trump often recites Al Wilson’s “The Snake” at his rallies, a cautionary tale against trusting empathy over reason. Another poem about snakes that expresses similar apprehension, in a different form and taking a different tack is D.H. Lawrence’s “Snake.” I’ve included the text of both poems below as a source of inspiration for this prompt.

At Warrior Writers we attempt to transcend political divisions and focus instead on the craft of writing. But the problems of ethics, when and how it is justified to arrest, confine and kill human beings, inevitably come up in our writing. We won’t always agree, and that’s ok. Our interests are in refining our art.

Here, let’s write a snake poem, and try to touch on some deeper ethical or civic issue while describing something we fear or revere.

Free write for a few minutes exploring a snake as a metaphor for something you fear or desire. Or choose some object, story or event that stands out in your mind, and use it to explore some deeper ethical issue or moral.

The Snake

By Al Wilson

On her way to work one morning
Down the path along side the lake
A tender hearted woman saw a poor half frozen snake
His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew
"Oh well," she cried, "I'll take you in and I'll take care of you"
"Take me in oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman, " sighed the snake

She wrapped him up all cozy in a curvature of silk
And then laid him by the fireside with some honey and some milk
Now she hurried home from work that night as soon as she arrived
She found that pretty snake she'd taking in had been revived
"Take me in, oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman, " sighed the snake

Now she clutched him to her bosom, "You're so beautiful," she cried
"But if I hadn't brought you in by now you might have died"
Now she stroked his pretty skin and then she kissed and held him tight
But instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite
"Take me in, oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman, " sighed the snake

"I saved you," cried that woman
"And you've bit me even, why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die"
"Oh shut up, silly woman," said the reptile with a grin
"You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in
"Take me in, oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman, " sighed the snake

Snake

By D.H. Lawrence

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him.
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act.
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923

Write a letter to an enemy

Here's a well used writing prompt. I got it from Brian Turner’s summer 2014 workshop at The Old Oak Dojo.

Write a letter to an enemy.

In 500 words or less express your contempt, reasoning or disillusionment toward your worst enemy. It could be an abstract member or the leader of an opposing military force like ISIS, Assad, or the Viet Cong. Or it could be a direct letter to just any Shitbag you've known. Set a stopwatch for 10 minutes. Write free verse or prose. Go.

An Exercise in Aesthetics: write about a battlefield, a crusade, a jihad

In this exercise we attempt what Oliver Wendell Holmes did to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life.” We take the essence of something beloved by another for other reasons and twist it to our own ends.

Find a piece of literature that disturbs you. Explore the web for something controversial or cute. Take anything, a passage of scripture, or some haunting modern verse like The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry. You might look for works that inspire terrorism, like Tarek Mehanna’s “A Drone Over the Skies of Madinah,” or escapism like Philip Britts’ “Down the Years.”

Consider the aesthetics of whatever piece you find, its meter, its rhyme, even the way its words look on the screen or in print. What makes it powerful? Why did it move you?

Respond to the piece that you find by free writing for awhile. Gather your thoughts, and explore your own story or opinions. Find some specific imagery, some scene, some scent, some memory or metaphor, and expand on it. Free write for 10 minutes or an hour. Just meditate on why you chose the piece of literature you chose, and what you have to say about it.

Try not to revise at this point, just plow ahead past any nonsense. It’s often useful to free write on a piece of paper you plan to throw out later.

Read through what you’ve written. Consider the aesthetics of your thoughts. Focus on specific things, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures. Think about how you might craft what you’ve written into a response to whatever piece of literature you chose to write about. Now revise it, rewrite it, make it sing.

After reading great works, our words can seem so puny and worthless in the grand scheme, like we’re contributing to “The Library of Babel” (Jorge Luis Borges). There’s nothing wrong with spewing language in the spirit of Jack Kerouac or Lamont Coleman, but there’s no reason to expect perfection in the initial meanderings of your mind.

Even if you do think what you’ve already written is perfect, and ready to publish, again consider its aesthetics. Think about how you want this piece to appear. Look at its meter and rhyme. There’s no need to exactly duplicate verse for verse the piece that inspired this response, but try to match or parody its style in some aspect.

Maybe you’re crafting an essay about a poem, or a short story inspired by whatever piece of literature you chose. Still, consider the esthetic, think about how your writing looks and sounds. Read it aloud. Record it. Listen back. Revise. How might your thoughts best present? Remember, our goal is to create texts to revisit, again, and again. “Art is long, and time is fleeting.”

Whether your response takes the form of prose or poetry, think about the rhythm and flow of your words. Let’s not just write and be content with a first draft. This exercise is for practice, after all. As Mary Oliver says, “True ease in writing comes from art not chance.”

As a further guide post, the theme for this exercise is “battle.” Just keep the word “battle” in mind as you research and respond here. See where it leads.

A Psalm of Life

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
   Life is but an empty dream
For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
   And things are not what they seem.  

Life is real. Life is earnest. 
   And the grave is not its goal; 
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
   Was not spoken of the soul.  

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
   Is our destined end or way; 
But to act, that each to-morrow 
   Find us farther than to-day. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 
   And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
   Funeral marches to the grave.  

In the world’s broad field of battle, 
   In the bivouac of Life, 
Be not like dumb, driven cattle. 
   Be a hero in the strife.

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant.
   Let the dead Past bury its dead! 
Act,— act in the living Present.
   Heart within, and God o’erhead.

Lives of great men all remind us 
  We can make our lives sublime, 
And, departing, leave behind us 
   Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 
   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
   Seeing, shall take heart again.  

Let us, then, be up and doing, 
   With a heart for any fate; 
Still achieving, still pursuing, 
   Learn to labor and to wait.

A Parody On “a Psalm Of Life”

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Life is real, life is earnest, 
And the shell is not its pen –
“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”
Was not spoken of the hen.

Art is long and Time is fleeting, 
Be our bills then sharpened well, 
And not like muffled drums be beating
On the inside of the shell.

In the world’s broad field of battle, 
In the great barnyard of life, 
Be not like those lazy cattle! 
Be a rooster in the strife! 

Lives of roosters all remind us, 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And when roasted, leave behind us, 
Hen tracks on the sands of time.

Hen tracks that perhaps another
Chicken drooping in the rain, 
Some forlorn and henpecked brother, 
When he sees, shall crow again. 

Write a Walking Poem

At our workshop in the Carriage House last Wednesday, Kevin Bowen and Fred Marchant read a series of walking poems. Then they told us to take a walk and write about what we saw and felt, or just to sit somewhere and write about a walk we took once.

So, here’s the prompt: take a walk and then write something.

Here are a few of the poems that Fred Marchant gave us for inspiration:

Walkers with the Dawn 

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness--
Being walkers with the sun and morning.

• Langston Hughes

Walking in the Woods 

That's when I saw the old maple
a couple of its thick arms cracked
one arm reclining half rotted
into earth black with the delicious
hospitality of rot to the
littlest creatures 

the tree not really dying living
less widely green head high
above the other leaf-crowded
trees a terrible stretch to sun
just to stay alive but if you've
liked life you do it

• Grace Paley

In the Woods 

In the twilight woods
the child with me
held me tightly.
We two as one,
wordless,
walked deep into the woods. 

There it was,
my childhood just as I left it,
A single buck loped away.

• Ko Un