Time yourself as you write in some way (with a timer, the length of a song, or the length of a page). Write for roughly 3 minutes in response to each of the prompts below. Try to write for the whole time, without stopping, in sentences, with no line breaks. Work to get all of your thoughts on the page, without worrying about what you are writing, or how. It is encouraged to follow wherever your mind leads.
Prompt:
What is a mirror? Write a list of all the mirrors in your home, actual and metaphorical. What are the most important mirrors in your life?
What is a window? Write a list of all the windows in your home, actual and metaphorical. What are the most important windows in you life?
A concrete poem visual enacts the meaning of the poem in the placement and appearance of the text on the page. How can “Mirror” be read as a concrete poem? How does the form of the poem, the way it appears visually on the page, change the meaning of the poem?
A contrapuntal poem is a poem that can be read in more than one direction, or that weaves two or more poems together into one poem. How can “Mirror” be read as a contrapuntal poem?
Looking back over your writing about mirrors and windows, compose a poem that focuses on one metaphorical mirror or window, and compose a concrete poem. The form of the poem on the page should enact the meaning of the words. Or, take what you have written, and compose one poem about a mirror, actual or metaphorical, and then compose a second poem about a window, actual or metaphorical. Combine the two poems into one poem that can be read in multiple directions.
Maggie Queeney (she/her) is the author of In Kind (University of Iowa Press, 2023), winner of the 2022 Iowa Poetry Prize, and settler (Tupelo Press, 2021). She received the 2019 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, a Ruth Stone Scholarship, and an Individual Artists Program Grant from the City of Chicago in both 2019 and 2022. Her work appears in the Kenyon Review, Guernica, the Missouri Review, and The...