Taking Stock
A Creative Exercise Inspired by Sharon Olds’ “Apology”
Read “Apology” by Sharon Olds several times, out loud or silently.
Questions to consider, on your own in writing, or in discussion with others:
- What is the connection between the mice and the speaker’s mother?
- How is this poem an apology? Who is apologizing? For what, and to whom?
- Why does the speaker in the poem address the reader? How does that change the focus of the poem?
Assignment:
Think about something you have done that you wish you could apologize for doing. Take 8-10 minutes to freewrite: What did you do? Why did you do it? How is this action connected to other things you have done, or not done, in your life? How do you feel about what you have done, and where do those feelings come from?
Leave your freewriting for a day or so. When you return, write a poem that describes what you did and connects it to individual, familial, or communal patterns of behavior you have engaged with in some way. End the poem by speaking directly to the person you imagine reading your poem in the future. What would they think about your actions? How do your actions (individual, familiar, or communal) affect or involve them? Who do you wish to apologize to, and why?
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...