SESSION 30 - the Everyday muse

Photo by Niklas Ohlrogge (niamoh.de) on Unsplash‍ ‍

Discussion:

• Sometimes, the most beautiful or haunting poem emerges from the most mundane of interactions:

  • The market vendor who gave us an extra piece of plantain

  • the girl at the corner shop who snickered at a buyer’s request for a quarter-pound of cheese

  • the two blue sakis who always show up for the sliver of mango carefully placed on a brick wall

• It isn’t the thing, as much as the attention that is paid to the thing. that makes it a suitable launching point for a poem.

• What everyday interaction launches this piece by Amy Grimm? And how does she build on it?

Amy Grimm is an American poet. Her work has been published in The Greensboro Review and Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety. She worked for 15 years at Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers and is now a milliner.

BUYING YOURSELF FLOWERS
by Amy Grimm

I swear the woman who works at the
grocery store on Prince Street was an
obstetrician when she lived in Korea.

The way she glows at the roses while
she swaddles them in tissue paper
and passes them to you across the counter

so tenderly you are clearly being handed
either a newborn or a grenade. I don’t
want to be a mother, but my left arm knows
just how to be a cradle, and on the way home,
a homeless man says they have my eyes.

Writing Prompt

• Think about an everyday occurrence where you noticed something … not much—a trick of the light, the tone of someone’s voice or the way they walked, a laugh.

• Write about it. See if you can connect it to something seemingly unrelated. Unrelated until you connect it, that is. Then it becomes the most natural thing in the world: a bouquet of flowers that has its mother’s eyes.

• Have fun!