The Ars Poetica, The Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/ars-poetica

“Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.”–Paul Engle

In this generative workshop, we'll examine a few Ars Poetica and write our own, whether it is in the genre of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction, since all of these genres intersect in short form. The session will be followed by a Q&A about MIU's MFA in Creative Writing, an innovative program that works from a basis of conciousness and creative process, putting the writer and creativity first. Program director Nynke Passi will be leading this session.

About Soul Bone™ Literary Center

Soul Bone™ intersects writing with creative process, spirituality, social justice, and healing in tiny, winged courses that lift the spirit.  Soul Bone™ is founded and directed by Nynke Passi, who also is the director of MIU's MFA in Creative Writing. You can find information about both at the end of this Padlet handout (scroll right).

Where Is My Poem: Ars Poetica

by Leah Waller

Where is my poem?
I must have been too needy for him.
I demanded that we spend every evening together,
so one day he said that he was going out
for a pack of smokes
and never came back.

I saw him in a dance club months later
flirting with other poets
and he looked so good-
lines cut in a sharp buzz,
his images even more direct and clear.
A cigar stuck in his mouth
like a fork in a pie
as he cleanly told me
he was done.

I stood on the other side of the glass
watching him dance with the other poets.
He saw me and, feeling guilty,
put on his black fedora
and came out into the street light.

He said, “What do you want?
Can’t you see I’m busy?”
I said, “I came for my passion,
hand it over, and we’ll be done here.”

He placed it in my hands
wrapped in a small couplet.
But no sooner had he touched me
than he wanted more.
He held me in iambic pentameter,
tangled my hair into simile and metaphor.
He kissed me uncontrollably.
Wet lips pulsing stanza after stanza,
he filled my page.

Then he pulled away,
went back inside to dance with the other poets.
leaving me
with only
a page of words.

– published in Under the Cedar Tree (First World Publishing)

Prompt:

Personify either your Poem or your Muse and write a scene playing with this personification. What would your Poem look like, be like, or do? What would the two of you discuss? Who else would be there? What does your Muse look like, feel like, and how does your muse behave, dress, act, speak? Have fun imagining! Be as concrete as possible and don't feel shy to play and experiment, as Leah did in her poem.

Ars Poetica
by Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown –

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind –

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea –

A poem should not mean
But be

Prompt:

Write an ars poetica in two-line stanzas where each stanza holds an image and states what a poem is or isn't. Use contradiction and push into the sensory world of image and metaphor, drawing on sight, sound, texture, taste, and smell.

Bonus Prompt 1:

Write a visual or concrete poem that is an art poetic - using form, line-break, shape on the page, the relationship between words and white space, sound and silence, to evoke the subject matter of your poem visually on the page.

In memory of Ruth Stone (June 8th, 1915-November 19th, 2011)

All I did was write them down
wherever I was at the time, hanging
laundry, baking bread, driving to Illinois.
My name was attached to them
on the page but not in my head
because the bird I listened to outside
my window said I couldn’t complain
about the blank in place of my name
if I wished to hold both ends of the wire
like a wire and continue to sing instead
of complain. It was my plight, my thorn,
my gift-the one word in three I was
permitted to call it by the Muse who took
mercy on me as long as I didn’t explain.

Poem a Day

Bonus Prompt 2:

Write an Ars Poetica in memory of someone - someone you love(d) and who inspired your voice or someone who is your model, a writer, an ancestor, a famous person, someone alive or dead. Either research a bit how this person created, then evoke that at the start of your piece, connecting to yourself or leaving yourself out of the picture. You can also tell a story. Make this Ars Poetica about how words are a gift. How those who inspire words in us are our gifts.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

Prompt:

Write an ars poetica that is humorous using different metaphors likening to the process of reading or writing poems the way Collins did in his poem "Introduction to Poetry."

You can find her website here.

Testimonials

You can find testimonials for Nynke here.

Below a few testimonials from Soul Bone collaborative workshops offered by Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi:

"Every single event [of the Soul Bone Literary Festival] influenced my thinking about my own work. Right out of the gate with Nynke and Jennifer. Holy mother of all things beautiful! I was never so excited and proud to have these two women as my mentors and teachers. I remember after I heard each of them read their poems, I thought 'I hit the jack pot of professionalism!' Immediately, they opened the door of vulnerability for all the students and participants. After that, I felt there was no holding back the flood gates that wished to pour from me."  

- Jennifer Sheena

"Nynke Passi and Jennifer Espinoza made a fabulous team! Your master workshops on Writing the Wound and Writing toward Healing inspired me to create my own poem concerning a traumatic incident. I had trouble writing about it, but this time, with your positivity and support, I came up with something. I think what really did the trick was y’all saying that all of us have different traumas and it’s ok to feel how we feel. I am so grateful for your supportive space and your grace. You both have an incredible creative energy that is phenomenal to be around (even on Zoom)."  

- Jennifer Grant

"Nynke is a talented writer who have that rare ability to inspire others to write often and well.."

- Jim Turner

By Lisa Low

After not showing in a poem how I once was boring, I spend weeks collecting proof  from my past for readers who wanted to know. I have difficulty deciding the best prop for my poem:

    A) from the outside, the crack of a bathroom stall framing a girl’s eye

    B) an unmoving sleeping bag

    C) a shaky piece of paper or hand

    D) sunspots in the ceiling of a girl’s closed eyelids

What is the shape of the girl’s body in the sleeping bag, and how long can she remain unmoving? Is she sleeping or pretending to sleep? someone might wonder.

I don’t know whether to prefer the girl’s body seen (yes, hers is like yours) or unseen (you already know what it looks like, yours).

On the other hand, her body must appear at least a little unlike yours.

The previous ending to this poem released the girl from having to appear in future poems of mine: “Go, I tell her / and picture her filling the ceiling with peelable stars.”

I didn’t want to change the lines that relieved me from question-answering and gave me hope.

I pictured one day wanting to write about the girl again, reversing myself.

In the original version, no one sees her, not even to look at her wrongly.

The bedroom ceiling above her recalls the earlier ceiling—a space in the mind.

In my mind, she hasn’t yet become the weakest point on her body.

In the poem, I keep feeling the walls for another ending for her.

Link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/156308/ars-poetica-61095e8a54ad2

Bonus Prompt 3:

An Ars Poetica can also be a poem commenting on itself, on its own creation and can include self-commentary, quizzes, multiple choice, footnotes, and much more. Write about yourself using meta-writing, writing aware of itself, using at least one device such as footnotes or a quiz or multiple-choice bullet point list to step out of the ordinary.

“你的诗缺乏道的真理“

我想起远古的时期

无人有钱，无人在乎道。

我嘲笑，

他与道失之交臂，

那种人

应该留下来赚钱。

Can’t Write Poetry—Ars Poetica

by Wang Ping

“Oh no, not with your immigrant syntax!”

—V.H. to Chun, a Chinese poet writing in English

She walk to river

She walks to a river

She walk to river now

She is walking to a river now

What difference it make

What difference does it make

In nature, no completeness

No sentence really complete thought

Language, our birthright & curse

Pay no mind to immigrant syntax

Like mountain running to valley and bay

Like water flowing into Panthalassa Sea

Poetry is river is mountain is life

Who can stop it from running, free, undressed？

by Adela Najarro

The week Poetry stayed at my house,

she kept a razor in a wooden box. Poetry

refused to abandon her ancestors

and paid homage to the octagonal black

tourmaline rising up from underneath

the burden of boulders. She joined in song

with La Virgen and burned down the barriers between us.

She was interested in rhyme and the metaphorical.

Her rhythm shattered glass, but she did not finish

what she began to carve into stone. She was fickle.

First she drank mead, then preferred a martini.

Poetry wore a new necklace every day. Still,

she prayed for us. Words as omens and talismans.

But she couldn’t really do anything. She never

made dinner or even brewed coffee.

She was horrible at baking.

Soon enough, Poetry abandoned everything,

left flour all over the counters,

the dough proofing unbaked in the oven.

On her way to the airport,

she texted one last entreaty,

something about an old oak tree

unfurling leaves, glossy and new

but with sharpened points

that can make a poet bleed.

Link to the poem on Poetry Foundation

Prompt:

Write a poem about what poetry told you. Imagine poetry moving in with you. What does Poetry do, what does Poetry say? What does Poetry like or own or want? And how does Poetry leave you?