Write The Book #75 (12/7/09) Charles Harper Webb
Dec 7th, 2009 by writethebook
Interview with the poet Charles Harper Webb, author of the new collection Shadow Ball, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Prompt: Today's Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Charles Harper Webb. Charles recently published this prompt and one or two others in a collection titled The Working Poet, published by Autumn House Press and edited by Scott Minar.
Choose two subjects that interest you - the more different and apparently unrelated, the better. You may choose two stories, two processes (making beer, lethal injections), a story and a process, whatever. The important thing is that both subjects be of real interest to you. Now write a poem in which you combine the two subjects, letting each intermingle with and illuminate the other. Ideally, you will have no idea how the two interconnect until - it may seem like magic - they do.
Good luck with this prompt, and please listen next week for another.
The poems from the book Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems, by Charles Harper Webb, ©2009, are aired/posted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)