The Violet Prompt
I love Sappho’s poems. Some lines I’ve always really loved from Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho are:
girls
all night long
might sing of the love between you and the bride
with violets in her lap
I love the way this particular translation takes into account the spaces of language that have been lost throughout time from Sappho’s original work. With this specific passage, something about this bride has always fascinated me. I love that all we know of her is that she holds violets in her lap.
Violets are such a magnetic flower. But what is especially special about them are their vibrant color, which is part purple and part blue and all energetic poetry.
For this prompt, let’s focus on the color violet.
1. To begin, put on as much violet as you can. If you have any violet make-up (any shade of purple or blue is good, too, especially in combination), then put that on as much as you feel is right. If you have violet gloves, wear those. If you have a violet blanket, then put it on as a cape.
2. Take some printer paper. Using violet markers, color the paper in and then tape them to your window. Live with them that way for a few days.
3. Take some more paper and draw pictures of violets. Hang them up near your bed.
4. Put your violet costume on again. Consider: If you had to live through all of eternity in a poem, what flower might you put on your lap? Write a paragraph about your associations with this flower.
5. Close your eyes. Imagine you are in a place filled entirely with snow. Walk for a little bit and see three violets. Go up to them and put your hands above them. Do you feel warmth or cold or some combination of both, or some other sort of temperature?
6. Open your eyes and take notes on what this experience was like, especially the temperature you felt above the violets.
7. The next day, put on your violet costume and pretend you are the seed that makes the violet. Write down a set of 5 words that you feel this seed would speak. if it could.
8. Now write a 9-line poem from the perspective of the flower from #4. Imagine it is speaking near the sea. Make sure you mention how it feels and especially what it feels deeply.
9. In the last line of your poem, describe a memory you have of yourself as a teenager.
10. Title the poem: “Love Poem.”
Dorothea Lasky is the author of several books, including the forthcoming MEMORY. She is currently writing a book about Sappho. She teaches poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts and is a co-editor of PROMPT.
Dorothea--Elena Karina Byrne here...
I'm a big fan of your work...great to see you here, in violet.