For the past several years I’ve enjoyed the creative prompts for the New Year Poetry Challenge (NYPC) from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. Each day from mid-December to mid-January, they offer up an original and rich prompt, encouraging you to take it in any direction you’d like. You even have the option to send in one poem to be considered for entry in their annual NYPC chapbook. This year I shared the first ten prompts with my writing group, and Catherine Flynn liked one so much that she chose it for our Inklings challenge. The theme: Secrets. The task: “Write a poem about secrets——family, community/societal, governmental, personal, etc.”
Way back in December, when I first responded to this prompt in my notebook, I was also working on Heidi Mordhorst’s fabulous Yuletide prompts, one of which was to “try to write about effort”. These two prompts combined into this poem:
This pen holds secrets
You can tell by the way
it resists the pull of paper
how you have to exert force
to mark the page
how the ink bleeds and blots
and each letter requires
just a bit more effort
so that your hand aches
as the weight of those secrets
coagulates
until you
and the pen
come to
a stuttering
silent
stop.
©Molly Hogan
This week Mary Lee Hahn hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup at her blog, A(nother) Year of Reading. She shares her response to this prompt there. To check out what the other Inklings did with this prompt, go to the links below:
Catherine Flynn
Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon
And then, just because everyone should listen to this song more frequently…
Nix the comfort zone 
Oof, secrets can bleed you (and your pen?) dry, can’t they? I love how you combined secrets and effort in your poem, Molly. And bonus points for working in “coagulates”! 😉
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Oh. This poem has muscle! It’s almost an effort to read. I’d say you nailed both prompts, Molly. (Coagulates. Urgh. Such a strong visual.)
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I love the word choice “coagulates” as though when we write our truth we bleed onto the page. It grabs me. I try to resist, but the blank page insists that I tell the truth.
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For me this poem is brilliantly, *physically* about the way sometimes when we try to tell the truth, reveal the secret, the pen can get clogged, the flow stops, we can’t get it, let it out. Coagulation works that way too–scabs.
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The verbs resist and exert say so much about effort. You captured the push, the pull, the weight, and finally, the “stuttering / silent / stop.” (With lovely alliteration, to boot!)
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And just for fun, I found the Go Gos, all grown up and performing via Zoom in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNcfx2dx9_8
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Ok, that was too much fun ! Thanks!
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My oh my! You’ve captured the challenge, the difficulty of writing something hard, secret or not. Well done, my friend.
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How clever! I love the idea that the pen is holding the secrets. So well done, Molly!
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oooh! This is good. That sensual feeling of forcing the paper to accept the ink.
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Molly, what a powerful take on secrets and effort. Yes, indeed, it takes efforts to deal with secrets, doesn’t it? I love “the weight of those secrets”
and how it causes the writer and the pen to come to
“a stuttering
silent
stop.”
Wow, so powerful.
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Really powerful pull, Molly. I can feel the tension between pen, paper, hand, words.
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Oh, I love thinking about a pen holding secrets.
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Great job combining the two prompts. And I love the idea of a pen holding secrets – until we let them out.
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Well done, Molly! The pen holding secrets is a perfect metaphor, and I agree with Mary Lee about those terrific, alliterative final words.
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Molly, what a powerful shape poem. So many of the ills of our world come down to shame and secrets–while the people I feel should be *most* ashamed are parading around their misbehavior like expensive clothes. Ugh. Here’s to airing out all the secrets–in writing, in person, whatever shape it needs!
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What a powerful poem! I love how those two prompts merged. This is a poem to read, and read again; to sit with and think on what it inspires. What are the secrets we’re keeping? How would we feel if we let go of some of our weighty secrets?
Thank you for sharing this with us today!
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It’s lovely to read the background of this poem, too, Molly. I’m thinking, after this: “how you have to exert force
to mark the page”, my voice seems to say, “You must, you must write it down.” It’s a beautiful truth you’ve shown us.
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Those two prompts combined for a powerful poem. I enjoyed reading this, Molly.
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Wow, I feel the effort and the weight here, down to my bones. Magnificent, Molly.
And yes, I’ll listen to the Go-Gos on an endless loop. 🙂
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