An Exercise of Imagination, After Elizabeth Bishop’s “Little Exercise”

Time yourself as you write in some way (with a timer, the length of a song, or the length of a page). Write for roughly 10 minutes in response to the following prompt. Try to write for the whole time, without stopping, in sentences, with no line breaks. Work to get all of your thoughts on the page, without worrying about what you are writing, or how. It is encouraged to follow wherever your mind leads.

1. Think of something that exists in and/or moves through the sky. You may choose a feature of nature (clouds, a rainbow, stars, a migrating bird or butterfly, a comet, etc.) or something manufactured (an airplane, a drone, a kite, a satellite, a song traveling over radio waves, etc.).
2. Once you have your topic selected, write for roughly 8 minutes from the point of view of the thing moving through the sky. Imagine a specific part of the earth. What does it see? What does it touch? How does it affect what exists on the ground?
3. For the final 2 minutes, write the perspective of someone or something, or multiple someones or somethings, on the ground. What is your experience of what is in the sky?

Read Elizabeth Bishop’s “Little Exercise.”

Questions to consider in writing, or in discussion with others:

• What do you notice about how Bishop describes the storm? What associations do you have about storms?
• What kinds of things does the storm touch? What does the storm reveal about the things, animals, and people in the poem?
• Several sentences/lines begin with a direction, “Think of....” Who is the speaker addressing? Why does she instruct this person to think of the storm?

Writing Assignment:
Write a poem that imagines the interaction between something in the sky and the earth.