I loved this poem when I read it online but had recently used a poem by Matthew Olzmann as inspiration for prompts. The news this month about a tourist throwing a rock at an endangered monk seal though made it feel necessary.
Fuck that guy, I hope he has to pay the full fines of $50,000 and $20,000 for violating the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. An update to the initial story is here: https://apnews.com/article/monk-seal-harassment-endangered-maui-tourist-6c3c3e0d372b26b824582c624352bdfc.
For the first prompt, use the first line, “Tell me what it’s like to live without” as your first line, substituting “curiosity” with your own emotion and developing the poem through a series of phrases. Italicize or place the line in quotation marks and credit the poet in an after statement, footnote, endnote or your title.
The second prompt is to write a list poem of what inspires your own curiosity and awe, or write about a particular phenomenon or event in a poem or essay.
The third prompt is to take one of the poem’s descriptions, “To stand / on the precipice of some wild valley, / the eagles circling, a herd of caribou / booming below” for an opening scene in a story.
For the next prompt, create a poem or story from the following wordlist: “rolling,” “flicker,” “mist,” “precipice,” “circling,” “herd,” “booming,” “primordial,“ “smell” and “knife.”
The last prompt is to write a rant or a curse for the cruelty, pettiness and deliberate ignorance in a poem, essay or story.
Bonus prompt: write about a child’s wonder.
Good luck writing!