Something I love about writing poetry is what it requires of my attention. For me to write, the noisy world must filter out, or else be ordered to retreat from my mind’s awareness.

The French mystic philosopher Simone Weil wrote that “absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” This prompt asks you to write towards that gorgeous idea.

Freewrite

While we can of course direct attention to the abstract and metaphysical, I want to begin merely with the physical.

Find, choose, or discover an image or object that commands your full attention. Something you find irresistible to look at, or that you want to understand at a deeper level.

Then, respond to the following prompts as you study the image:

1. List 7+ physical qualities you observe in this image.
2. List 3+ abstract qualities. Be creative. Maybe your image has a personality, a philosophy, a mood or energy?
3. List 5+ other images that might go well alongside this one.
4. List 5+ other images that certainly do not belong alongside this one.
5. Describe, in detail, your personal relationship to your image. Tell a story if you can. If you have no relationship, imagine what a relationship might look like.
6. Freewrite about anything else this image raises for you.

You’ll sculpt your responses to these questions into a poem. But first, let’s direct our attention to attentive poetry.

Poem: “Ode to My Lover’s Sequined Dress” by Jaz Sufi

Retrieved from Queer Poem-a-Day.

                                           & the matching blazer, too—

all of those sequins flirting with the light like every one
of them is trying to fall in love tonight, they are new

               & eager & trembling

against their stitches, much like how my breath flutters
& forgets itself every time i see you across the room,

     every time.

it looked so lifeless on its hanger, still until its first sharp gasp
as i dragged its zipper up your spine like a tongue,

                                        & yes, i’m not ashamed

to admit i counted each sequin as i did so, eager,
exalting. the neckline, dripping so far down

      i dropped to my knees

so my mouth might catch its kaleidoscopic splatter. still, though,
i thought first of the body below, sweetened

     curve of shoulder & the hip

sugared when i craved salt, i imagined lifting the gold necklace
like a veil to taste what trace of metal might remain.

                                                      what is beauty,

i thought, if not what my lover bares to me in the dark? what lies
shadowed beneath my lover’s shadow?

       how wrong i was—

hours later i see you across the room, peacock flocked
by other brilliant birds, constellations orbit around you

     & my pulse forgets its place,

the flowers on my own dress straining towards your sun.
you laugh & the champagne shivers in every glass.

                                        everyone loves you here,

all of our hearts standing in ovation, our eyes gilded
with honey from its comb. how lucky we are to see your dress’s debut.

       a coronation, a crown

too tender to be gold. at first i saw each sequin as a mirror
reflecting, but now i know them all to be prisms refracting

              you & your infinite wonder,

your spectrum of limitless love, streaming out & striking
like lightning gentled by your touch. what is beauty? this is it, i think,

                                                everything everything all all.

the dress, the matching blazer, & how they summon you to the surface,
all yourself & in this moment most yourself, your release & return,

       loved, beloved,

comet speeding towards an open-armed crowd,
gold dust shed from a fruit-skinned star,

              a gift, a gifting,

a blossom forge, petals & pleasure cracking the anvil
open like a window & broken like a fever—

                                        my lover         (you)

every mode of glitter stands before me in a gown.
each breath i take is drawn like water from your well.

       here: let me give

as i have been given to. later, i’ll unclench the zipper’s teeth
as i tug it down your back, but for now, let me just sip at your shimmer,

              let it split me open from the inside out.

Divinations

Although one eye deviates from time to time, this poem always thinks of, looks at, and returns to the lover’s sequined dress. What results is a poem revealing in both its imagery and its attention, betraying a speaker’s relationship to the object of their desire, emulated in the swish and sway of the poem’s own lineation.

Notice how the speaker’s emotions color the poem’s language and attention. The close study of this dress demonstrates the speaker’s interiority, like in the following lines:

all of those sequins flirting with the light like every one
of them is trying to fall in love tonight

This is a beautiful image with lovely internal rhyme. It also suggests a speaker whose entirety is invested in loving the dress’s owner, each bit of sequined-self pointed towards desire.

still until its first sharp gasp
as i dragged its zipper up your spine like a tongue

The embodiment in this image is actually a little disturbing. Carnal, yes, and also oddly personifying: the dress itself is gasping, its zipper itself like a tongue. Is the wearer being devoured?

at first i saw each sequin as a mirror
reflecting, but now i know them all to be prisms refracting

              you & your infinite wonder

We’re back to a loving and tender image, though admittedly a bit hyperbolic. “Infinite wonder” is difficult to believe—though perhaps all-consuming attention is divine, as Simone Weil suggests.

later, i’ll unclench the zipper’s teeth
as i tug it down your back, but for now, let me just sip at your shimmer,

              let it split me open from the inside out.

In constantly attending to the dress, the speaker has lines and movements that suggest something more than innocent obsession. There’s an underlying brutality in this poem that I find reveals itself precisely because of the poem’s all-consuming attention. This is a speaker that has given in entirely to the object of their want. There’s danger in a line like “each breath i take is drawn like water from your well”—the amount of power this places in the dress-wearer is precarious, not least because they only ever exist in this poem. (That lowercase i, too, suggests a tenuous self.) The object of desire never speaks, is only witnessed, and is made more brilliant when being witnessed by an admiring anonymous public.

The dress, in other words, is metonymous. Its brilliance is derived from the body that wears it, and the speaker’s ode to it is really an ode to the object of desire—which, really, is an exploration in the porousness of a speaker that seeks to be totaled by the lover.

Which is not to say this poem is unhealthy or a warning. I try not to treat poetry as didactic, and I’m often wary of didactic poetry. What I mean is, this poem becomes a prayer in its absolutely unmixed attention to the symbolic dress. When the speaker extols the dress, they extol someone else, too. Some poets wish to be consumed by God’s light or some form of divine grace. Some poems seek a more carnal absolution. What we interpret from this or take away says just as much about ourselves as it does about the speaker.

Prompt: Closely Attentive Poetry

We are what we attend to. The objects, incidents, and ideas we focus on do more than just inform the self—they become the self; they reveal to us who we are and what we are becoming.

I find that forcing my mind to pay attention to something—and persisting in that attention, even when it begins to bore me—often results in an epiphany I didn’t expect.

As such, your prompt is to write a poem that pays close attention to an image or idea. Let that image be present or referred to in every line—but also allow room for unexpected insight, for a deviation that reveals the greater truth of your subject.