- The world as it is
- Inciting incident
- The stakes are raised (and raised)
- The turning point
- The world as it is now
I'm not going to tell you exactly how I think the poems fits these five structural movements, and you can agree or disagree on that, but I think we can all agree one of the greatest turns in poetry ever happens here:
then, the miscarriage, and before that
the months of waiting: like baskets filled
with bright shapes, the imagination
run wild. And then what arrived:
the event that was nothing, a mistaken idea,
a scrap of charred cloth, the enormous
present folding over the future,
like a wave overtaking
a grain of sand.
Now for the prompt: think of something that your heart does not understand. Your may understand it intellectually, literally, but your heart stubbornly refuses its sense. Write a parable poem that defends your heart against this thing or person or event that contradicts it, a parable that teaches it a lesson. Write it using the five parts of story-telling, but resist the urge to tell it straight in any way. If the thing shows up literally at all in the piece, it shouldn't be until the turn.