Want writing prompts delivered to your inbox on the regular? Subscribe today and don’t miss a single edition. I also share poetry prompts on my Instagram account, too.

Subscribe now

Hi, hi. How are you?

It’s a lovely day to gather some inspiration. Let’s play with some transgressive and surrealist-bent prompts.

Have fun. Let’s meet somewhere inside a poem.

✧ Prompt 1: Word List
Write a poem, on any topic you desire, but include the following words: plague, nostalgia, always, desire, ever.

✧ Prompt 2: Mourning Dove
Write a poem from the perspective of a mourning dove. Maybe it’s pastoral. Maybe it’s humorous. Maybe it’s a little mystical or something else entirely. Maximum lines: 8.

✧ Prompt 3: The Beloved in a Sublime Landscape
Take an object of desire, the beloved (real or imagined) and transport them to a place that doesn’t seem to exist on the earthly plane. Give it a surrealist context or motif. What is slightly off-center in this space? Are there specific rules in this universe that make it surreal? Or is it purely aesthetics? Poem should be a minimum of 10 lines, maximum of 16.

Did you write with these prompts? If you feel moved to do so, share an excerpt of your work below or tag me on Substack.

Share

Subscribe now

A sentence has its own body. Think a spine, a hip, a heart beat, lungs to help it breathe and slow down. A sentence is also a place.

Sometimes I am a meticulous lover with my sentence: I take my time, I listen to it, and I embrace it fully. Other times, I am a bad lover because I’m in a hurry to get the sentence over with and I’m focused solely on my own enjoyment. But like anything worth doing, a sentence needs time to marinate.

When it comes to seducing a sentence, it’s essential to ponder the economy of words.

The eros on the page is about attention. How do we divide our attention as writers? And, I’m speaking beyond sentence length because part of that depends on your writing style. (Me personally, I prefer a mix of short and long sentences in my prose.)

The words we choose have all the power. The words and their placement—and the use of white space itself—is what really matters.

Here’s some quick and dirty tips for weaving in more seduction:

1. Desire should start with attention.

Instead of something simple like “The fig tree was beautiful.” Sure, it works. It’s simple. It’s non-confrontational. It’s not really eliciting a unique response from the reader.

And to that point, if you wrote that sentence, would it even elicit much a response from you? Let’s be honest, babe, because no it probably wouldn’t either.

So, how do you grab attention and pour it over the sentence? Dive into something more sensorial, something arresting. This is when you want to provoke. Play with a phrase like this one: “The fig tree cracked open under its own sweetness.”

One of these sentences tells you what to think. One of these sentences helps you conjure visions.

2. Objects should hold weight.

If an object can’t carry water (proverbially speaking), then why use it? Don’t let an object be a prop, make it feel irreplaceable. Consider: why this pearl? why this knife? why this space?

3. Verbs live inside eros.

Let adjectives flirt but verbs can touch. This can be a good time to replace half of your adjectives with stronger—even leaner—verbs and watch the atmosphere shift.

4. It’s okay to let your syntax break a little.

Sometimes you have to break something to make it a bit more interesting. And also more food for thought: Does playing with syntax reflect how your character moves through the world better?

5. Write for deeper intimacy instead of merely intensity.

Sure, intensity and tension is fun. And if you’re reading a romance or gothic novel, you down right expect it. But add another goal post and that’s sometimes the sexiest sentence you can write isn’t necessarily about sex itself. It could be a kiss on the shoulder. A push-pull dialogue. Brushing hair. An observation. You get my drift.

6. Consider the pause.

When does the reader get to catch their breath? What happens why they stop reading? What does the page actually look like?

Share

Memory is a beautiful and persistent, even pervasive little thing. I say little, but memory has the ability to creep into one’s mind like a small cat, padding along so lightly, until its presence fills up the entire room.

It takes up the entire space and suddenly, it’s majestic and immense. Perhaps I should’ve opened with “memory is a shapeshifter” because memory is indeed that, too.

That being said, because of memory, poets make for delightful but also terrible witnesses. Which means, ask me what happened and I’ll tell you want it felt like. I’ll tell you how the tide pulled in against the sand as the touch of a hand left mine.

I’ll tell you that I remembered the sound of his voice before he hung up the phone. Or, the ghost feeling of a hand on my waist long after it’s gone.

But, I can’t remember being any other way. Like other poets, we’ll remember the sound of rain on the window on a particular afternoon but forget the date. We’ll transmute a passing glance into a personal legend. We’ll write an entire chapbook that excavates meaning from one late-night conversation that lasted for ten minutes and two cigarettes.

Is this a form of distortion? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe poets toe the line of unreliable narration. (I’d also argue that this is the point of poetry, toeing the line between fantasy and reality, or the line between imagine reality and perceived fantasy.)

Poets experience life and then immediately begin the process of translating said experience. A sly glance might become a metaphor. A kiss is a symbol. A passing fancy is a season. A breath bonds to the natural landscape. A stranger imprints themself into an opening line. You get my drift.

Perhaps that makes poets untrustworthy. I am untrustworthy. Because I’m perpetually rearranging the notes of the human experience in my capacity to understand it. It’s not because I want to lie or fantasize eternally, it’s because I am also interested in (really, preoccupied) with liminal state of significance.

What does that mean? For me, as a poet, I want the moment to mean something whether that’s quantified as a “large” or “small” moment. And it’s up to me to decipher the clues left by the cosmos.

Many poets want coincidence to be fate and attraction to be prophecy. Is it true? Sometimes. And also, sometimes not.

Because the poem is a hidden door. Because the poem is a secret between us (the speaker and the reader). Because the poem is a portal.

Share

Subscribe now

Hi, there. Come and wander with me. Let’s enter a secret garden where poems unfurl like questions and words blossom under a luminous night sky.

Now, below this note is the prompts for paid subscribers only. I hope you’ll consider joining us as a gathering of poets and writers for musings and focused creativity. And please share your work in the comment section below!

For those already in the portal behind the paywall, keep scrolling and write, and a heartfelt thank you for supporting me, my work, and this community.

Read more

Maybe that’s why I’m a writer. The allure of stepping into someone else’s skin, even for just a brief moment, is deliciously tempting. And that’s why I’m also a reader.

Books are certainly mirrors (for our lives and who we want to be). And there’s certainly books that can be masks. The identities we want the world to see, whether it’s true or not. Or at least, aspirationally true.

But sometimes I want to be another version of myself. No, I don’t mean some idealized version of me that “has it all” and finally squashed time blindness once and for all. I mean, another version of Stephanie. Maybe this version of Stephanie has dark auburn hair (a double process, of course, to keep it from fading) and she’s a dental hygienist. Maybe she doesn’t like poetry at all.

Then, there’s another version of Stephanie. She’s only called Steph. Loves long-distance running. Her favorite book genres are sci-fi and romance. She prefers white wine over red. She has an MBA and dreams of being a screenwriter. She’s twice divorced.

Neither of those Stephanies are me. But they’re fun characters to think about.

I suspect there are many people out there who think like I do. Who would I be with a different life? A different personality? A different birth chart?

Which is all to say I look for various possibilities of myself in books. (Movies, too. But I’m only writing about books today.)

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what I read when I want to consider a new life:

• Angela Carter (because fairy tales, of course)

• Clarice Lispector (her books are like monologues that break down identity)

• Anaïs Nin (erotic lush interiority)

• Louise Glück (the mythic stripped down, emotional core)

• Anne Carson (philosophical desire)

• Rainer Maria Rilke (the holiness of solitude)

• Toni Morrison (clarity, refusal of comfort)

• Marguerite Duras (infatuation, impossible love)

• Italo Calvino (sublime, hidden wisdom)

• Anne Rice (regal urgency, cosmic interiority)

  
  

  Portals is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Share

History of Pleasure
Richie Hofmann

I walked by myself to the market
past ruins with broken
bodies of stone, where even
a fragment of a man could undo me.
I bought herbs wrapped in paper.
Light shone through the glass of our apartment.
You had been showering,
the smell of mint invaded the room, your hair was wet.

Source: This poem appears in A Hundred Lovers (Knopf, 2022).

A mighty fine poem.

Perhaps one of the finest. No notes.

Subscribe now

Hi, hello. Welcome to a new space for Portals paid subscribers.

This is the exclusive paid subscribers wing where you can peruse a curated index, download craft lessons and poetic reflections, plus more depending on the whims of the muse.

Read more

Share

Venus Transiens
Amy Lowell

Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli’s vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?

For me,
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at my feet.

Source: This poem appears in Poetry (April, 1915).

What would you say?

To those three opening lines?? Stunning. I love the cleverness. The sly arrogance of asking the beloved. And yet, the humility and the sweetness in its adoration in its questioning.

So tell me, how does it feel to be more beautiful than Venus? Careful with your answer. The gods are reactive.

Want more poetics? Follow me on Instagram, @stephaniemariavalente

Subscribe now

When I was younger, I thought goodness could protect me from being misunderstood. If I explained myself clearly enough, loved generously enough, and of course, made myself small enough, perhaps everyone would leave with a favorable impression.

Read more

Olympia
Joanna Valente

The tourists take photos
of all the old shit,
exclaiming how beautiful

the breaking down of
stone is to their children,

who will one day remember
all the old shit they’ve
seen in their lives,

fondly remembering
the torso of Zeus, the lack
of Hera—

the dust we all become.
But who will remember
them?

Remember me, they will say
to their children.

Remember everything,
even the bad shit.

Source: This poem appears in η ψυχή, η ψυχή μαςt/the soul, our soul (Agape Editions, 2023).

Stunning.

I love how profound this poem is while positioning the work at the intersection of humor and mortality, against the backdrop of the gods. Don’t you agree?

Also, Joanna is my sister.

Want writing prompts delivered to your inbox on the regular? Subscribe today and don’t miss a single edition. I also share poetry prompts on my Instagram account, too.

Subscribe now

Oh, hello.

Some things linger and leave an impression on you. These instances can be sublime and lovely, profound, and even, terribly haunting.

We’ll start writing from there.

✧ Prompt 1: Vintage Haul
Begin your poem as a list. What does the speaker collect? Are they shopping in a foreign city? Or perhaps it’s all from the internet, a go-to brick and mortar shop in their neighborhood, a surreal and/or boutique. Play with this one.

✧ Prompt 2: Italian Summer
Write about a summer moment in Italy. Either the middle of the trip or the very end. As the getaway crests on, what ghost surfaces? What has been haunting the speaker beautifully or terribly?

✧ Prompt 3: Mirror of Mourning
Write a poem from the perspective of a cursed or haunted object. Like, a mirror. What does this voice sound like? How does this object function? Is it sentient? Is it haunted by a being? Or is it something residual? Imprinted long ago…

Did you write with these prompts? If you feel moved to do so, share an excerpt of your work below or tag me on Substack.

Share

Share

Here Are My Black Clothes
Louise Glück

I think now it is better to love no one
than to love you. Here are my back clothes,
the tired nightgowns and robes fraying
in many places. Why should they hang useless
as though I were going naked? You liked me well enough
in black; I make you a gift of these objects.
You will want to touch them with your mouth, run
your fingers through the thin
tender underthings and I
will not need them in my new life.

Source: This poem appears in The House on Marshland (Ecco Press, 1975).

“I think now it is better to love no one”

Such a good line, and encapsulates one of the most universal experiences for many of us: love, loss, and moving on. The end of a love affair.

Want more poetics? Follow me on Instagram, @stephaniemariavalente

Subscribe now

Want poetry horoscopes delivered to your inbox on the monthly? Subscribe today and don’t miss a single forecast.

Subscribe now

July feels like standing at the edge of a cliff just before the leap. There is electricity in the air, breakthroughs waiting to happen, and more than one invitation to begin again.

The Cancer New Moon mid-month reminds us that every bold transformation begins somewhere quieter: in the body, in memory, in the imagination.

By month’s end, under a remarkable Aquarius Full Moon, the future arrives all at once. Stay curious, stay discerning, and trust the ideas that return to you with insistence.

Now, read on for you sun, moon, and rising signs.

Aries
Your courage is evolving this month. Let conviction replace urgency, and you’ll find yourself building something that lasts.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write a poem that begins with the line, “I mistook fire for desire.”

Taurus
Questions of security and self-worth come into sharper focus. What nourishes you now may look very different than it did a year ago.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write about an object you’ve kept for years without explaining why.

Gemini
Your mind is racing with new ideas, especially in the first half of July. Capture them before they disappear, but don’t feel obligated to chase every spark.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write a six-line poem where every line begins with “Suppose.”

Cancer
The New Moon in your sign feels deeply restorative. Give yourself permission to retreat so that what emerges afterward is wholly your own.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write about a room that’s imprinted with your energy.

Leo
By late July, the spotlight finds you naturally. Shine generously, but let your work speak louder than your ego.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write a poem addressed to your future self ten summers from now.

Virgo
Venus entering your sign invites beauty into the smallest rituals. Rearrange your life the way you’d rearrange flowers in a vase.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write a poem using only ordinary household objects.

Libra
Relationships become mirrors this month. Pay attention to the conversations that leave you feeling more like yourself.

✷ Poetry Prompt: End your poem with a question no one can answer.

Scorpio
July asks you to trust transformation without demanding immediate proof. Some changes work underground before they bloom.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write about a seed planted in the underworld.

Sagittarius
The horizon keeps calling your name. Follow your curiosity, but remember that every adventure begins with one honest sentence.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write a poem that takes place on a train.

Capricorn
Responsibility feels lighter when it’s rooted in purpose. Build slowly; your future self will thank you.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write about a mountain without using the word mountain.

Aquarius
The Full Moon in your sign arrives like lightning. An idea you’ve been quietly carrying may finally ask to be shared.

✷ Poetry Prompt: Write a poem that contains one impossible invention.

Pisces
July draws you inward before carrying you somewhere unexpected. Protect your imagination; it’s trying to tell you something important.

✷ Poetry Prompt: WWrite a five-line poem inspired by a recent dream.

Follow me on Instagram at @stephaniemariavalente.

Share

Share

Flowers
Wendy Cope

Some men never think of it.
You did. You’d come along
And say you’d nearly brought me flowers
But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts
The sort that minds like ours
Dream up incessantly.
You thought I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile
But, look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while.

Source: This poem appears in Serious Concerns (Faber and Faber, 1992).

Infuriating.

Listen, this poem is brilliant. The speaker is direct and precise, cutting through the vein of nostalgia. But, on the speaker’s behalf, I’m soooo annoyed at the lover wanting credit for not buying them flowers. One doesn’t get credit for merely having a thought.

Which means, is this poem as lighthearted as it presents? Or is it darker and more painful? It’s bittersweet at best. Painful and sinister at most. That’s just some food for thought.

Want more poetics? Follow me on Instagram, @stephaniemariavalente

Subscribe now

I’ve grown to love spending time alone but I wasn’t always that way. It was a process but now I’m some of my favorite company.

Of course, I started romanticizing an image of a certain kinds of women. Women who arrive alone, order a drink, and open a book as though they have entered a private chapel.

Part of me suspects it is a form of seduction. Of the self, and of course, of life itself.

A woman reading in public creates a curious disruption. She is present, but not entirely available. Her body occupies the room while her mind wanders elsewhere. She belongs simultaneously to the bar and to another world entirely.

I've watched women read novels over glasses of red wine. I've seen them annotate poetry collections beneath dim lights. Once, I spotted a woman reading I Who Have Never Known Men at a crowded cocktail bar and thought: there is no way she doesn't know exactly what she's doing.

Then again, perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps reading in public is a refusal. A way to engage with the world and society but not necessarily participate in it. And instead, to participate in another realm.

Also, even more erotic, it’s a refusal to make loneliness look ashamed of itself.

Books have always offered a mystical form of companionship. Just the wonder and the comfort of another consciousness sitting beside your own.

I think that’s what I admire most, the pure confidence of it. The willingness to occupy a table for one and make it feel abundant. (And also, to be clear: to put oneself first by reading, decompressing, or simply enjoying the company of the self.)

If you need me, I’ll be at the bar. With a book.

Share

Solstice
Jane Hirshfield

The Earth today tilts one way, then another.

And yes, though all things change,
this night again will watch its fireflies,
then go in to a bed with sheets,
to lights, a beloved.

To running water cold and hot.

Take nothing for granted,
you who were also opulent, a stung cosmos.

Birds sing, frogs sing, their sufficient unto.
The late-night rain-bringing thunder.

And if days grow ordinarily shorter,
the dark's mirror lengthens,

and one's gain is not the other lessened.

This poem appeared in The Asking: New and Selected Poems (Knopf, 2023).

Subtle sacred domesticity.

A turning point. There’s something about the opening line that draws me in from the get-go. We’re walking down this winding path together, on the longest day of the year, and we’re reminded: “Take nothing for granted, / you who were also opulent, a stung cosmos.” The poem braids together wild and pastoral glimpses. Marvelous, isn’t it?

Subscribe now

Everyone talks about the abundance of light and my much-loved longer days and poetic heat, but I keep thinking about what comes after. The sun reaches its apex and immediately begins its slow descent. Even at its brightest, there is an undercurrent of longing.

Perhaps this is why poets love summer (like me), because we understand that beauty is most intoxicating when it is fleeting.

I think of long afternoons spent reading with the windows open, of cherries staining fingertips, of spontaneous gatherings, eating ice cream under the stars, shopping at outdoor markets, lazy days at the beach. I think of dresses hung over chairs after midnight, of coconut sunscreen-scented skin. I think of wanting something so intensely that I briefly become incandescent.

Anaïs Nin wrote, “I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”

I return to this line every summer because summer is deep and has an appetite. For pleasure and experience, for total and complete embodiment.

I’m ready to lock in. I’m ready to say yes and yes again to beauty before practicality can intervene.

And yet, beneath all this brightness, another truth persists. And it reminds me of that Mary Oliver line that sounds more like a prayer lately: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Perhaps that’s the real question of the solstice. How can we let ourselves by altered by joy? How to live so fully that when the days begin to shorten, we carry summer inside us anyway?

Like a poem, or a secret. Like a mouth still sweet from fruit.

Share

Share

For love,
Jean Valentine

you leapt sometimes
you walked away sometimes

that time on the phone you
couldn’t get your breath
I leapt but couldn’t get to you

I caught the brow that bid the dead
I caught the bough that hid

I’m, you know, still here,
tulip, resin, temporary—

Source: This poem appears in Shirt in Heaven (Copper Canyon Press, 2015).

Wow.

So undeniably stunning in its focus in the mundane and smallness of moments as they occur, and large sense of grief and magnitude of those moments past. The temporal aspect of it all.

Want more poetics? Follow me on Instagram, @stephaniemariavalente

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

You already know. That’s the problem. The voice you’re waiting for? It’s the one you’ve been avoiding.

Ask the question anyway and answer it carefully. Step forward and hear what the threads of fate tell the oracle.

Now, below this note is the prompts for paid subscribers only. I hope you’ll consider joining us as a gathering of poets and writers for musings and focused creativity. And please share your work in the comment section below!

For those already in the portal behind the paywall, keep scrolling and write, and a heartfelt thank you for supporting me, my work, and this community.

Read more

Share

Heliophilia
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Desire to stay in the sun / love of sunlight

Don’t call it an affliction —
call it affection. I’d stay under
the sun all day, never hiding
under a copse of trees if I knew
I wouldn’t burn, but isn’t it
more accurate that I burn
for the sun? To be pulled to the light
is nothing to be ashamed of: look

at flowers, butterflies, seals lounging
on a rock. Rhubarb sings in dark gardens
but truth be told it sounds more like
a wet cracking and popping. I think

it secretly counts the hours till it can turn
towards the sun again. For me, the sun
has always been easy to love, as easy
as it is to love whatever small light

bees bestow on fallen leaves—easy
to love the light they give just before
they crawl into a honey-hungry sleep,
just before the first fall of snow.

Source: This poem appears in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World (Milkweed Editions, 2024).

For the Helios & Apollo devotees.

If this poet doesn’t have multiple planets in Leo in her chart, I will be shocked. Aside from that, the speaker’s pure sense of wonder is palpable and it’s the ribcage of the poem, protecting the organs and propelling each stanza to life.

Want more poetics? Follow me on Instagram, @stephaniemariavalente

Subscribe now