70 A.D.

History comes back to bite us
As we learn of the temple and Titus.
When it’s Rome against Jews,
There is one side must lose—
Though the outcome may fail to delight us.

135 A.D.

Another rebellion: once more
They attempted to settle the score.
Since “messiah” Bar-Kokhba
(Right up to the Nakba)
The region relapses to war.

PROMPT 20: write a poem that recounts a historical event.
Draw on your memory, encyclopedias, history books, or primary documents.

[…in an article in the New Republic, Randolph S. Bourne urged his readers, “You must hear Mr. Lindsay recite his own ‘Congo,’ his body tense and swaying, his hands keeping time like an orchestral leader to his own rhythms, his tone changing color in response to noise and savage imagery of the lines, the riotous picture of the negro mindset against the weird background of the primitive Congo, the ‘futurist’ phrases crashing through the scene like a glorious yell—you must hear this yourself, and learn what an arresting, exciting person this new indigenous Illinois poet is.” Dennis Camp related that Harriet Monroe, founder and editor of Poetry magazine, once warned Lindsay not to “frighten the ladies” with his loud delivery at one poetry reading, to which he replied, “still I must roar.” ]

extract from Poetry Foundation bio of VACHEL  LINDSAY

In habit for the chase array’d,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer, a shade!

Phillip Freneau

Haunted by desire’s mad melodies,
By faces idealized in reveries;
Memory itself is haunted
By photos never taken.

To visualize is to be taunted
By scenarios that reawaken,
Longing for what has never been,
Yet what the mind has seen.

The haunted are mistaken,
Hunting memories and dreams;
Trying to catch that which vanishes
upon awakening. Doomed to realize
That the hunted bird ever flies.

PROMPT #17:

What are you haunted by, or what haunts you?
Write a poem responding to this question.
Then change the word haunt to hunt.