Poem prompt: “Today’s daily resource is the online galleries of the Whitney Museum, where you’ll find artwork as varied as this fun portrait of Billie Jean King, a Frank Stella sculpture that looks like what would happen if a space station fell in love with a bridge, and this contemporary take on the classic embroidered sampler.

And now for today’s prompt – optional as always. Just as poetry is made by poets, music is made by musicians. There is always a living being behind the words, the rhythm, and at the heart of every song. Just as music and poetry can fascinate in their own right, so do the personalities behind every form of art. In her poem, ‘Canary,’ Rita Dove riffs on Billie Holiday, and how her life has been spun into myth. Likewise, in ‘Ode for Donny Hathaway,’ Wanda Coleman muses on another tragic figure, in the form of the eponymous soul singer and keyboardist.

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that takes its inspiration from the life of a musician, poet, or other artist. And while our example poems are squarely elegiac, don’t feel limited to minor-key feelings in your own work.”

Departure of the Guests

Tchaikovsky probably never owned a Nutcracker. 
He certainly never intended his magnum opus to live 
in dancing girls 
and linen nightgowns 
and Christmas trees 
and toy soldiers 
and six-feet-tall mice 
and anthropomorphic candy, 

but Nadezhda consumed his soul 
in every commission, and sang along 
through ink and note alone. 
His patron, his bulwark: a silent, wealthy voice. 
Rumor is, they never met. Rumor is, they were best friends. 

Yet today, when we easily make Patreons of the poor 
longing to support lives made better by the witnessing, 
and all the tears in one word's creation are worth 
the knowing for a single starfish to be saved—

we feel worthless and alone.