Meriadoc's post here about the difficulty of seeing the value in one's own work, and the long winter, and ZenDog led me to suggest this writing prompt.
My favourite Theodore Roethke poems are In a Dark Time and The Waking -- two poems that have informed my being for many years. ZenDog gave me this "Dolor" - and its description of a dead, dull institutional atmosphere where the nouns are accompanied by the gravest adjectives (misery of manilla folders; pathos of basin and pitcher).
But this doesn't have to be a sad writing prompt: pick a noun and an adjective that you don't normally see together and see where they take you:
I have known the notorious lust of notebooks
with their cryptic scribblings
in longhand, long caressing hands
across the shoulders of the page I shall continue, in due course
Dolor by Theodore Roethke
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces. A despondent drain. Even my name is lame.
A refuge for your waste which in haste you
spill into the sink so you can wash the plates. Clogging my arteries abates your onslaught.
My listless gurgles through the sodden debris
compels your companionship. If only for a moment.
Nice pair of poems by Roethke. I especially like this stanza: What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.