Writing to the Allegory

A poem of mine and some prompts for you to write to.

Last week, on the podcast I co-host with my best friend, Hannah, we had a very interesting and meandering conversation with another close friend of ours. We considered what it meant to live apart from society — as some people do in the abandoned tunnels of New York City’s subway system. We discussed how one of our human instincts is to leave a mark: cave drawings, graffiti, the way people carve their names into trees. What does it mean to make your own reality? What does it mean to have a legacy? Of course, we touched also on seasonal depression and Catholicism and Eurydice and feminine shame. In a word, the topics were: rich.

The purpose of the podcast is to get into strange and surprising avenues of conversation by reading another poet’s poem. We consider elements of the poem through a lens both serious and absurd. We go off-track (as besties are wont to do) and come back again. We then tell a joke that sometimes has nothing to do with the poem, and sometimes finds its way into being related. To wrap it up, we both write a poem about one or many of the topics discussed. It’s an hour of entertainment and laughs and ponderings. It’s also a long-form writing prompt.

Our mention of cave drawings reminded me of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which describes the life of prisoners chained inside of a cave their entire lives, facing the back wall of it, and knowing only the shadows cast there as their concept of reality. This is an allegory for the state of humanity: we know only what we can perceive in front of us, and not much beyond it. Socrates posited that the position of the philosopher was the unchain themselves from the cave; to turn around; to explore the world and to come back and tell of it. I think this is also the role of the artist. I believe it is the function of a poem.

This poem of mine (which you can hear also on the podcast) is written from Plato’s cave — though Hannah thought perhaps it was written from the womb. I love this idea, hence the working title added. Following the poem: some writing prompts of your own.

If you’d like a monthly poem + accompanying prompts, consider becoming a paid member at $5 a month! I appreciate your support <3