Zoom

There are great poems about war and peace, love and loss, grief and joy, the big things in life. There are very few poems about the little things of life–bread, for example.

Here's a prose poem on that very topic by Francis Ponge (translated from the French by yours truly).

"The surface of bread is marvelous first because of the almost panoramic impression it gives; as if one had in their hand, at their disposal, the Alps, the Taurus or the Andes.

An amorphous, belching mass was slipped into that stellar oven for us, where, hardening, it formed valleys, ridges, undulations, crevasses... And all these features, these narrow slabs where the light carefully extinguishes its fires, are now so clearly articulated, without regard for the awful limpness below. 

That cold, feeble subsoil which we call 'la mie' is made like a sponge. Leaves or flowers here are like Siamese twins, knitted together at every bend. When the bread grows stale, these flowers wither and shrink, they detach themselves from each other and the mass begins to crumble...

But let us break there–for bread, in our mouths, must be less an object for respect than for consumption."

You could even say that this poem is about the crust, because Ponge doesn't seem like a big fan of the soft inside. And yet, there's something beautiful about the description of a loaf of bread as a life-giving ecosystem containing mountains, soil, flowers, leaves. 

Your perspective changes when you look at something - anything - that closely. And Floodmark is all about shaking up your writing perspective. So, here's your assignment. 

1. Choose one of the photos below.
2. Look at it for two minutes (I'm not kidding, set a timer).
3. Freewrite for ten minutes about what you see. That's a long time, I know. But I want to force you to really think about what you're looking at.
4. Now, read through your freewrite and either polish, or create.
5. Share!

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.