Creative Writing Prompt: In the Box with Joseph Cornell

Creative Writing Prompt #18
In the Box with Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell made boxes. Poetry in boxes, if you ask me.

Cornell is known as a pioneer of an artistic genre that some call assemblage. To avoid an art history lesson here, the short version is that Cornell created three-dimensional, boxed compositions using objects from here, there, and everywhere. From maps to photographs, stuffed parrots to dolls, drinking glasses to pipes, sand to cork – whatever he found, he at least considered and often incorporated into his art.

Even though Cornell’s configurations may sometimes seem random, they are anything but. Just as poets write poems – no matter how nonsensical or “throwaway” they may seem – Cornell’s boxes were created deliberately and with purpose and meaning. How he or you or anyone else choose to interpret the art is completely subjective.

The point here is that Cornell’s fantastic boxes are yet another way to help you generate poetry. Yesterday, our creative writing prompt focused on the art of collage and how this medium can inspire and inform your writing. Now you can get even more experimental and make your own contained art… or contained poetry.

One of my favorite poets, Frank O’Hara, wrote a box-shaped poem as a tribute to Cornell, aptly titled “Joseph Cornell.” While I can’t accurately preserve the lovely shape of the poem here (though I will attempt it!), I can at least share the verses:

“Joseph Cornell”
by Frank O’Hara

Into a sweeping meticulously
detailed   disaster   the  violet
light   pours.   It’s   not  a   sky.
It’s  a  room.   And in the open
field   a   glass of  absinthe   is
fluttering   its   song   of  India.
Prairie Winds  circle mosques.

You   are   always   a  little  too
young   to   understand.   He is
bored  with  his  sense   of   the
past,   the   artist.   Out   of   the
prescient   rock   in   his   heart
he   has  spread  a land without
flowers     of     near    distances.

Poet Michael Dumanis was also inspired to write a poem about this artist: “Joseph Cornell, with Box.”

So this creative writing prompt has two parts – take your pick or complete them both:

• Read up on Joseph Cornell. Google him and view some of the unique boxes he created. Then write a poem inspired by one of his pieces.
• OR, create a Cornell-inspired box yourself. Use found objects or even order The Joseph Cornell Box, a very cool kit (see the pic to the right – get an online tour of the kit here) that comes with more info about Cornell as well as various materials to jump-start your creative process. Once you’ve created your own box, compose a poem inspired by it or even describing your composition… poetically, of course.

Happy Cornelling!

See all of our National Poetry Month posts