Note Book

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Note Book features close readings of alumni work, written interviews, and generative prompts from Pacific Alumni. Photos on this page are from our respective notebooks. If you’re a Pacific alum and would like to contribute to PACT Deskset, visit our ABOUT page for more info.

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From Melissa McKinstry’s Notebook:

A couple years ago I read about the way Ruth Stone grabbed a particular poem. She said,

“I remember one poem, ‘Things I Say to Myself While Hanging Laundry.’ I was out in the backyard in Goshen, hanging laundry, and the poem began coming to me and I just went on hanging the laundry, and I said to myself, ‘Oh! I’d better get this down.’ And so I ran around to the front of the house because I couldn’t get in the back door. I ran around to the front and up to my room and wrote it down as fast as I could.”

–Ruth Stone interviewed by Chard deNord, “The Wealth of Strong Poetry: A Conversation with Ruth Stone,”12 January 2023, World Literature Today, WorldLiterature Today.org

I’d been using a hard-backed notebook that didn’t fit in a pocket. It required a tote bag or a backpack. It often got left at home. Ruth Stone inspired me to switch things up, downsize, keep my notebook close. So I began using these small notebooks, just a little bigger than a playing card. They remind me of “commonplace books” from the Renaissance–places to collect, to capture, to fill the well.

Here are a couple of exercises to try in your own notebook:

Prompt #1:

Prompt #2:

I wrote these exercises by going “in reverse” from the direction I followed to write a couple of my poems. The poems are linked at the PACT Substack Bookshelf under Episode 3.

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