What’s Beyond the Horizon of Your Obsession?

Take a deep dive into your obsession with this poetry prompt from Luther Hughes.

“Again?!” my boyfriend teases when he hears the lyrics “I’ve been staring at the edge of the water” for the umpteenth time in a month. I laugh and say, “But it’s so good.” “It” is Moana, the 2016 classic Disney movie about a young Polynesian girl who ventures off her island to find a way to rectify the curse that has begun to befall them.

The song my boyfriend has heard a thousand times is “How Far I’ll Go,” sung by Auli’i Cravalho, who voices Moana. In the song, Moana meditates on the way the sea calls to her. However, this “calling” is in direct confrontation with her father’s rules: she is never to go out into the water because it’s dangerous, and her role is to stay on the island and serve her people as the next leader. The song riffs and riffs on the obsession Moana has with the sea. She sings, “See the line where the sky meets the sea? / It calls me. / And no one knows / how far it goes.”

How the sea “calls” her reminds me of writing poetry and how one can be so obsessed with something, so called by it, you have to write about it no matter what. Within this, the obsession begins to flower into something new. It is no longer just an obsession but a journey into understanding yourself or your relationships or your past or your future. It can become many things in front of your eyes.

For the next five minutes, make a list of some of your obsessions. Don’t overthink it. Just a quick list. After that, pick one thing from that list you want to write about. For the next five minutes, make another list of reasons why you’re obsessed with this thing. For Moana, it was curiosity—she wanted to know how far the sea went and how far she’d go to find out. Again, don’t overthink it. It can be simple.

After you’ve jotted down your reasons, begin to write a poem about this obsession. Address the following questions directly or indirectly:

• Why are you obsessed with it?

• How far will you go to obtain, research, or run headfirst into this obsession?

• What are some qualities of this obsession? Color? Smell? Does it make noise? Is it heavy? Can you physically grab it?

Your poem should be in couplets (two-line stanzas) and cannot include the words, “call,” “calls,” “obsession,” “live,” or “sea.” In addition, your poem must contain the following:

• A title (cannot be “How Far I’ll Go”)

• A line from the song “How Far I’ll Go”

• The word “far”

• Twenty lines minimum, forty lines maximum

• A type of fish

Try this again with the same obsession but attempt to write a different poem. Try it a third time. A fourth. Try it until you feel like your obsession begins to transform, and in turn, transforms you, how you think, and how you approach the subject. This, I believe, is what makes writing about obsessions so spectacular, and why Moana became a movie near and dear to my heart. Ultimately, Moana’s obsession with the sea allowed her to stop thinking about her duties and her “calling” as separate. She realized her purpose was to reignite her people’s passion for community, adventure, and home. This would have never happened if she hadn’t unflinchingly taken a deep dive (LOL) into her obsession. She sings, “What’s beyond that line? / Will I cross that line?” as she stares at the horizon, wrestling with the thought of never experiencing the sea. From the edge of the cliff, she trills, then runs down into the boat, into the sea. And her journey begins.

An obsession is only an obsession until you run down that cliff, into the boat, and off into the sea. I ask you, what’s beyond the line of your obsession? Will you cross that line? How far will you go?

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Luther Hughes’s debut poetry collection, A Shiver in the Leaves, comes out September 27, 2022, and is available for preorder.