Poetry Prompt: Starbucks

Coffee is the lifeblood of many Americans. In fact, about 83 percent of adult Americans drink coffee each day. The U.S. is the biggest consumer of coffee in the world. The National Coffee Association’s online survey revealed that consumption is rising to an average of three cups per day, per person, or 587 million cups. That’s a lot of java.

Bob Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, who once taught a course on Starbucks and the coffee phenomenon quipped, “You could say the nation runs on two dark liquids— petroleum and coffee.”

Like petroleum, coffee is big business. It is a $30 billion-a-year national industry, and one of the giants is Starbucks.

Starbucks as we know it didn’t start out that way. They didn’t sell brewed coffee and espresso, just coffee beans. English teacher, Jerry Baldwin, history teacher, Zev Siegel, and writer Gordon Bawker were inspired by Peet’s Coffee and Tea in Berkely, CA. They wanted to start a similar business. With Alfred Peet’s blessing, the three men pooled together $8000 of their own money plus some loans to start up their very own coffee bean venture in 1971. In a little over nine years, Starbucks was the largest coffee roaster in Washington State.

If you are a reader of the classics, “Starbucks” may sound familiar. The company got it’s name after a shipmate in Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick. Although they had toyed with the possibility of naming it “Pequod” after the same shipmate’s best friend. Try to imagine saying, “I could really go for some Pequod right about now. “

Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

In continuation of their nautical theme, they designed a logo with a siren. It seemed to fit well with their Seattle location in Pike’s Place Market and their seaworthy name.

The current CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz, joined the team in 1982 as the head of marketing. His assignment was to evangelize the wonders of Starbucks and search for new tastes, campaign ideas, and anything else that would boost sales and grow the company. Shultz suggested the company start serving espresso, but Baldwin wasn’t interested, so Shultz left in 1985 to pursue his own coffee business. One where he served espresso. It was a success.

Eventually, everything came full circle and Shultz returned and purchased Starbucks. His vision was to expand the company throughout Seattle. The idea of selling brewed coffee and tea by the cup was innovative and people came in droves. The company experienced colossal growth which continued to climb exponentially. Today, Starbucks is at home in over 40 countries and has more than 15, 000 stores worldwide.

Try It: Starbucks Poetry

Does the smell of freshly roasted beans entice you? There’s nothing like waking up and taking that first sip of coffee. For some, it’s the only way to start the day. Are you one of the many fans who consider Starbucks a necessary part of life? If so, let your imagination wander into a coffee-induced fantasy. Then write a poem, maybe even a love poem to coffee or the coffee shop everyone knows, Starbucks.

Are you craving a cup of coffee yet?

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Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here is a poem from Andrew we enjoyed:

It lay, a shrivelled remnant
Left and neglected by the wayside.
One snip of that ancient Yggdrasil
Loose and unfettered in our world’s tide.

My father said it was a gift,
This sapling without its sap
And that he’d meant to care for it,
Plant it in some well-sheltered gap.

Desiccated and deserted, left to dry
To see all trails of nature die
Still yet it slept within itself,
Dreaming of vaults of heaven high.

And so we piled the brown earth ’round its roots
Gave water, succour and a hope
And sure as Spring, the sapling grew
Slowly at first, yet fast as it could cope.

Now I sit underneath a promise it fulfilled,
The sun a golden lake around its trunk
And green, green leaves displayed upon its head;
A living circlet that will always crown its bulk.

—by Andrew H.

Photo by Yuri Samoilov. Creative Commons via Flickr.

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How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.

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Heather Eure

Heather Eure has served as the Poetry Editor for the late Burnside Collective and Special Projects Editor for us at Tweetspeak Poetry. Her poems have appeared at Every Day Poems. Her wit has appeared just about everywhere she's ever showed up, and if you're lucky you were there to hear it.