Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Start with ‘I’ll take it all.’”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday May 5th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"Instructions on Not Giving Up" by Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Copyright © 2017 by Ada Limón. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 15, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.

Thank you to everyone who joined us to celebrate our *300th* virtual group session!

For this session we read a poem “Small Kindnesses” by Danusha Laméris, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Begin with the word ‘Strangers…‘”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday April 28th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Laméris        
 
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

The New York Times (9/19/2019),   Bonfire Opera

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “On the Road Home” by Wallace Stevens, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Begin with… ‘it was when you said.’”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday April 17th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"On the Road Home" by Wallace Stevens

It was when I said,
“There is no such thing as the truth,”
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.

You . . . You said
“There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth.”
Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,
“Words are not forms of a single word.
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye”;

It was when you said,
“The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth”;

It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.

Credit: Wallace Stevens. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at “La Flor Blanca (1944)” by José A. Bencomo Mena, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about finding peace when danger lurks.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday April 10th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

“La Flor Blanca (1944)” by José A. Bencomo Mena

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes | Mediart | 2017 ©

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “The Lifeguard ” by James L. Dickey, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Stepping out from the earth onto the water, I ….”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday April 7th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"The Lifeguard " by James L. Dickey

In a stable of boats I lie still,
From all sleeping children hidden.   
The leap of a fish from its shadow   
Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.   
With my foot on the water, I feel   
The moon outside

Take on the utmost of its power.
I rise and go out through the boats.   
I set my broad sole upon silver,
On the skin of the sky, on the moonlight,   
Stepping outward from earth onto water   
In quest of the miracle

This village of children believed   
That I could perform as I dived
For one who had sunk from my sight.   
I saw his cropped haircut go under.   
I leapt, and my steep body flashed   
Once, in the sun.

Dark drew all the light from my eyes.   
Like a man who explores his death
By the pull of his slow-moving shoulders,   
I hung head down in the cold,
Wide-eyed, contained, and alone
Among the weeds,

And my fingertips turned into stone   
From clutching immovable blackness.   
Time after time I leapt upward
Exploding in breath, and fell back   
From the change in the children’s faces   
At my defeat.

Beneath them I swam to the boathouse   
With only my life in my arms
To wait for the lake to shine back
At the risen moon with such power   
That my steps on the light of the ripples   
Might be sustained.

Beneath me is nothing but brightness   
Like the ghost of a snowfield in summer.   
As I move toward the center of the lake,   
Which is also the center of the moon,   
I am thinking of how I may be
The savior of one

Who has already died in my care.   
The dark trees fade from around me.   
The moon’s dust hovers together.   
I call softly out, and the child’s
Voice answers through blinding water.   
Patiently, slowly,

He rises, dilating to break
The surface of stone with his forehead.   
He is one I do not remember
Having ever seen in his life.
The ground I stand on is trembling   
Upon his smile.

I wash the black mud from my hands.   
On a light given off by the grave   
I kneel in the quick of the moon   
At the heart of a distant forest   
And hold in my arms a child   
Of water, water, water.

Source: James Dickey: The Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1998).

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Storm Warning” by Robert Grant Burns, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about heeding, or ignoring, a warning.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday April 3rd at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

 "Storm Warning" by Robert Grant Burns

You said that when the peacocks took to the trees,
and all the birds, funch and jay and swallow,
whirred upon the same anxious note continually,
that is sign of storm coming.

And so the peacocks were
sitting in the branches,
each clumped in the fruit of its mad comprehension,
each in its innermost breast
thundering like great falling stones;
and all the birds whirred upon the same anxious note
continually.

That night, a storm came.

If only we, too, could be sure again,
in this forest of desire and foreboding,
sure, unerringly sure,
when to go home,
whom to shelter,
what to seek.

Source: Poetry (June 1969).

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “Bride of the wind” by Oskar Kokoschka, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a moment of rest.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday March 31st at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

“Bride of the wind” by Oskar Kokoschka

Credit: Oskar Kokoschka. 1914

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the paiting “Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus: A Portrait of Rudolf II” by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a metamorphosis underway.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday March 27th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

“Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus: A Portrait of Rudolf II” by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

© Skokloster Castle, Sweden. Photo credit: Samuel Uhrdin.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Lost” by David Wagoner, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about being found.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday March 24th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"Lost" by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Credit: poetryfoundation.org. David Wagoner.