Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST November 22nd 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at Sterling Floats” by Dale Chihuly, posted below.

Our prompt was: โ€œWrite about a time when everything became clear.โ€

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

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 November 25th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Sterling Floats by Dale Chihuly

Credit: Dale Chihuly


Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST November 15th 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem Belief in Magic” by Dean Young, posted below.

Our prompt was:โ€œWrite about words suspended in the air.โ€

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

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 November 22nd at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Belief in Magic by Dean Young

How could I not?
Have seen a man walk up to a piano
and both survive.
Have turned the exterminator away.
Seen lipstick on a wine glass not shatter the wine.
Seen rainbows in puddles.
Been recognized by stray dogs.
I believe reality is approximately 65% if.
All rivers are full of sky.
Waterfalls are in the mind.
We all come from slime.
Even alpacas.
I believe weโ€™re surrounded by crystals.
Not just Alexander Vvedensky.
Maybe dysentery, maybe a guardโ€™s bullet did him in.
Nonetheless.
Nevertheless
I believe there are many kingdoms left.
The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather.
A single gem has throbbed in my chest my whole life
even though
even though this is my second heart.
Because the first failed,
such was its opportunity.
Was cut out in pieces and incinerated.
I asked.
And so was denied the chance to regard my own heart
in a jar.
Strange tangled imp.
Wee sleekit in red brambles.
You know what it feels like to hold
a burning piece of paper, maybe even
trying to read it as the flames get close
to your fingers until all youโ€™re holding
is a curl of ash by its white ear tip
yet the words still hover in the air?
Thatโ€™s how I feel now.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2014)



Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST November 8th 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye, posted below.

Our prompt was:ย โ€œThe idea I carry close to my bosom.โ€

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

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 November 15th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on ourย Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Copyright Credit: Naomi Shihab Nye
Source: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)

Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT October 28th 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Two Guitars” by Victor Hernรกndez Cruz, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about what happens when the door opens OR Write about a tune the guitars play.

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

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 November 8th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Two Guitars by Victor Hernรกndez Cruz

Two Guitars
BY VICTOR HERNรNDEZ CRUZ
Two guitars were left in a room all alone
They sat on different corners of the parlor
In this solitude they started talking to each other
My strings are tight and full of tears
The man who plays me has no heart
I have seen it leave out of his mouth
I have seen it melt out of his eyes
It dives into the pores of the earth
When they squeeze me tight I bring
Down the angels who live off the chorus
The trios singing loosen organs
With melodious screwdrivers
Sentiment comes off the hinges
Because a song is a mountain put into
Words and landscape is the feeling that
Enters something so big in the harmony
We are always in danger of blowing up
With passion
The other guitar:
In 1944 New York
When the Trio Los Panchos started
With Mexican & Puerto Rican birds
I am the one that one of them held
Tight like a woman
Their throats gardenia gardens
An airport for dreams
I've been in theaters and cabarets
I played in an apartment on 102nd street
After a baptism pregnant with women
The men flirted and were offered
Chicken soup
Echoes came out of hallways as if from caves
Someone is opening the door now
The two guitars hushed and there was a
Resonance in the air like what is left by
The last chord of a bolero.

Source: Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000 (Coffee House Press, 2001

Rita Basuray blog post


Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT October 25th 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from the novel Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (pg. 139), posted below.

Our prompt was: โ€œWrite about what we are born of.โ€

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 October 28th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.


Excerpt (p 139) from Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (2017)

“The cherry trees exploded on Palace Gardens Terrace  at that time, bursting into white blossoms, the closest thing many of the streetโ€™s residents had ever seen to snow, and reminding others of ripe cotton in the fields, waiting to be picked, waiting for labor, for the efforts of dark bodies from the villages, and in these trees there were now dark bodies too, children who climbed and played among the boughs, like little monkeys, not because to be dark is to be monkey-like, though that has been and was being and will long be slurred, but because people are monkeys who have forgotten that they are monkeys, and so have lost respect for what they are born of, for the natural world around them, but not, just then, these children, who were thrilled in nature, playing imaginary games, lost in the clouds of white like balloonists or pilots or phoenixes or dragons, and as bloodshed loomed they made of these trees that were perhaps not intended to be climbed the stuff of a thousand fantasies.”


Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT October 14th 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the piece titled Disability” by Allessandro Gatto, posted below.

Our prompt was: โ€œWrite about a space.โ€

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

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 October 25th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Disability” by Allessandro Gatto

Credit: Allessandro Gatto


Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT October 11th 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee, posted below.

Our prompt was: โ€œWrite about finding joy from day to day to day.โ€

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

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 October 14th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on ourย Live Virtual Group Sessions.

From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Credit: Li-Young Lee, โ€œFrom Blossomsโ€ from Rose.

Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT September 30th 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem Great Things Have Happened” by Alden Nowlan, posted below.

Our prompt was:ย โ€œWrite your first thoughts in the shadowย of this poem.โ€

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

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 October 11th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on ourย Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Great Things Have Happened by Alden Nowlan

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you've never visited
before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.

"Great Things Have Happened" by Alden Nowlan, from What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread. ยฉ Nineties Press, 1993. Reprinted with permission

Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT September 27th 2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem For What Binds Us” by Jane Hirshfield, posted below.

Our prompt was: โ€œWrite about a small triumph.โ€

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

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โ€œLeave a Replyโ€), 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 youโ€™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 September 30th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

For What Binds Us by Janeย Hirshfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set downโ€”
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chestโ€”

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

Copyright Credit: Jane Hirshfield, "For What Binds Us" from Of Gravity & Angels. Copyright ยฉ 1988 by Jane Hirshfield and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Of Gravity & Angels (Wesleyan University Press, 1988)

Encuentros virtuales en vivo: Sรกbado 21 de septiembre, 13:00 EST

Nos reunimos cinco personas desde Nueva York, Espaรฑa y Argentina. Trabajamos la traducciรณn del poema โ€œWhy I hate Raisinsโ€, de Natalie Diaz, traducido por Olga Lucia Torres. 

En el poema se dan la mano el principio y el final; la primera lรญnea no se entiende hasta la รบltima lรญnea. Versos que se oponen: amor-odio.

Se comentรณ que es una niรฑa-cachorro, que lo come todo, no guarda para el dรญa siguiente. Se hablรณ de la diferencia entre apetito y hambre. El apetito provoca una respuesta voluntaria, controlada. El hambre no se controla, se come de golpe, no se piensan en las consecuencias.

El poema nos recordรณ las historias personales y familiares relacionadas con la carestรญa.

El poema gira en torno de la relaciรณn con el hambre en la relaciรณn entre madre e hija. Impresiona de que no hay comprensiรณn entre ambas.

Hablamos de la percepciรณn de la diferencia: nosotros frente a los otros. Y de la percepciรณn de la miseria.

La comida se convierte en el medio de vincularse y las emociones se materializan en la relaciรณn con la comida. La comida establece las relaciones.

La propuesta de escritura era: Escribe sobre un objeto pequeรฑo de gran significado. Escribimos sobre los objetos que (nos) unen a personas a travรฉs del tiempo. Y sobre el tiempo que es tambiรฉn un objeto pequeรฑo.  Descubrimos que los objetos guardan vidas y que nos mantienen unidos a los otros.

Aquรญ, ahora alentamos a los participantes que, si asรญ lo desean, compartan lo que escribieron a continuaciรณn. Deja tu respuesta aquรญ, si deseas continuar la conversaciรณn sobre el poema de Natalie Diaz.Pero antes, les recomendamos tener en cuenta que el blog es un espacio pรบblico donde, por supuesto, no se garantiza la confidencialidad.

Por favor, รบnase a nosotros en nuestra prรณxima sesiรณn en espaรฑol: El sรกbado 26 octubre a las 13 hrs. o a la 1 pm EDT. Tambiรฉn, ofrecemos sesiones en inglรฉs. Ve a nuestra pรกgina de sesiones grupales virtuales.

ยกEsperamos verte pronto!


Por quรฉ odio las pasas por Natalie Diaz

ยฟY es sรณlo la boca y el vientre los que estรกn
heridos por el hambre y la sed?
-Mencio

Amor es una libra de pasas pegajosas
empaquetadas apretadas en cajas gubernamentales
blancas y negras el dรญa que no tenรญamos
comestibles. Le dije a mi mamรก que tenรญa hambre.
Ella me dio toda la caja brillante.
USDA estampado como un puรฑo en el lateral.
Me las comรญ todas en diez minutos. Comรญ
Demasiados, demasiado rรกpido. No pasรณ mucho tiempo
antes de que esas viejas uvas se asentaran como arcilla
negra en el fondo de mi barriga
haciรฉndola doler e hincharse.

Me quejรฉ, odio las pasas.
Sรณlo querรญa un sรกndwich como los demรกs niรฑos.
Bueno, eso es todo lo que tenemos, suspirรณ mi mรกma.
ยฟY quรฉ otros niรฑos?
Todos menos yo, le dije.
Ella dijo: Te refieres a los niรฑos blancos.
ยฟQuieres ser una niรฑa blanca?
Pues quรฉ pena, porque tรบ eres mi hija.
Yo gritรฉ: โ€œAl menos a los niรฑos blancos les dan un sรกndwichโ€.
Al menos los niรฑos blancos no se cagan.
 
Fue entonces cuando me dio una bofetada. Me dejรณ
tapรกndome la boca y el estรณmago-
devorado por la vergรผenza.
Todavรญa odio las pasas,
pero no por lรญneas de mercancรญas torcidas
que hacรญamos para conseguirlas, serpenteando
alrededor y en el gimnasio de la tribal.
No por las incรณmodas cajas de cartรณn
en las que las llevรกbamos a casa. Ni por la diarrea que causaban
ni por cรณmo distendรญan mi barriga.
Odio las pasas porque ahora sรฉ
que mi madre tambiรฉn tenรญa hambre ese dรญa,
y me comรญ todas las pasas.