Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “To Be A Person” by Jane Hirshfield, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about your waiting work-boots.”

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 November 6th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

To Be A Person by Jane Hirshfield

To be a person is an untenable proposition.

Odd of proportion,
upright,
unbalanced of body, feeling, and mind.

Two predators’ eyes
face forward,
yet seem always to be trying to look back.

Unhooved, untaloned fingers
seem to grasp mostly grief and pain.
To create, too often, mostly grief and pain.

Some take,
in witnessed suffering, pleasure.
Some make, of witnessed suffering, beauty.

On the other side—
a creature capable of blushing,
who chooses to spin until dizzy,
likes what is shiny,
demands to stay awake even when sleepy.

Learns what is basic, what acid,
what are stomata, nuclei, jokes,
which birds are flightless.
Learns to play four-handed piano.
To play, when it is needed, one-handed piano.

Hums. Feeds strays.
Says, “All together now, on three.”

To be a person may be possible then, after all.

Or the question may be considered still at least open—
an unused drawer, a pair of waiting work-boots.

—Jane Hirshfield

Credit: Jane Hirshfield

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read the poem “Dusk After Your Passing” by Ada Limón, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about all that the light contains.”

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 October 19th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Dusk After Your Passing by Ada Limón

I think Cliff Swallow sounds like the name
of a beige-clad mortgage broker who hangs
out at the bar and doesn’t talk politics, but
it’s a bird I’m reading about to keep my mind
from diving fast into the abyss. If someone asked
what changed me first, I’d say love. Secondly,
I’d say death. Does the order matter? When I took
to birds I thought I’d be destroyed by staring
at flying, twittering blurs, but what destroys me
is what always destroys me. A friend once said,
every elegy is a love poem and every love poem
is an elegy. But there must be a difference. Trying
once to identify swallows darting in and out
of the shadows above the creek water slick with
reflections of willows and white alders above us,
I asked a friend, What kind of swallows are those?
He squinted, and we all watched, the sky’s mirror
rippling in the shallow creek bed, the wet rocks
emerging like islands we might retire to when we
shrink into nothing. Fast ones, he said, turning,
and shrugged. So much for the naming. Instead
a pointing to the flitting minutes so they lasted,
until they didn’t. Then all of us leaned over
the railing and stared at the quickly thinning light
and all that the light contained, all of us calmly
unable to distinguish, to classify, but we could
show each other the whole view, practically
holding each other by the collar so no one
drowned, as we watched every last fast
flyer swoop, yes, we praised what lives and what
disappears, we made use of the end of the light.

Copyright © 2026 by Ada Limón. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 14, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “Almost A Very Rare Thing” by Sasha Gordon, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about an unexpected gift.”

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 October 9th 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Almost A Very Rare Thing by Sasha Gordon

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Returning Birds” by Wisława Szymborska, and took a close look at “Paysage Azteeque 1950″ by Rufino Tomayo posted below.

Our prompt was: “Begin your writing with: “Rejoice, O reason…”.”

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 Wednesday September 23rd at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Credit: Rufino Tomayo, Paysage Azteeque 1950 

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Returning Birds
  by Wisława Szymborska

This spring the birds came back again too early.
Rejoice, O reason: instinct can err, too.
It gathers wool, it dozes off — and down they fall
into the snow, into a foolish fate, a death
that doesn’t suit their well-wrought throats and splendid claws,
their honest cartilage and conscientious webbing,
the heart’s sensible sluice, the entrails’ maze,
the nave of ribs, the vertebrae in stunning enfilades,
feathers deserving their own wing in any crafts museum,
the Benedictine patience of the beak.

This is not a dirge — no, it’s only indignation.
An angel made of earthbound protein,
a living kite with glands straight from the Song of Songs,
singular in air, without number in the hand,
its tissues tied into a common knot
of place and time, as in an Aristotelian drama
unfolding to the wings’ applause,
falls down and lies beside a stone,
which in its own archaic, simpleminded way
sees life as a chain of failed attempts.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at a photo taken by Kathleen Sullivan and read the poem “Breakage” by Mary Oliver, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Tell a story of the broken and then opened.”

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 September 11th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Photo credit: Kathleen Sullivan

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“Breakage” by Mary Oliver

I go down to the edge of the sea. 
How everything shines in the morning light! 
The cusp of the whelk, 
the broken cupboard of the clam, 
the opened, blue mussels, 
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred— 
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split, 
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone. 
It’s like a schoolhouse 
of little words, 
thousands of words. 
First you figure out what each one means by itself, 
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop 

       full of moonlight.Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.   

Credit: Mary Oliver. Source: Poetry (August 2003)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “[i love them still]” by Fatimah Asghar, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Start your writing with ‘Scattered like a seed…‘”

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 Wednesday August 5th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

[i love them still] by Fatimah Asghar

Copyright © 2026 by Fatimah Asghar. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 30, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Disclosure” by Camisha L. Jones, posted below.

Our prompt was:“Write about sounds that beckon.”

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 July 13th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Disclosure by Camisha L. Jones

I’m sorry, could you repeat that. I’m hard of hearing.

To the cashier 

To the receptionist 

To the insistent man asking directions on the street 

I’m sorry, I’m hard of hearing. Could you repeat that?

At the business meeting 

In the writing workshop 

On the phone to make a doctor’s appointment 

I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry-I’m-so-sorry-I’m-hard-for-the-hearing

Repeat. 

           Repeat. 

Hello, my name is Sorry

To full rooms of strangers 

I’m hard to hear 

I vomit apologies everywhere 

They fly on bat wings 

towards whatever sound beckons 

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry

           and repeating

                       and not hearing

Dear (again) 

I regret to inform you 

I       am

here

Copyright © 2020 by Camisha L. Jones. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 3, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.