Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Under Ideal Conditions” by Al Zolynas, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about losing the light.”

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 December 8th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

 "Under Ideal Conditions" by Al Zolynas

say in the flattest part of North Dakota
on a starless moonless night
no breath of wind

a man could light a candle
then walk away
every now and then
he could turn and see
the candle burning

seventeen miles later
provided conditions remained ideal
he could still see the flame

somewhere between the seventeenth and eighteenth mile
he would lose the light

if he were walking backwards
he would know the exact moment
when he lost the flame

he could step forward and find it again
back and forth
dark to light light to dark

what's the place where the light disappears?
where the light reappears?
don't tell me about photons
and eyeballs
reflection and refraction
don't tell me about one hundred and eighty-six thousand
miles per second and the theory of relativity

all I know is that place
where the light appears and disappears
that's the place where we live

originally published by Laterthanever Press, 1994, San Diego CA
Copyright Al Zolynas

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from a story “The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a call from the wild.”

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 November 27th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

 "The Great Silence" by Ted Chiang

The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe.

But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices?

We’re a non-human species capable of communicating with them. Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?

The universe is so vast that intelligent life must surely have arisen many times. The universe is also so old that even one technological species would have had time to expand and fill the galaxy. Yet there is no sign of life anywhere except on Earth. Humans call this the Fermi paradox.

One proposed solution to the Fermi paradox is that intelligent species actively try to conceal their presence, to avoid being targeted by hostile invaders.

Speaking as a member of a species that has been driven nearly to extinction by humans, I can attest that this is a wise strategy.

It makes sense to remain quiet and avoid attracting attention.

The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe.

But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices?

We’re a non-human species capable of communicating with them. Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?

The universe is so vast that intelligent life must surely have arisen many times. The universe is also so old that even one technological species would have had time to expand and fill the galaxy. Yet there is no sign of life anywhere except on Earth. Humans call this the Fermi paradox.

One proposed solution to the Fermi paradox is that intelligent species actively try to conceal their presence, to avoid being targeted by hostile invaders.

Speaking as a member of a species that has been driven nearly to extinction by humans, I can attest that this is a wise strategy.

It makes sense to remain quiet and avoid attracting attention.

Credit: “The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang from THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY 2016 published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Copyright © 2015 by Ted Chiang. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “Curfew (Likoni March 27 2020) 2022″ by Michael Armitage, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Start with I have witnessed…”

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 November 20th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

“Curfew (Likoni March 27 2020) 2022″ by Michael Armitage

Credit: Michael Armitage.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Fourth Wall Arpeggio” by A. Van Jordan, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about love’s austere and lonely offices.”

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 November 17th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

 "Fourth Wall Arpeggio" by A. Van Jordan

Lately, my friends ask me, out of love,
have I written about my mother,
who suffers under the storm of Alzheimer’s disease,
and I tell them, “I don’t write about my family,
never directly, at least.” To write this poem seems so

out of character for me, but it’s not about my mother,
as much as it’s about how, as a son, the disease
measures the changing rituals of family.
And 28 lines—all I’ve provided myself—seems so
anemic. Now, I barely have 18 lines left for a love

I don’t have the vigor to describe. Reticence is a disease
I’ve suffered from throughout my life. Without family,
I don’t know what it means to live as myself, and, so,
I hide in the reflection of others, which, after all, others love:
people care more about themselves than a friend’s mother.

I mean, how does one explain to someone who’s not family
how you now see the patterns into which a parent would sew
a quilt to lay over a child, the child neither hip to love
nor Hayden’s “austere and lonely offices”? My mother’s
silence seems like indifference except I know the disease,

which changes our relationship, the parent and child; I sow
healing from my memory of how she taught me to love,
not knowing her movement through a day as a mother,
as someone whose sole gig was to keep me alive, free of disease
and, whenever possible, embarrassment. But now, family

means playing the parent; I’m still just a son, writing about love,
but, lowering my eyes from the trauma, I lift her body, her disease,
for a shower, straining under all the love she sowed.

Source: Poetry (November 2023)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Crows” by Mary Oliver, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write an equation for your morning.”

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 November 10th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

 "Crows" by Mary Oliver

In Japan, in Seattle, In Indonesia—there they were—
each one loud and hungry,
crossing a field, or sitting
above the traffic, or dropping
 
to the lawn of some temple to sun itself
or walk about on strong legs,
like a landlord. I think
they don’t envy anyone or anything—
 
not the tiger, not the emperor
not even the philosopher.
Why should they?
The wind is their friend, the least tree is home. 
 
Nor is melody, they have discovered, necessary
Nor have they delicate palates;
without hesitation they will eat
anything you can think of—
 
corn, mice, old hamburgers—
swallowing with such hollering and gusto
no one can tell whether it is a brag
or a prayer of deepest thanks. At sunrise, when I walk out,

I see them in trees, or on ledges of buildings,
 as cheerful as saints, or thieves of the small job
who have been, one more night, successful—
and like all successes, it turns my thoughts to myself.

Should I have led a more simple life?
Have my ambitions been worthy?
Has the wind, for years, been talking to me as well?
Somewhere, among all my thoughts, there is a narrow path.
 
It’s attractive, but who could follow it?
Slowly the full morning
draws over us its mysterious and lovely equation.
Then, in the branches poling from their dark center,
 
ever more flexible and bright,
sparks from the sun are bursting and melting on the birds’ wings
as, indifferent and comfortable,
they lounge, they squabble in the vast, rose-colored light. 

Credit: Mary Oliver

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we viewed the painting “Flight of the Swallows” by John Henry Lorimer, posted below.

Our prompt was: “The others were so excited but 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 Monday October 30th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Sorrow Is Not My Name” by Ross Gay, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about what keeps you from sorrow.”

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

"Sorrow Is Not My Name" by Ross Gay

       —after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.

      —for Walter Aikens

Copyright © 2011 by Ross Gay. 
Source: Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Finale” by Pablo Neruda, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a sea of renewal.”

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 October 20th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"Finale" by Pablo Neruda

Matilde, years or days
sleeping, feverish, 
here or there,
gazing off,
twisting my spine,   
bleeding true blood,   
perhaps I awaken
or am lost, sleeping:
hospital beds, foreign windows,
white uniforms of the silent walkers,
the clumsiness of feet.

And then, these journeys   
and my sea of renewal:   
your head on the pillow,   
your hands floating
in the light, in my light,   
over my earth.
It was beautiful to live   
when you lived!

The world is bluer and of the earth   
at night, when I sleep
enormous, within your small hands.

Source: The Sea and the Bells (City Lights Books, 2002)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Love After Love ” by Derek Walcott, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about finding yourself (again).”

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

“Love After Love ” by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

credit: all poetry.com

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “Self-portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States, 1932” by Frida Kahlo, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about inhabiting two worlds.”

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 September 18th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

“Self-portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States, 1932” by Frida Kahlo

© Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York