Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem Deep Lane [June 23rd, evening of the first fireflies] by Mark Doty, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about an evening—real or imagined–with fireflies.”

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 Wednesday August 17th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Deep Lane [June 23rd, evening of the first fireflies] by Mark Doty

June 23rd, evening of the first fireflies,we're walking in the cemetery down the road,and I look up from my distracted study of whatever,

an unfocused gaze somewhere a few feet in front of my shoes,

and see that Ned has run on aheadwith the champagne plume of his tail held especially high,his head erect,

which is often a sign that he has something he believes he is not allowed 
to have,

and in the gathering twilight (what is it that is gathered,who is doing the harvesting?) I can make out that the long horizontalbetween his lovely jaws is one of the four stakes planted on the slope

to indicate where the backhoe will dig a new grave.

Of course my impulse is to run after him, to replace the marker,out of respect for the rule that we won't desecrate the tombs,or at least for those who knew the womanwhose name inks a placard in the rectangle claimed by the four poles

of vanishing—three poles now—and how it's within their recollection,their gathering, she'll live. Evening of memory. Sparklamps in the grass.I stand and watch him go in his wild figure eights,I say, You run, darling, you tear up that hill.

Credit: Copyright © by Mark Doty. poets.org

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting A Tower Of Blue Horses by Franz Marc, and read the poem Franz Marc’s Blue Horses by Mary Oliver, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about something beautiful.”

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 August 15th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

A Tower Of Blue Horses by Franz Marc

 Franz Marc’s Blue Horses by Mary Oliver

I step into the painting of the four blue horses.
I am not even surprised that I can do this. 
 
One of the horses walks toward me. 
His blue nose noses me lightly.  I put my arm 
Over his blue mane, not holding on, just
   commingling. 
He allows me my pleasure. 
 
Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain. 
 
I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses
   what war is. 
They would either faint in horror, or simply 
   find it impossible to believe. 
 
I do not know how to thank you Franz Marc. 
 
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. 
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
   is the piece of God that is inside each of us. 
 
Now all four horses have come closer, 
   are bending their faces towards me
      as if they have secrets to tell. 
I don’t expect them to speak, and they don’t.
If being so beautiful isn’t enough, what
   could they possibly say?

Credit: On Being Studios SoundCloud

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at a scene/song Across the Universe – I Want You She’s So Heavy by Joe Anderson, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a heavy burden.”

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 August 8th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Across the Universe – I Want You She’s So Heavy by Joe Anderson

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem How to Be a Poet by Wendell Berry, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “What comes from the silence…”

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

How to Be a Poet by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)
i   

Make a place to sit down.   
Sit down. Be quiet.   
You must depend upon   
affection, reading, knowledge,   
skill—more of each   
than you have—inspiration,   
work, growing older, patience,   
for patience joins time   
to eternity. Any readers   
who like your poems,   
doubt their judgment.   

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   
the unconditioned air.   
Shun electric wire.   
Communicate slowly. Live   
a three-dimensioned life;   
stay away from screens.   
Stay away from anything   
that obscures the place it is in.   
There are no unsacred places;   
there are only sacred places   
and desecrated places.   

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   
Make the best you can of it.   
Of the little words that come   
out of the silence, like prayers   
prayed back to the one who prays,   
make a poem that does not disturb   
the silence from which it came.

Source: Poetry (Poetry)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Twenty-five participants gathered from various locations to read and discuss “The First Fish” from Ada Limón’s 2022 collection The Hurting Kind. We discussed how the word “[f]irst” (appearing in the title) indicates an important event. The poem’s speaker, calling herself “a barbarous girl”, recounts catching a fish with a gold circled black eye and “terrible mouth” in order to be called brave. Participants saw the situation as one in which the girl lacks power; the narrator now as a woman reflecting on the experience with regret.   

Later, four participants read aloud their responses to the prompt “Write about a first catch” and captured the group’s attention with accounts of: refusing to accept the doctor who her father saw as a “catch” and catching a theoretical physicist instead; catching a cold, which was feared to be COVID and being “voted off the island”; witnessing one’s self as being “the first catch”; and fishing as a child and wishing to ride away on the back of the fish that got away.   

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 July 29th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

The First Fish from The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón

When I pulled that great fish up out of Lake Skinner’s
		mirrored-double surface, I wanted to release 
	the tugging beast immediately. Disaster on the rod,
		it seemed he might yank the whole aluminum skiff
	down toward the bottom of his breathless world.
		The old tree of a man yelled to hang on and would
	not help me as I reeled and reeled, finally seeing 
		the black carp come up to meet me, black eye 
	to black eye. In the white cooler it looked so impossible.
		Is this where I am supposed to apologize? Not 
	only to the fish, but to the whole lake, land, not only for me
		but for the generations of plunder and vanish.
	I remember his terrible mouth opening as if to swallow
		the barbarous girl he’d lose his life to. The gold-ringed
	eye did not pardon me, no absolution, no reprieve.
		I wanted to catch something; it wanted to live.
	We never are the bottom-feeder, buried by the rosebush
		where my ancestors swore the roses bloomed
	twice as big that year, the year I killed a thing because
		I was told to, the year I met my twin and buried
	him without weeping so I could be called brave.   

Credit: Limón, Ada. “The First Fish.” The Hurting Kind. (2022) Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem Stars by Marjorie Pickthall, and took a close look at a James Webb image Cosmic Cliffs, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about looking up.”

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 July 25th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

 Stars by Marjorie Pickthall

Now in the West the slender moon lies low, 
And now Orion glimmers through the trees, 
Clearing the earth with even pace and slow, 
And now the stately-moving Pleiades, 
In that soft infinite darkness overhead 
Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread. 

And all the lonelier stars that have their place, 
Calm lamps within the distant southern sky, 
And planet-dust upon the edge of space, 
Look down upon the fretful world, and I 
Look up to outer vastness unafraid 
And see the stars which sang when earth was made. 

James Webb image Cosmic Cliffs

Credit: NASA.gov

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem The Dog Star by Tom Billsborough, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a ceremony 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 Wednesday July 20th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

The Dog Star by Tom Billsborough

Sirius rising, seed of power..

Wind rode or tide rode
A reed boat sways the whole night,
Straining at anchor.

The papyrus dawn stretches.
The pale East trembles.
The priest too. Who knows.

Red sails tether

The dawn breeze.
The Nile renews her annual surrender.

Sirius rising, seed of power..
In this man's soul
What joy to compose its shell,
The hollow ritual! 

Credit: www.poemhunter.com

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Thirty-two participants engaged with The Artist by William Carlos Williams, posted below. We noticed first the form of the poem, which evokes Mr. T’s sudden movement—an entrechat—a performance on the page. In the discussion that followed we wondered not only “[w]hat goes on here?” (a line in the poem) but also: who does the title name? Is it Mr. T, the woman in the wheelchair who sees and applauds his scissored leap, the poet who performs the movement with words, or we readers, who bring our puzzle pieces from close reading and see all these possibilities?

Our prompt was: “ Write about a moment of unexpected beauty. or Write about a leap.” The prompted writing brought moments of beauty: traveling and asking where we are going; arrivals and departures, dogs and hummingbirds, the leap of a trout, a series of movements in ballet before a move to hospital corridors, a last kiss, and the generation of more than one unanswered question.

Thank you everyone for your participation in this evening’s narrative choreography!

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 July 15th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

 The Artist by William Carlos Williams

Mr. T.
          bareheaded
                    in a soiled undershirt
his hair standing out
          on all sides
                    stood on his toes
heels together
           arms gracefully
                    for the moment
curled above his head.
            Then he whirled about
                     bounded
into the air
             and with an entrechat
                     perfectly achieved
completed the figure.
             My mother
                     taken by surprise
where she sat
             in her invalid’s chair
                      was left speechless.
Bravo! she cried at last
             and clapped her hands.
                       The man’s wife
came from the kitchen:
            What goes on here? she said.
                        But the show was over.

Credit: allpoetry.com 
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we look a close look at the painting The Janitor Who Paints by Palmer Hayden, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about two sides of yourself. ”

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 July 11th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

The Janitor Who Paints by Palmer Hayden