Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at a scene from the HBO film production of Angels in America directed by Mike Nichols and written by Tony Kushner, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Describe your own heaven.”

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

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem Some Feel Rain by Joanna Klink, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a time of wonder.”

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 May 2nd at 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Some Feel Rain by Joanna Klink

Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.
When it falls apart, some feel the moondark air
drop its motes to the patch-thick slopes of
snow. Tiny blinkings of ice from the oak,
a boot-beat that comes and goes, the line of prayer
you can follow from the dusking wind to the snowy owl
it carries. Some feel sunlight
well up in blood-vessels below the skin
and wish there had been less to lose.
Knowing how it could have been, pale maples
drowsing like a second sleep above our temperaments.
Do I imagine there is any place so safe it can’t be
snapped? Some feel the rivers shift,
blue veins through soil, as if the smokestacks were a long
dream of exhalation. The lynx lets its paws
skim the ground in snow and showers.
The wildflowers scatter in warm tints until
the second they are plucked. You can wait
to scrape the ankle-burrs, you can wait until Mercury
the early star underdraws the night and its blackest
districts. And wonder. Why others feel
through coal-thick night that deeply colored garnet
star. Why sparring and pins are all you have.
Why the earth cannot make its way towards you.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem The Silence of Plants by Wislawa Szymborska, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a question that has never been asked or answered.”

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

The Silence of Plants by Wislawa Szymborska

The Silence of Plants

A one-sided relationship is developing quite well between you and me.
I know what a leaf, petal, kernel, cone, and stem are,
and I know what happens to you in April and December.

Though my curiosity is unrequited,
I gladly stoop for some of you, 
and for others I crane my neck.

I have names for you:
maple, burdock, liverwort,
eather, juniper, mistletoe, and forget-me-not;
but you have none for me.

After all, we share a common journey.
When traveling together, it’s normal to talk,
exchanging remarks, say, about the weather,
or about the stations flashing past.

We wouldn’t run out of topics 
for so much connects us.
The same star keeps us in reach.
We cast shadows according to the same laws.
Both of us at least try to know something, 
each in our own way,
and even in what we don’t know 
there lies a resemblance.

Just ask and I will explain as best I can:
what it is to see through my eyes,
why my heart beats,
and how come my body is unrooted.

But how does someone answer questions 
which have never been posed,
and when, on top of that
the one who would answer 
is such an utter nobody to you?

Undergrowth, shrubbery, 
meadows, and rushes…
everything I say to you is a monologue,
and it is not you who’s listening.

A conversation with you is necessary 
and impossible,
urgent in a hurried life
and postponed for never.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a novel excerpt from  The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about the rhythm of home.”

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

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Home was a cot in one of their bunkhouses at the Fair Ranch in Yolo. Home was a long tent beneath a leafy plum tree at Kettleman’s. Home was a wooden shanty in Camp No. 7 on the Barnhart Tract out in Lodi. Nothing but onions as far as the eye can see. Home was a bed of straw in John Lyman’s barn alongside his prize horses and cows. Home was a corner of the washhouse at Stockton’s Cannery Ranch. Home was a bunk in a rusty boxcar in Lompoc. Home was an old chicken coop in Willows that the Chinese had lived in before us. Home was a flea-ridden mattress in a corner of a packing shed in Dixon. Home was a bed of hay atop three apple crates beneath an apple tree in Fred Stadelman’s apple orchard. Home was a spot on a floor of an abandoned schoolhouse in Marysville. Home was a patch of earth in a pear orchard in Auburn not far from the banks of the American River, where we lay awake every evening staring up at the American stars, which looked no different from ours: there, up above us, was the Cowherd Start, the Water Star. “Same latitude,” our husbands explained. Home was wherever the crops were ripe and ready for picking. Home was wherever our husbands were. Home was by the side of a man who had been shoveling up weeds for the boss for years.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use by Ada Limon, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a word you have refused to use.” 

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 22nd at 12pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use by Ada Limon

All these great barns out here in the outskirts,
black creosote boards knee-deep in the 
     bluegrass.
They look so beautifully abandoned, even in 
     use.
You say they look like arks after the sea’s
dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,
and I think of that walk in the valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood 
     there,
low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish 
     moss,
and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our 
     pockets,
woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.
So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,
its clouds in simple animal shapes we could 
     name
though we knew they were really just clouds—
disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

Poem copyright ©2012 by Ada Limón


 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from Words are Birds by Francisco X. Alarcóny, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about words without borders.”

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

Words are Birds by Francisco X. Alarcóny

words
are birds
that arrive
with books
and spring
 
they
love
clouds
the wind
and trees
 
some words
are messengers
that come
from far away
from distant lands
 
for them
there are
no borders
only stars
moon and sun
 
some words
are familiar
like canaries
others are exotic
like the quetzal bird
 
some can stand
the cold
others migrate
with the sun
to the south
 
some words
die
caged—
they're difficult
to translate
 
and others
build nests
have chicks
warm them
feed them
 
teach them
how to fly
and one day
they go away
in flocks
 
the letters
on this page
are the prints
they leave
by the sea

Source: Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems (Lee & Low Books, 1997)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from Why I Am Not A Painter by Frank O’Hara, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write or draw about orange.”

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

Why I Am Not A Painter by Frank O’Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

Copyright © 2008 by Maureen Granville-Smith

See prompt drawing responses from our session below!

Thank you for joining us for this session and celebrating the two-year anniversary of our Virtual Group Sessions!

For this session we read an excerpt from Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about something that can still happen.”

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 4th at 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Gate A-4 by, Naomi Shihab Nye

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"
said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Gate A-4” from Honeybee. Copyright © 2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting Untitled 2009, by Kerry James Marshall, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about something unfinished”

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 March 30th 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Untitled 2009 by, Kerry James Marshall

Credit: Kerry James Marshall/Jack Shainman Gallery