Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from “Held ” by Anne Michaels, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a pair of socks.”

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

Held by Anne Michaels pg. 11-12

The black lines of the trees reminded him of a winter field he'd once seen from the window of a train. And the black sea of evening, and the deep black bonnet and apron of his grandmother climbing up from the harbour, knitting all the while, leading their ancient donkey burdened with heavy baskets of crab. All the women in the village wore their tippie and carried their knitting easy to hand, under their arm or in their apron pocket, sleeves and sweater- fronts, filigree work, growing steadily over the course of the day. Each village with its own stitch; you could name a sailor’s home port by the pattern of his gansey, which contained a further signature - a deliberate error by which each knitter could identify her work. Was an error deliberately made still an error? 

Coastal Knitters cast their stitches like a protective spell to keep their men safe and warm and dry, the oil in the wool repelling the rain and sea spray, armour passed down, father to son. They knitted shorter sleeves that did not need to be pushed out of the way of work. Dense worsted, faded by the salt wind. The ridge and furrow stitch, like the fields in March when they put in the potatoes. The moss stitch, the rope stitch, the honeycomb, the triple sea wave, the anchor; the hailstone stitch, the lightning, diamonds, ladders, chains, cables, squares, fishnets, arrows, flags, rigging. The Noordwijk bramble stitch. The black-and-white socks of Terschelling (two white threads, a single black). The Goedereede zigzag. The tree of life. The eye of God over the wearer’s heart.

Credit: Anne Michaels

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we listened to an instrumental piece of music “Skimming the Fractured Surface to a Place of Endless Light” by Kaki King, from the Album Glow posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a place of endless light.”

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 December 9th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Skimming the Fractured Surface to a Place of Endless Light by Kaki King

Credit: Kaki King

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from “The Night Watchman” by Louise Erdrich, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Tell a story about diving to the bottom.”

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

 The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

As he did at the change of every season, Thomas gave his father a pinch of tobacco and asked for the story of his name. This story tied them together as Thomas was named after his grandfather, whose name had become the family surname. The original and real Wazhashk was a little muskrat.

"In the beginning," said Biboon, "the world was covered with water. The Creator lined up the animals who were the best divers. First the Creator sent down Fisher, the strongest. But Fisher came up gasping, couldn't find the bottom. Next Mang, the loon, ducked under the way they do."

Biboon curved his hand. "Loon tried. But failed." Thomas nodded in appreciation, loving the gestures he remembered from childhood.

"The Hell-diver flashed into the water, bragging it would succeed. That Hell-diver pulled itself deep down, and down. But no!"

Biboon waited, took in a deep breath.

"Last the humble water rat. The Creator called on that one.

Wazhashk. The little fellow dived down. He took a long time, a very long time, and then finally Wazhashk floated to the top. He was drowned but his paw  was clenched. The Creator unfolded Wazhashk's webbed hands. He saw that the muskrat had carried up just a little off the bottom. From that tiny paw’s  grip of dirt, the Creator made the whole earth.”

"Mii’iw. That's it," said Biboon.

They were sitting outside. Biboon stared at the bright popple leaves, trembling and flashing as they swirled thickly off the branches. Once, the wild prairies had been littered with bones. Bones thick and white as far as he could see. He'd gathered and hauled the buffalo bones with his father. Eight dollars a ton down at the railroad yard in Devils Lake. His family had all dived to the bottom to scrape up dirt. But now his son was sitting with him. Their chairs tipped back against the whitewashed wall of old logs. The sun struck Biboon's face, no warmth to the light, a sign his own namesake was just over the horizon.

"I'm an old pinto pony, scrawny and always hungry. This winter might do me in," he said. His voice was light, amused.

"No," said Thomas. "You have to stick around here, Daddy.”

"I'm a weight around your necks," said Biboon.

"Don't say that. We need you."

"I can't even dig a potato! Yesterday I fell over."

"I’m sending Wade down to stay with you. We need you, like I said. This thing that's coming at us from Washington. I need you to help me fight it."

"Oh, fine," said Biboon, putting up his fists.

Credit:The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich, p 172-173

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: “Write about a time when everything became clear.”

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

Sterling Floats by Dale Chihuly

Credit: Dale Chihuly

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:“Write about words suspended in the air.”

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 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 we’re surrounded by crystals.
Not just Alexander Vvedensky.
Maybe dysentery, maybe a guard’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 you’re holding
is a curl of ash by its white ear tip
yet the words still hover in the air?
That’s how I feel now.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2014)

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: “The idea I carry close to my bosom.”

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 15th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our 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)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Two Guitars” by Victor Hernández 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 (“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 8th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Two Guitars by Victor Hernández Cruz

Two Guitars
BY VICTOR HERNÁNDEZ 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

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: “Write about what we are born of.”

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 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 street’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.”

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: “Write about a space.”

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 25th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

“Disability” by Allessandro Gatto

Credit: Allessandro Gatto

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: “Write about finding joy from day to day to day.”

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 14th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our 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, “From Blossoms” from Rose.