Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Statement of Teaching Philosophy” by Keith Leonard, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about when words fail.”

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

Statement of Teaching Philosophy by Keith Leonard

My students want certainty. They want it
so badly. They respect science and have memorized
complex formulas. I don’t know
how to tell my students their parents
are still just as scared. The bullies get bigger
and vaguer and you cannot punch a cloud.
I have eulogies for all my loved ones prepared,
but cannot include this fact in my lesson plans.
The best teacher I ever had told me to meet him
at the basketball court. We played pick-up for hours.
By the end, I lay panting on the hardwood
and couldn’t so much as stand.
He told me to describe the pain in my chest.
I tried. I couldn’t find the words. Not exactly.
Listen, he said, that’s where language ends.

Credit: Keith Leonard. Waxwing literary journal

Rita Basuray prompt response:

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “SOUS LE CERVEAU” by Edward Povey, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about the then and now.”

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 3rd at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

SOUS LE CERVEAU by Edward Povey

Credit: Edward Povey. Available from Waterhouse & Dodd Gallery, New York

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at a piece of art “Lady Exuberance” from the exhibit Ebullience by Kimathi Mafafo, posted below.

Our prompt was: “ ‘Write about being framed by nature’ OR ‘Write about where the light falls.’”

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 22nd at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Lady Exuberance, 2023 by Kimathi Mafafo

Credit: Kimathi Mafafo

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “What the Living Do” by Marie Howe, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about what the living do.”

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

What the Living Do by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Credit: From What the Living Do, copyright © 1998 by Marie Howe. Used by permission of W. W. Norton. All rights reserved.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H Auden , posted below.

Our prompt was: “When there is pain …”

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

Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts" from Selected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson. Copyright © 1979 by W. H. Auden.  Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. (US).
Source: Selected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (Vintage Books, 1979)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Yes It Will Rain (or Prayer for Our First Home)” by Patrick Rosal, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about turning a dry little yard into a garden.”

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

Yes It Will Rain (or Prayer for Our First Home) by Patrick Rosal

Here is our little yard  

too small            for a pool  
or chickens   let alone 

a game of tag or touch 
football       Then 

again   this stub-  
born patch  

of crabgrass  is just 
big enough      to get down  

flat on our backs 
with eyes wide open    and face 

the whole gray sky  just 
as a good drizzle 

begins                   I know  
we’ve had a monsoon  

of grieving to do  
which is why  

I promise    to lie 
beside you  

for as long as you like  
or need  

We’ll let our elbows 
kiss     under the downpour  

until we’re soaked  
like two huge nets  
                    left  

beside the sea  
whose heavy old

ropes strain  
stout with fish 

If we had to     we could  
feed a multitude  

with our sorrows  
If we had to  

we could name   a loss  
for every other  

drop of rain   All these  
foreign flowers 

you plant from pot  
to plot  

with muddy fingers  
—passion, jasmine, tuberose—  

we’ll sip 
the dew from them  

My darling                here
is the door I promised  

Here
is our broken bowl Here  

                        my hands  
In the home of our dreams  

the windows open  
in every  

weather—doused  
or dry—May we never  

be so parched 

Copyright © 2024 by Patrick Rosal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 13, 2024, 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 “Fruta Fina, Fruta Estraña (Lee Monument) (2022)” by Firelei Báez, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about tasting a strange fruit.”

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

Fruta Fina, Fruta Estraña (Lee Monument) (2022) by Firelei Báez

Credit: © Firelei Báez 2022. Image courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photos: Jackie Furtado

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look a short animated story “The Lady From Maine” by Aaron Calafato (writer/performer) and Pete Whitehead (animator).

Our prompt was: “I must love what I do because..”

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 March 18th 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 an excerpt from “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about untying a knot.”

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

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

The group spent more and more time in the jungle, getting increasingly disillusioned. “Do you know that a fungus called blister blight did more for the class struggle than all the Naxalites put together? It wiped out tea estates. The owners abandoned the land to the tribals. It was their land in the first place.” Lenin said the immensity of the jungle silenced him and his comrades; they hardly spoke to each other.

	“An old tribal in Wayanad taught me how to sling a stone with a slender leader over the lowest branch of the tallest tree. Then, by tying a rope to the leader, I could loop the branch and make a sling for my body. He showed me a special knot, a secret one, that allowed me to pull myself up little by little—the rope locks so you don’t slide down. That friction knot, so hard to learn, is passed down by the tribals from generation to generation. People think of inheritance as being land or money. The old man gave his inheritance to me.”

	The fugitive Lenin winched himself up to the stars. He lived for days in the canopy with mushrooms, tree beetles, rats, songbirds, parrots, and the occasional civet cat to keep him company. “Every tree had its own personality. Their sense of time is different. We think they’re mute, but it’s just that it takes them days to complete a word. You know, Mariamma, in the jungle I understood my failing, my human limitation. It is to be consumed by one fixed idea. Then another. And another. Like walking in a straight line. Wanting to be a priest. Than a Naxalite. But in nature, one fixed idea is unnatural. Or rather, the one idea, the only idea is life itself. Just being. Living.

Credit: Verghese, Abraham, The Covenant of Water, Grove Press, NY, copyright 2023, p. 653

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a short story “The Visitor” by Lydia Davis, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about an unspoken social contract.”

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

The Visitor by Lydia Davis

Sometime in the early summer, a stranger will come and take up residence in our house.  Although we have not met him, we know he will be bald, incontinent, speechless, and nearly completely unable to help himself.  We don’t know exactly how long he will stay, relying entirely on us for food, clothing, and shelter.
Our situation reminds me that a leathery-skinned old Indian gentleman once spent several months with my sister in London.  At first he slept in a tent in her back yard. Then he moved into the house.  Here he made it his project to rearrange the many books in the house, which were in no particular order.  He decided upon categories—mystery, history, fiction—and surrounded himself with clouds of smoke from his cigarettes as he worked.  He explained his system in correct but halting English to anyone who came into the room.  Several years later he died suddenly and painfully in a London hospital.  For religious reasons, he had refused all treatment.

This Indian visitor of my sister’s also reminds me of another old man—the very old father of a friend of mine.  He had once been a professor of economics.  He was old and deaf even when my friend was a child.  Later he could not contain his urine, laughed wildly and soundlessly during his daughter’s wedding, and when asked to say a few words rose trembling and spoke about Communism.  This man is now in a nursing home.  My friend says he is smaller every year.

Like my friend’s father, our visitor will have to be bathed by us, and will not use the toilet.  We have appointed a small, sunny room for him next to ours, where we will be able to hear him if he needs help during the night.  Some day, he may repay us for all the trouble we will go to, but we don’t really expect it.  Although we have not yet met him, he is one of the few people in the world for whom we would willingly sacrifice almost anything.

Credit: Lydia Davis Collection of stories Can’t and Won’t (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).