1. Read the poem 

2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

You Ask About Poetry

You ask from an island so far away 
it remains unspoiled. To walk quietly 
till the miracle in everything speaks 
is poetry. You want to look for poetry 
in your soul and in everyday life, as you 
search for stones on the beach. Four 
thousand miles away, as the sun ices 
the snow, I smile. For in this moment, 
you are the poem. After years of looking, 
I can say that searching for 
small things worn by the deep is 
the art of poetry. But listening 
to what they say is the poem.

—Mark Nepo
Drinking From The River of Light is avaialbe at: Sounds True, Amazon, and other sources.
https://marknepo.com

The Poet by John O’Donohue

The poet wants to drink from the well of origin; to write the poem that has not yet been written. In order to enter this level of originality, the poet must reach beyond the chorus of chattering voices that people the surface of a culture. Furthermore, the poet must reach deeper inward; go deeper than the private hoard of voices down to the root-voice. It is here that individuality has the taste of danger, vitality and vulnerability. Here the creative has the necessity of inevitability; this is the threshold where imagination engages raw, unformed experience. This is the sense you have when you read a true poem. You know it could not be other than it is. Its self and its form are one.

https://www.johnodonohue.com/works

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Note: Next Read Around is:
Oct 22, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

This week’s prompt set is based on two entries, You Ask About Poetry by Mark Nepo and The Poet by John O’Donohue. Both offer insight, at least from the perspective of two great contemporary poets, about what it means to be a poet and what sources poetry as a vehicle of expression. Nepo’s poem is in his book, Drinking From the River of Light: The Life o f Expression and the John ODonohue quote is from his website. Consider them an invitation to dive your own depths and find your own answer to the enigma of poetry: What is poetry to you? What sources your writing? What does it mean to be a poet? I took these questions and went looking for poetry in my soul and in everyday life on a walk around the neighborhood in Kalamazoo where friends, Suzanne and Rob, live and composed the following:

This morning, as I ventured out into the day, my eyes were tangled by the shimmering light through the trees, my lungs were wakened in the frosty Michigan morning air. Walking the old neighborhood, I admired the Victorian houses with large meandering patios like guardians at the entry and big bay windows ever-watchful with their causal pondering eyes. I drifted between presence and possibility, surfed the thin edge of the moment. I dipped below the chorus of chattering voices and searched for small things worn by the deep: the undeterred way tiny blades of grass poke through concrete cracks; the hieroglyphs in mottled paint on the fence post, the storied dip in the center of steps that have taken the weight of coming and going for years; teaching me what it means to me to be a poet: even without pen and paper, the poem pokes through the slabs of habit, speaks in the glyphic tongue, climbs the steps of presence, and enters the old house of being filling me with glints of morning light, imprinting the moment with itself as one in my heart. 

Prompt Menu

1. Journal or write to the query: What is poetry to you? What sources your writing? What does it mean to be a poet?

2. Imagine a letter arrives from a soulful inquisitor, one who knows your heart and who lives on an island so far away it remains unspoiled. What might the letter say? What soulful question might the letter pose?

3. Take a walk in the world, “quieting yourself till the miracle in everything speaks to you.” Or use the stem sentence, The miracle in things (or some thing, eg; this tree, this fence, ) spoke to me and said…

4. Where do you look for poetry? How do you fid poetry in your soul? How do you find poetry in everyday life? How do you look for, listen for, touch, taste or smell poetry in your every day life? Use you senses. Write a poem with a stanza for each sentence: I see poetry in…. I hear poetry in…. etc.

5. What people in your life are poems to you and in what way?

6. What originality is waiting to birth through you below the chorus of chattering voices? Or use the reference to the cattering voices that people the surface of a culture and write what those voices say inside of you. How do you relate to them?

7. Write a poem inspired by O’Donohue’s line: “individuality has the taste of danger, vitality, and vulnerability. Or use taste to enter into your writing, whether it is the taste of a doughnut or of danger (douhgnuts are after all dangerous to many of us!.

8. As usual, write about anything else from the poem or life that inspires you