If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read-Around is 3/14/2024 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  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

  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

My Thoughts

It’s a wonderful delight when you come across a poem that is so well written you want to read it over and over, like Jane Hirshfield’s For What Binds Us. You know it was carefully crafted because every line and turn of phrase is knit together so seamlessly it is as if the poem wrote itself. I imagine her in the workshop of her mind, wrestling with her muse for a blessing, turning and returning to the work of revelation while the proud flesh grew back across the wound leaving a scar between them that is now given out as a poem after the battle. Among its many uses, poetry can serve as a healing modality, both for writer and reader. Poems that address the inevitable wounds we suffer in the act of living and, particularly, the act of loving helps us to see the scars as proud flesh that makes us stronger and that binds us to ourselves and to each other. When two people love each other over a long time, they form between them what Robert Bly named in his poem, The Third Body. Hirshfield points out the third body is composed of more than the rhythms of togetherness or the silky flow of good times, but also the scars from wounds inflicted from both sides. The proud flesh between them—the stronger, darker cords—knit the two separate souls into a single fabric that “nothing can tear or mend.” The ending line circles back to personalize the title, For What Binds Us, to whomever she had in mind. And for us, as readers, to whomever we are bonded in a single fabric such that every ripple from one side ripples the other.

For What Binds Us

These are the names for what bind us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they’ve been set down—
and gravity, scientists, say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple , untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other,
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

Jane Hirschfield
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52468/for-what-binds-us

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about what binds you to someone you love.

  2. Take some binding agent, like superglue, and research what makes it work so well. Then use the found words and phrases in a poem.

  3. Journal or write a poem about gravity and how it holds things in place—not only physically. Consider what is held in place by mental, emotional, or spiritual gravity.

  4. Journal or write a poem about a wound you experienced, especially a wound that made you stronger.

  5. Did you ever brag about a wound when you were young? Did you break an arm or leg and get signatures on the cast? Journal or write about such an experience (your own or someone else’s)

  6. Names and definitions make a huge difference in how we experience the things named or defined. For instance, Hirshfield takes existing names, like “gravity” defined as a “weak force” in physics and turns it into a strong force in relationships. Consider using a similar tactic by starting your poem with the phrase: There are names for…

  7. Journal or write a poem about what it means and what it might be like to be your own illumination.