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 4/25/2024 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

Rosanna Warren’s poem, Simile, got me thinking about handrails because life will often unsteady us by circumstance, accident, age, emotional avalanche, and other atrocities. It may be a dizzying height, a broken heart, a death—whatever the thing—that gets us gripping onto any nearby handrail, whatever form that handrail may take. it is easy to believe, in the cold snap of the moment poised squarely between Fight and Flight, when we’re surrounded by nothing but air, that it is best to have a handrail always with us and the only thing that qualifies is the body: the clenched jaw, the bear trap shoulders, the vice grip gut. The clever part of us says: Why not carry it with you? Why not steady yourself against something always available? Then, without knowing, that gripping gets enshrined in the body. It’s like a knee jerk reaction that turns into a lockdown because we’ve forgotten how to let go. Whenever we face a critical passage, it’s better have also practiced letting go as well as holding on. And, perhaps most important, accepting help. Some say family is the house of our comfort; some say friends are a boat that carries us from our troubles, some say God peels sin from our eyes; some say it is a hand that quickens our heart—praise whatever the thing is that gets us to shed our old skin and walk into whatever we are facing. As Warren points out, we may need that help when the time comes, despite all our determination, training and our courage, to take the step we know we must take.  

Simile

As when her friend, the crack Austrian skier, in the story
she often told us, had to face
his first Olympic ski jump and, from
the starting ramp over the shoot that plunged
so vertiginously its bottom lip
disappeared from view, gazed
on a horizon of Alps that swam and dandled around him
like toy boats in a bathtub, and he could not
for all his iron determination,
training, and courage
ungrip his fingers from the railings of the starting gate, so
his teammates had to join in prying
up, finger by finger, his hands
to free him, so

facing death, my
mother gripped the beds, but still
stared straight ahead – and
who was it, finally,
who loosened
her hands ?

—Rosanna Warren
http://www.rosannawarren.com

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about a time when you were “white knuckled” with fear.

  2. Pick a moment just before a courageous act and describe what it is like to be on the edge of fear and/or excitement.

  3. When you think of it as a metaphor, what “handrails” do you hold onto in life? Are they made of wood or metal? Ornate or plain? Where are the handrails (in a stairwell, on a bridge, a cliff edge, etc)

  4. Journal or write a poem about a time when someone helped you let go of a rail. Describe how they helped in detail.

  5. Journal or write a poem about someone’s manner of death and what you learned from it or what touched you about it.

  6. Journal or write a poem about something you’ve done that required determination, training and courage over time and what it was like to arrive at a crucial point.

  7. Journal or write a poem about a time when you had to ask for or accept help, despite your determination, training, and courage in order to get on.

  8. Journal or write a poem based on the idea that you sometimes have to know how to hold on and let go to move on. Follow Warren’s structure and start with a simile or metaphor that represents the idea and then tie it down to an actual experience.

  9. As usual, write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.