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 8/28/25 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

Ahh for the wild-eyed pen, for the love of ink on the page, I give sway to that wondrous life force that refuses the cage of form, breaks the dam of syntax code and social airs and leaps over rocks and fallen branches, cascades over cliff edges, weightless in the free fall, splashing misty tears into my grateful eyes from the undiluted water of the soul flowing from an unknown source to an unknowable sea, from I to Thou and Thou to me, the banks wide, the river deep, in all ways divinely flowing the very heart-beat of Life Itself to us and through us.

That is what came to me after reading Walt Whitman’s The Secret Of It All, his celebration of ecstatic writing, which is the ultimate form of free-writing. I rarely sit down to write with a topic or theme in mind, although I do love prompts to provide a seed to root and nurture. Mostly I write as I am moved, in one sitting, sometimes in a flash, sometimes in a clumsy laboring birth of crafted effort over a few hours after the water breaks as I push through my rambunctious naysayer. Once I finish a poem, I usually move on. I rarely revise, a skill I am sure would improve my writing, though it would require a stronger distinction between creative spirit and the cold eye of the critic. How about you? What does Whitman’s Secret evoke in you?

The Secret of It All

There is infinite treasure—
oh! inestimable riches...
And the secret of it all is,
to write in the gush, the throb,
the flood, of the moment—
to put things down without
deliberation—
without worrying about their style—
without waiting for a fit time or place.

I always worked that way.

I took the first scrap of paper,
the first doorstep, the first desk,
and wrote—wrote, wrote.

No prepared picture, no elaborated poem,
no after-narrative, could be what the
thing itself is.

You want to catch its first spirit—
to tally its birth.

By writing at the instant
the very heart-beat of
life is caught.

—Walt Whitman
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/walt-whitman

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem titled, The Secret Of It All.

  2. Give yourself permission to free-write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment, without deliberation or worry.

  3. Journal or write a poem about the way your writing typically works.

  4. Write about the mechanics of your writing—do you hand write, typewrite, or dictate? Do you have a writing desk, or a special place or time to write? Do you have a warm up ritual?

  5. Whitman describes writing without a plan. When is your writing inspired in the moment and when is it more crafted?

  6. Start a new poem or journal entry, or consider a piece of writing you’ve already written, and then track its first spirit, and “tally its birth.”

  7. Use Whitman’s phrase, “The heart-beat of life” as you prompt. For instance, use the stem sentence, When tuned with the heartbeat of life I… or In (or with) the heartbeat of life…

  8. Write about anything in the poem or in life that inspires you.