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

your little voice

Your little voice
Over the wires came leaping,
and I felt suddenly
dizzy
With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
wee skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
up
Up
with the pale important
stars of the Humorous
moon
dear girl
How i was crazy how i cried when i heard
over time
and tide and death
leaping
Sweetly
your voice

-E.E. Cummings
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/e-e-cummings

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:

The next Read-Around is 3/19/25 at 5:00 PM PDT

My Thoughts

Voice, that instrument of self that expresses the gifted wind of our breath and, by muscle of tongue and mouth, shapes sounds that stir us up and lift us out of the relentless daily grind that wears and tears at our spirits. Even beyond the meaningful utterance of words and the power they have to bind us together or break us apart, the voice itself, by sonorous pitch and cadence, can strike a chord within us and create a current that carries us. Such a voice has the power to tease the tender heart out to play the same way buds answer the call of spring to bloom with fragile beauty.

E. E. Cummings poem, your little voice, captures the astonishing delight of being swept away by another’s voice. How, even at a distance, carried over wires, the waves of that sweet little voice leap into him, stirring up a field of wildflowers, lifting him up and over time and tide and death, and transporting him to a realm of celestial joy as if whirling among heavenly bodies—the fiery sun, the humorous moon, and the twinkling stars. And like a "Harry Met Sally" moment, we , too, want to be dizzied by rapture from a voice both so far and so near it could be our own free spirit calling us out to play.

Prompt Ideas

1. Journal or write a poem about a time when someone’s voice made you swoon or resonated deeply inside of you.

2. Journal or write poem about a long distance connection (over the phone or over the internet) with someone that felt as intimate or connected as if they were right there with you.

3. Describe a time as an adult when you entered a childlike state of exuberant joy. Use that state as your prompt.

4. Use Cummings languistic playfulness as your prompt.

5. Journal or write a poem about the experience of spinning or whirling joyfully; or a time when someone made you dizzy or crazy in a good way..

6. Recall a time when you laughed and cried at the same time. Use that experience as your prompt.

7. Journal or write a poem about the courage or necessity to risk exposing one’s (yours? Another’s? Life’s) fragile beauty to the world.

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