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

I Dwell In Possibility

I dwell in Possibliity—
A fairer House than Prose—
More Numerous of Windows—
Superior—for doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—

of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—

—Emily Dickinson
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52197/i-dwell-in-possibility-466

The Read Around

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 10/8/26 at
5:00 PM PDT — 8:00 PM EDT

My Thoughts

We can easily name our address. We can describe the house we return to each day and the place we lay our heads each night. We may call it home. It may be a house of belonging, a home filled with familial affection, with fond memories, with occasional fights, and with a share of foolishness. But your home is not the place “you” dwell. Leave it to Emily Dickson to make this notion clear in her poem that begins, I dwell in Possibility, which was, for her, poetry. Her poetic house was many windowed, with superior doors, and cedar wood that kept her safe inside from prying eyes, and a roof that opened to the sky. I would guess the poems she wrote were the visitors who came for occupation which, by spreading wide her narrow hands, made her dwelling a paradise. Take your cue from Emily and write about your true place of dwelling

Prompt Ideas

1. Journal or write a poem about dwelling in possibilties.

2. Journal of write a poem about your true place of dwelling? You might consider what typically occupies your mind and heart or what activity you do that you love or frees you from the constraints of life.

3. Describe the house of your true dwelling,, which may have many rooms (for humor, worry, doubt, love, etc.)

4. In what way does creative writing talk to itself between silences and feel its way along? Use that idea as your prompt and feel your way through it.

5. Hodges describes the world adds a Spendthrift and her relationship to it has "listening hard, talking you up, extolling your" virtues. Take whatever out of those lines inspires you: in what way has the world a spinthrift? How do you listen hard? What do you talk up? What about the world are you willing to praise enthusiastically?

6. As usual, write about whatever else inspires you form the poem or from life.