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 the poem

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

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert
https://poetrysociety.org/features/readinginthedark/c-dale-young

Next Read Around is March 18, 2022

My Thoughts

One might not think that delight needs a defense, at least not for many of us who live lives of relative comfort compared to the vast majority of people in the world. Yes, we too may suffer, but most of our worries are first world problems compared to those living in bombed out cities in Ukraine or the crushing poverty in the Republic of Congo. The world is filled with unimaginable suffering mostly distant from us and at a magnitude difficult for us to comprehend. But extreme suffering has always been here in America too and is creeping closer and closer to our doorstep.

Homelessness has increased by 38% since 2010and we now see homelessness everwhere: at camps under bridges, at river sides, on city sidewalks. The pandemic has impacted us all and we all likely know someone who has died from covid or suffered terrible isolation or debilitating consequences from the virus. In 2021, 1.2 million Americans were dispalced due weather disasters and that figure is likely to rise dramatically in the future. 2020 was a record year for gun violence in America and there has a been a signifiant uptick in mass shooting incidents in the past two years. Now, with soaring costs and rising inflation and a world teetering on the brink of war, all indications are that there will be years of sorrow to come.

In the midst of such tremendous suffering, Jack Gilbert’s poem, A Brief For The Defense., makes a case for delight even in the worst of circumstances. As Gilbert points out, there is still laughter, still small moments that, by contrast, shine through it all. I saw this in my father, tortured and dying form cancer, yet he still made us laugh with his constant joking and a twinkle in his eyes.

Prompt Menu

1. Write an ode to sorrow and what might be worth all the years of sorrow (in your life, in the world)

2. In the midst of terrible suffering, Gilbert states, “we enjoy our lives because that is what God wants.” It is part of his defense for delight. Journal or write a poem about how does this idea sets with you?

3. Journal or write about a time in your life when you had a moment of pure delight or enjoyment in the midst of terrible suffering or stress (or when you witnessed this in the world).

4. If we “deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation.” Journal or write a poem about how this contrast has shown up in your life. What positive experiences do you now value more because you have been deprived of them (for example, experiences you have been deprived of from the pandemic)

5. Gilbert declares that we can do without pleasure, but not delight, not enjoyment. How do you make sense of this? Journal or write poem about the difference between pleasure and delight or about the difference between pleasure and enjoyment.

6. Write a list poem about the ways you have risked delight in your life.

7. Journal or write a poem form the prompt, After the locomotive of the lord ran me down, I…

8. Gilbert ends with a quaint scene about the sound of oars from the rowboat ferrying passengers to the sleepingisland. Write your own in-the-moment poem about some precious moment that holds you through it all

9. Journal or write about anything else that might inspire you from the poem or life.