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

People Like Us

There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and 
      people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives, and he's
lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death
you're safe.

—Robert Bly

Next Read Around is January 14 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

Perhaps the club of misfits has the largest membership of all clubs. There are no records so no one really knows. We may find a secret solace in our quirks and foibles, a special sense of our uniqueness, even if it is stained with shame and stirred in the static that runs through the monkey mind day in and day out quietly repeating the things we do not wish to face. When we lose our self in our misfortune or chide ourselves for our mistakes or missteps, we confuse path with purpose. We easily miss the door that opens or fail to notice the good that comes out of it. Bobert Bly's poem, People Like Us, points out we are not alone in our forgetting and stumbling. And it is a good reminder at the beginning of the New Year when so many of us forget our goals, falter in our resolutions, and find ourselves wandering off our path. Like George Bailey, who was repeatedly thrown off path in It's a Wonderful Life, we do not know the impact our tiny acts have on others and on life. Next time you stumble into the wrong room, before you stammer out an apology or curse your absence of memory, take a moment a check to see if you might actually find your soul there or happen upon some defender of your greatness, or find, in each small death from your losses, that it’s all right; that you are safe.

Prompt Menu

1. Use Bly’s opening line, There are more like us… and journal or write a poem about some quirk, flaw, of deficiency that we may share with others.

2. Bly implies forgetting is the way the world cleanses itself. How so? What other ways might the world cleanse itself through some foible of ours.

3. Journal or write about the advantages (and disadvantages) of forgetting. Or write an ode to forgetting.

4. Write about a time you took a wrong turn or entered the wrong room and describe what happened.

5. Journal or write a poem about someone who entered your life by mistake or by happenstance.

6. Bly says that greatness has a defender. Journal or write about the “defender of greatness;” or personalize it as the defender of your greatness. This could be a person, a poem, an animal or archetype, a symbol, etc. For instance, I might write about poetry as the defender of my greatness.

7. Journal or write a poem about a time when you made a mistake, particularly a faux pas, and it actually strengthened your bonds with others. For instance, I once misheard a comment from a member of our beach party as we were packing up to go, believing he said “let’s rip the goose.” I thought it was some slang for time to leave. When I queried him about it, everyone laughed and chided me. But it then became our own private slang for “let’s go.”

8. As usual, write about anything else from the poem or life that inspires you