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

Anatomy Lesson

The heart is veined like a carnelian agate,
red on deeper red, dusky pink on purple,

and though it governs your life blood
it’s not much larger than your fist.

It pumps like a fist impassioned, it’s cadence
shock after shock it jumps at, forcing

the blood through arteries curled
like a nest of baby mice inside you.

They go wherever you go, blind channellers.
The heart only vaguely resembles the heart

you learned in preschool, construction
paper red, the one you learned to cross

and hope to die, the one you use to signal
love. Now you try hard to have your heart

in the right place. You’ve learned not
to wear it on your sleeve or lose it

at the first sign of discouragement.
It throbs for its own reasons, throbs

even when broken, just beats harder.

—Lisken Van Pelt Dus
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisken-van-pelt-dus-47758024/

Please join Writing From The Inside Out by attending the read-around sessions on Friday afternoons. It’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional. If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read Around is September 30, 2022 at 4:00 PM (PST)

My Thoughts

In many cultures, and in the Greek origin of Western Culture, the heart, not the brain, is considered the organ of thinking. There are enough brain cells in the heart and in the gut that some researchers now declare we have three brains. The heart, centered between the head and the gut, is perfectly situated to be a mediator between the the ephemeral-mind self and the animal-body self.

The mind is the place for strategic thinking, for dreaming up possibilities, for planning and problem solving. The heart is the organ of connection, of intimacy, of empathy, and of importance. The gut is for instinct and visceral reaction. As a culture, we tend to put our faith in the brain and the strategic mind. The brain makes commitments out of loose words, the heart believes every word is a devotion. The brain makes idle promises, the heart mourns at the graveyard of the broken. The brain calculates to the finish line, the heart generates the momentum to cross.

Lisken Van Pelt Dus’ poem, Anatomy Lesson, begins  by first describing the heart physically, liking it to a fist, then symbolically, noting the heart-shape that only vaguely resembles the heart, and then as a mediator, finding its right place somewhere between worn on the sleeve and lost in defeat. And how, in the long history of the heart, despite the odds, it goes on beating even after being broken.

❤️

Prompt Menu

  1. Write an ode to the heart.

  2. Pick an organ in the body and journal or write a poem about the organ. Consider using Van Pelt Dus’ prrgression starting with some brief physical description of its shape, size, and functions, then shifting to metaphoric description.

  3. Journal or write a poem describing what the heart governs versus what the head or the gut govern.

  4. Write a poem using organ language: language that uses body part and organ idioms (shouldering a burden, a leg up; having the guts, etc.)

  5. Write a poem composed of idioms and metaphors using the word heart.

  6. Journal or write a poem about where you might live on the spectrum between wearing your heart on your sleeve and keeping your cards close to the chest. Which situations trigger you to lean one way or the other.

  7. What keeps your heart going after it has been broken? Journal or write a poem about how the broken heart beats differently or how it recovers from the incident.

  8. How do you know when your heart is in the right place? What signals alert youto when it is not in the right place? How do you use your heart to navigate the delicate situations in life?

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