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

HANDWRITING

Vowels open their bodies
cup, chalice, sloping bowl,
they spread out
in a string of sound.
From their depth
a breath,
breathing rises.
Each word takes its time
on the page, easing
from left to right-
each a source
of light, the line of ink
simply its shadow
left behind.
The connections are long
and curving. Dips
of a wren's near-
touches to the earth,
strokes of this skater's
journey across
a new moon of ice.

Paulann Petersen
http://www.paulann.net/index.php

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 October 14, 2022 at 4:00 PM (PST)

My Thoughts

There is magic in the grip of a pen, in the angle and slope of lettering, movements that turn the clay of words into an urn of truth in the potter’s wheel. It is a way of communicating beyond the mental gyration of stringing words into sentences. If you let the hand take its time in accord with the vibrancy of the heart, each round of an “o,” each slope of an “a,” each crossbar of “t” is a dancer’s delight. Paulann Petersen’s ode to Handwriting reminds me of how the hand enlivens our thoughts in the embodiment of angles and curves, slows us down, and gives us time to feel subtleties of sound and sensation unavaialbe in typing and dictating. Writing slowly, by hand, is both more playful and more serious because it engages us physically in the act of writing.

Hand writing has had a long season of fruition, and, like so many dying life-forms, it is falling prey to the intrusion of everything digital. There is now a generation that cannot write or read cursive script. I too feed the machine and mostly do my writing on keyboards or voice notes. Every once in a while, I turn back to the page, dust off my old journal, crack open the cover, put pen to paper, and, with the caress of my long hand, I feel the world at my fingertips.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write a poem about writing. What makes you write? What does it do for you or serve in your life?

  2. Journal or write a poem about the difference in the experience of writing by hand versus typing or dictating. \

  3. Writing by hand requires shaping the letters. Use shape as your prompt and write about the shape of words, or the shape of thoughts, or the shape of feelings.

  4. Petersen describes how vowels open their bodies. How is the shape of vowels different than the shape of consonants. Think of vowels and consonants as different species and describe them, their habitat and lifestyle.

  5. Use Petersen’s line about how “each word takes its time on the page…” as a stem sentence for your prompt.

  6. Journal or write a poem by hand, preferably in cursive script, taking care to write as slowly and as neatly as possible, “articulating” each letter. If it helps, use the stem sentence, When I slow down, I… Or When I slow myself (or my hand) down… Or When I write slowly enough to…

  7. Journal or write about the fact that cursive handwriting is a dying art. Write and ode to, or an obituary for, cursive handwriting.

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