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

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

On Friday afternoon David said he was divesting his holdings
in Stephanie dot org.
And Cindy announced she was getting rid of all her Dan-obelia
and did anyone want a tennis racket or a cardigan?

Alyce told Michael that she was transplanting herself
to another brand of potting soil.
And Jason composed a three chord blues song called
“I Can’t Rake Your Leaves Anymore, Mama,”
then insisted on playing it
over her speakerphone to Ellen.

The moon rose up in the western sky
with an expression of complete exhaustion, like a 38 year old single mother
standing on the edge of the playground. Right at that moment

Betty was extracting coil after coil of Andrews
emotional intestines
through a verbal incision she had made in his heart, and Jane was parachuting into an Ani Difranco concert
wearing a banner saying, Get Lost, Mark Resnick.

That’s how you find out:
out of the blue.
And it hurts, baby, it really hurts
because breaking up is hard to do.

Tony Hoagland
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tony-hoagland

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 Friday, November , 2022 at 4:00 PM (PST)

My Thoughts

Last week's poem by Richard O. Moore explored an attempt to mend a broken relationship. This week we will follow up with Tony Hoagland's poem, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. I have met a few of people, although it seems rare these days, who married their childhood sweetheart and lived the ups and downs of happily-ever-after afterwards. But most don’t find lasting love on the first go round and break-up is an inevitable part of the journey. A break-up of intimacy often blindsides us, seeming to come out of the blue even when the signs say we’re heading for a train wreck; or, if we are the one doing the breaking, we go cold turkey and cut the cord to keep our boundaries or stay sane. Breaking Up Is Hard to Do even when it is amicable and the parties part in good company. Either way, it hurts, baby, it really hurts, as Hoagland says.

We put the weight of our well-being on the deliverables of romance and success as if the elusive conditions (that we, our families and signifiicant others, and the culture-at-large have placed on their fulfillment will finally set us right and make us whole. But, in the end, there is always something lacking or the taste of each other turns sour or, God forbid, they change or we change and the edifice eventually crumbles. Without a pre-planned exit strategy (or a team of handlers), we’re looking over Paul Simon’s list of “50 ways to leave your lover.” Add in a little bitterness and the break-up then breaks out in an act of spite played out in public. Breaking up is hard to do and to do it face-to-face is even harder. Hoagland’s poem offers a list of bitter ends in a poetic free-fall of public acts that let the ex know they have been dropped. Then, Hoagland leaves us there, in wreckage, along side the stilted lover giving us a view from both sides of the fence.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write a poem about a time when someone dumped you. How did they do it and how did it affect you. What happened afterwards.

  2. Journal or write a poem about a time when you dumped someone. How did you do it and how did it work out.

  3. Many poeple have the experience of ”the one that got away:” an early love that ended or a love that never took root. Journal or write a poem about this phenomonon, either from actual or imagined experience.

  4. Hoagland’s poem covers abrupt endings to intimate relationships. Write a poem about slow endings. Consider writing a list poem about the slow death of intimacy in relationships.

  5. Journal or write a list poem about the signs that you lover is about to leave you. You know your lover is about to leave you when…

  6. Consider any change of status in a relationship (coming of age, children leaving the nest) and journal or write a poem about how that changes the relationship might happen.

  7. Journal or write a poem about a time when someone publicly embarrased you or you witnessed someone else being publicly embarrassed. Or, vice versa, when you publicly embarrassed someone (why you did it, what you hoped to accomplish by it, and how it worked out).

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