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 in the column on the right

  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

It’s this Way

I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees –
they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can't smell the medicines –
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

Nazim Hikmet
Translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/opinion/william-armstrong/the-poems-of-nazim-hikmet-48180

Please join Writing From The Inside Out by attending the read-around sessions on Thursday 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:

No read around for the next three weeks. Next read around will be March 30 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

I don't remember the crime I committed but I do remember the punishment I endured. It was not a spanking or isolation in my room. I was sent to the window to look outside and watch the other kids playing. I could see what I was missing. It was a powerful combinatiion of boredom and longing. My heart’s desire was just beyond the glass but seemingly forever out of reach. This memory came in a flashback upon reading Nazim Hikmet’s, It’s This Way. There are many ways in which we might be imprisioned and kept apart from the world. HIkmet doubles down on the narrator ’s actual imprisonment by placing the scene in a prison infirmary. Either by sin or sickness or both, we are caged and kept from the world. The title, It’s This Way, states the condition as a matter-of-fact, capturing a kind of existential angst that we all suffer at times in our private isolation. But Hikmet suggests there is something in the human spirit that keeps us going despite our limitations and especially if we do not make our limitations the point of our lives.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write poem about what it means to “stand in the light.”

  2. HIkmet uses the phrase, my hands hungry. What are hands hungry for? How might hands experience hunger? Use the phrase as your starting prompt.

  3. Use the prompt: My eyes can’t get enough of…

  4. Journal or write a poem aobut the ways n which trees are hopeful.

  5. Journal or write a poem about looking out a window on a world in which you could not participate.

  6. Journal or write a poem about the experience of imprisonment, literally or metaphysically.

  7. Hikmet refers to being in an infirmary; journal or write a poem about a sickness, or a stay in a hospital, that affected you or changed you.

  8. Write what ever comes to mind from the prompt, It’s this way…

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