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

Rain

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

—Don Paterson
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/26/rain-poems-don-paterson

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

My Thoughts

Atmospheric storms continue to drench California and much of the west, flooding areas that haven't seen floods before, forcing people from their homes, disrupting services, changing lives. Between fire and floods, each year the catastrophes mount and come closer to home for us all. When I was young, the threat was anticipation of the “big one” in the shifting of tectonic plates or human folly of nuclear war. Although we hid under our desks in practice, the reality of such tragedies never struck and seemed somehow remote. But now, we have all been touched by the tragedy of extreme weather, either directly or indirectly.

Don Paterson’s poem, Rain, offers a surreal view of a downpour’s consequences in his opening line: I love all films that start with rain. Sandwiched between that opening and the enigmatic ending of a closeup view of a “rain dark gutter, running gold” are vignettes of human tragedy and error. His last stanza claims it does not matter what has been spilled from our lives, whether it be ink or milk or blood, since all these are washed clean in the flood. That line could evoke both hope and despair.  In film, we can have that detachment. We can come away with existential angst but our lives remain intact.

It is different in the real world. Some might say the gift of catastrophe is a clean slate.  Is it easier for the younger to start over, whose stretch ahead has more to offer, than for the older with more to lose and less time to recover? Floodwaters do not care for age or status, flow through walls and windows with equal ease. To the water, it does not matter. When the flood comes, in whatever form, only we can decide what matters as we repair lives or start over. either way, it’s up to us to navigate between hope and despair.

Prompt Menu

1. Journal or write a poem about a film or films that have helped put some difficulty in perspective for you.

2. Paterson’s poem moves between isolated scenes of rain and movie moments. Journal or write poem with a similar structure moving between isolated moments in a larger story.

3. Journal or write a poem aobut the way water braids on windowpanes.

4. Perhaps we have all, at some point, left something out in the weather that was subsequently damaged. Journal or write poem about that or about something that was damaged by neglect.

5. Paterson describes filming flaws, like the camera boom shows in a shot or an actor slips on character’s accent. The equivalent in life might be social faux pas. Journal or write about such an instance.

6. Aristotle said: the besinnings more than half the whole. In Paterson’s poem, he describes how the thundering downpour in a film’s beginning carries it through almost no matter what happens in the film. Journal or write about how some beginning experience carried you through a time in life.

7. Journal or write poem about a time when all the difficulties and challenges of life really did not matter. Where does the experience that “none of it matters” take you? Does it make it all seem pointless or insignificant. Or does it free you from the misery of dwelling on it?

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