If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

  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

Next Read-Around is 7/6/23 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

In every life there is a fair amount of slippage. It's going on all the time but we rarely notice the vanishing, only the vacancy when we go looking.  It is a daily occurrence in my life,  pretty much, at least the tendency to put things down randomly and then go on a search and rescue mission afterwards. Mostly, I find the AWOL items, but, occasionally, for reasons I cannot fathom, something simply goes missing altogether. I can let go the annoyance for those things that are easily replaceable, like my favorite frixion erasable pens, for which I have an entire back up collection.  It is not so easy when some part of my life is in the mix: like the phone with all my data. And some things carry the weight of a much greater loss like when I reluctantly lent a treasured manuscript, my only copy, to an adolescent friend extracting a solemn promise of return only to have him tell me he “lost it.” It wasn’t the first promise broken, but it was the one that made me vow never to “lend” out a book again. Then, there are those losses that it's hard to know where to look to find them, like that loss of faith,or that vacancy of loving feelings. Rebecca Baggett takes a journey through her own history of lost things in the poem, Vanished, starting with a lost sock all the way back to a box of precious things from her childhood. Along the way, she passes through the disappearance of a friend, the loss of trust, the demise of optimism, the erosion of the body, and the slippage of memory.  She deftly moves from the world of things to the world of the heart, which is the only place loss matters, leaving us, in the end, peering into an emptiness like Pandora after opening the box.

Vanished

Where do those lost socks
go? The ones that vanish
between washer and dryer,
submerge in suds and never
surface again? Off they go,
with your husband’s favorite
tie, tossed over the back
of a bedside chair, nowhere
to be found the next morning.
Lost, with your best friend
from high school, who never
appears on reunion lists
or in any Google search.

Your grandmother’s anniversary
bracelet — the one she promised
you — did your cousin swipe it
after all, though she still swears
she didn’t? Trust, certainty, childhood
loyalties — where have they gone?
Your sense of optimism
disappeared sometime in the nineties —
you could almost pinpoint
the election — but to where?
And why can’t you unearth
it, along with your lapsed
faith, that denim jacket
you loved on weekend walks,
your teenage metabolism, French
verbs, the old cigar box
in which you placed so carefully
three conch shells, a handful
of dried beech leaves, your treasured
sky-blue marble.

—Rebecca Baggett
https://regalhousepublishing.com/rebecca-baggett/

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about the missing sock or some other mysterious disappearance of an everyday thing.

  2. Write a list poem about your own history of lost things.

  3. Journal or write about a childhood friend (or a friend from any age) with whom you lost touch and your efforts, if any, to find them again, whether successful or not.

  4. Like Baggett’s bracelet, my grandfather made clocks and my mom passed one down to me. It got tossed out in my divorce, which upset Mom terribly. Think of some family heirloom that you lost or that you wanted and never received and use that instance as your prompt.

  5. Journal or write a poem about an time when you felt betrayed or when someone broke a promise in a way that hurt you.

  6. Consider the various losses Baggett mentions: los of trust, loss of certainty, loss of childhood loyalties and write a poem about where these losses go.

  7. Baggett describes how an election resulted in a loss of optimism. Journal or write a poem about how current events effect you emotionally.  Consider what deeper loss is under the surface emotion. Or write about something that snuffed out your optimism.

  8. Journal or write a [oem about some thing that vanished or was take from you as a child.

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