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:

Next Read-Around is 7/25/2024 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  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

  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

My Thoughts

The simplest way to describe the second law of thermodynamics is to say that things will go the way of most ways. And there are certainly more ways for things in your life not to be right, by whatever standard right might be measured, than to be right. Certainly for me, the times when everything seems to be right in my life are pretty rare. And I put a lot of energy and emphasis on accepting my life, counting my blessings, and finding beauty in the wreckage. In his poem, The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune, William Stafford defines wisdom as “having things right in your life and knowing why.” The key is in the last three words: and knowing why. This may be a question of cause: what makes things right; Or effort: what do you do to make things right; Or attitude: what point of view or frame percieves things as right in your life? Or maybe the real why of this wisdom is right there in the title.

The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
you will be overwhelmed:
you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life,
but do not know why,
you are just lucky, and you will not move
in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

The saddest are those not right in their lives,
who are acting to make things right for others:
they act only from the self –
and that self will never be right:
no luck no help no wisdom

—Willaim Stafford
https://voetica.com/poets/827/2

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about a time when things were right in your life.

  2. What do you do to make things right in your life? What conditions or circumstances create the feeling or perspective that things are right?

  3. Stafford says you will be overwhelmed if you do not have things right in your life. Is that true for you? What feelings, other than overwhelm, indicate things are not right in your life?

  4. What is your definition of wisdom? Use the prompt, Wisdom is… and free write about it.

  5. Journal or write a poem about the effort to make things right for others. When does that effort conflict with having things right in your life? In what way might acting to make things right for others actually be acting only from oneself?

  6. When does that effort to make things right for others help to have things right in your life? In what way does making things right for others make things right for you or vice versa?

  7. Journal or write a poem about the little ways you encourage good fortune. Consider picking on or two ways and go into depth with them or consider creating a list poem of several little ways you encourage good fortune.

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