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 8/15/2024 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

I have a long history of working with physical symptoms, both my own and with my clients. I assume symtoms are a form of communication. The body talks through sensation and in degrees of pleasure and pain. Personally, I have had a conflicted relationship with my body, which at times seems to be a teacher and other times a tormentor. So, I was keen to read Anna Swir’s poem, I Talked To My Body, when I happened across it in Cselaw Milosz’ A Book Of Luminous Things: An Anthology of International Poetry, Swir’s poem embraces the body as an animal that, when well-trained, can do amazing things (as dispalyed in Olympic Games). The poem arrived at a perfect time as I have been grappling with problematic symptoms. I immediately wrote the following: I talked to my body and my body talked back. I thought it was an argument. I talked to my body and my body laid flat. I thought it was a doormat. I talk to my body and my body turned its back. I thought it was a disrespectful act. Then I stopped talking and I started to listen. I vowed to love my body better. Now I am surprised at its forgiveness in every act of care I give it!

I Talked To My Body

My body, you are an animal
who is appropriate behavior
is concentration and discipline.
An effort
of an athlete,
of a saint and of a yogi.

Well trained
you may become for me
a gate
through which I will leave myself
and a gate
through which I will enter myself.
A plum line to the center of the earth
and the cosmic ship to Jupiter.

My body, you are an animal
for whom ambition is right.
Splendid possibilities
are open to us.

Anna Swir
—Translated from Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
https://gladdestthing.com/poems/i-talk-to-my-body

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem conversing with the body. You can use Swir’s title as the prompt: I talked to my body….

  2. Swir likens the body to an animal. Use the prompt, My Body, you are… and free write from there. Or, if you stay with the body as animal, write you own understanding of how it is so.

  3. Swir says the animal body’s “appropriate behavior is concentration and discipline.” What would you say is the body’s apporpriate behavior?

  4. Journal or write a poem about the body as a gate.

  5. Journal or write in the persona of the body: How does the body relate to the world around. What are the body’s ambitions?

  6. Journal or write a poem about the possibilities the body opens for you (and,if you like, the pitfalls i tmay present to you).

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