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 3/20/25 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

Over the weekend, I attended a retreat with the poet Mark Nepo. He gave us the assignment to bring a photo of ourselves as  toddler or young child. Our task was to identify a quality or trait the photo captures and describe how that quality/trait has been affected by and expressed in our lives. I took the assignment as an opportunity to explore the perseverance of some “natural” proclivity or fundamental inclination. Then, today, when looking for a prompt poem, I came across the poem Perseverance by Romanian poet Marin Sorescu. The narrator sets the intent of using observational perseverance to become intimate with nature and life by attending to something long enough for it to become a teacher; toobserve grass until you get a Doctor of Grass or watch clouds until you get a Master of Clouds. This weeks prompts consider both sides of perseverance: What haspersevered in youor life on its own and how do you use pereverance to learn, and develop yourself?

Perseverence

I shall look at the grass.
Till I obtain the degree
Of doctor of grass.

I shall look at the clouds.
Till I become a Master
Of clouds.

I shall walk beside the smoke
Till out of shame
The smoke returns to the flame
Of its beginning.

I shall walk beside all things
Till all things
Come to know me.

—Marin Sorescu
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/marin-sorescu
Translated from the Romanian by D.J. Enright and Joanna Russell-Gebbet

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem using the assignment from Mark Nepo desctibed in my thoughts: find a photo of you as a child and describe a quaility or trait you see in yourself in that photo. It may also be interesting to show the photo to others and ask what quality or trait they see in that child.

  2. Journal or write about a quality or trait that has persevered in you throughout your life. How has the expression of it changed over time? In what circumstances does it expand or contract?

  3. Pick something in nature and sit with it (or return to it) until it gives you an insight or evokes a quality or trait you want to develop or strentgten. In what way can it help you to grow?

  4. What have you looked at or walked beside in your life so much or sooften that you could say you have earned a Doctorate in or Masters Degree of its teachings? If not yet, what would you like to persist in looking at or being with until you do earn a degree from it.

  5. Is there a place in nature, or in your yard or house, that you have walked through o rbeside so often that you feel the things in that spacehave cometo know you? Journal or write what they know about you.

  6. Pick things in the world around you that you would like to use as your teacher and then use Sorescu’s structure as your prompt: I shall (look at, listen to, walk beside, touch, smell, taste, etc.) name of thing till …

  7. Or simply take the word Perseverance as the title of your poem and journal or write an ode to perseverance. Or personify it. Or simply write about what the word evokes in you and how you relate to it.

  8. Sorescu says he will walk beside smoke till “out of shame the smoke returns to the flame.” What does that mean to you? In what way can you be present with your shame until you return to the flame out of which it has arisen.

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