Read the poem
Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you
Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…
Use the selection of prompts below the poem
Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…
Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes
Attempts
When the old life is
burning, everything will
smell like ash for a while.
So trust your heart,
not your nose.
Trust the music of the
ages to surface what’s left
way inside. Wait like a
cello for each rub to
bring you closer.
Learn how to ask for
what you need, only to
practice accepting what
you’re given. This is our
journey on earth.
—Mark Nepo
https://marknepo.com
Mark is also offering a virtual event in October:
More together Than Alone
The Power and Spirit of Community
https://live.marknepo.com
Please join in for Round 6 of Writing From The Inside Out by attending the September 2020 read-around sessions on Friday afternoons (it’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:
Next Read Around is September 11, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST
My Thoughts
Mark Nepo’s poem, Attempts, opens with a metaphor that I think captures the collective feeling of our time: that our old lives are burning, literally for some and metaphorically for many. We know that something smells, that something is seriously off in the world. Meanwhile, we are swimming in a sea of conspiracy theories and alternate facts that leave us deeply troubled about who or what we can trust. On a collective level, this may be the most important question of our time.
It is a quaint and comforting thought that we may get the answers we need if only we could trust our own hearts. But this is no simple matter because we have all been misled by our hearts, skewered by our own passion or shamed by our own emotional outbursts. We use the word heart both as the organ of emotion, like the cello string that vibrates as the world rubs against us, and as a pointer to what is essential, like the music that underlies it all and to which we can tune ourselves and, as we move closer, find harmony with what we are given.
Week 22 Prompt Menu
Write a poem about the ways in which the old life (your life or the lives of others, the life of the community or the culture) has gone up in flames, or been reduced to ashes, or changed in such a way that it may not be recognizable.
Nepo advises trusting your heart above all else. But the heart can also be deceived, easily swayed, and sometimes tethered to a cart heading for the cliff edge. Write a poem about what it means to trust your heart and how to discern its true guidance against the the sway of tirggered emotions and the tide of the time.
The instruments that play music and the score sheets that record notes can be burned away, but music itself is immune to fire and can even sing through fire. Write a poem or song lyrics that you would attribute to the music of the ages surfacing in you at this time. Or write what is singing through the fire that is burning away the old life.
Nepo offers the image of a cello waiting for the rub that brings it closer to its purpose, to its own music. What brings you closer to that which is inside of you? What brings you closer to your own music?
Trapped in our homes for so long in the pandemic with windows and doors shuttered against the raging fires and smoke filled skies, many of us are eagerly waiting for a return to “normal:” for a chance to be out in the world mixing and mingling with family, friends, and loved ones without masks or fear of killing each other off while also knowing normal may never be normal again. Write a popem exploring what you are really waiting for in your life, perhaps what you were waiting for even before the pandemic took away your freedom of movement but you never knew it because you were too busy running your life.
Write a poem about the deeper things, (deeper truths, deeper experiences), that continue on, or that come from way inside and can survive and thrive no matter of how much of our outer world is burned away.
If you were granted permission to ask for what you truly need now in this strange time, what would you ask for and from whom? Or write a poem that compares and contrasts what you need with what you are given. Explore how you might accept what you are given even when it seems the antithesis of what you need or want.
Nepo’s poem declares itself at the end to be the journey of our life on earth. Write your own poem describing what the journey of life on earth is about from your perspective.
Write from whatever else in the poem inspires you or from elsewhere in your life.