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 the poem

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

Two Poems by Juan Ramon Jimenez

I Am Not I

I am not I.
I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
And whom at other times I forget;
The one who remains silent when I talk,
The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
The one who takes a walk where I am not,
The one who will remain standing when I die.

—Translated by Robert Bly

I Unpetalled You

I unpetalled you, like a rose,
to see your soul,
and I didn’t see it.

But everything around
—horizons of lands and seas—
everything out to the infinite,
was filled witha fragrance,
enormous and alive.

—Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Juan Ramon Jimenez was a Spanish Poet and writer who won the 1956 Nobel Prize for literature.

Next Read Around is September 18, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

These two short poems by Juan Ramon Jimenez share something in common: they both hint at the unknowable essence of the self. I am not I addresses the otherness within each of us. On many occasions, I’ve had potent moments where I felt “another” me, another presence that sometimes looks through my eyes and listens through my ears and sometimes seems to walk beside me as described by Jimenez. I could call it the soul, the spirit body, the essential self, the witness, etc.. It is a distinct essence, wordless in its wonder, observing without judging, patient, kind, and forgiving. Like Jimenez, I sometimes manage to visit this other. Mostly, I am lost in my own tendency to word the world and forget this silent presence. But when I do remember, or when life or somone “unpetals” me bringing the “I that I am not” into view, I am often astonished by the sense of an entirely different life that is lived outside of my awareness.

“I Unpetalled You,” seems to me to descibe what happens when we glimpse the bare essence of another. We’ve all had moments of robust vulnerability when life or another person unpetalled us or when we, either intentionally or accidentally, unpetalled someone else. These are often tender, truthful moments when one is cracked open, or touched deeply, and you witness a precious, beautiful, unnamable and unknowable essence. Jimenez describes how we, as privileged witnesses, are then, often, expanded beyond ourselves. Love can do this; deep acceptance can too; and so can good poetry!

Week 23 Prompt Menu

1. Write a poem about your experience of the “I” that Jimenez describes in “I Am Not I.”

2. Write a poem describing how you forget and remember yourself.

3. The title, I Am Not I, implies that the other “I” is actually more real than the I with which we identify because it is always there with us and it will live on beyond us. Imagine you are given a chance to talk with the other ”I” walking beside you. What would the other I — the witness of this piece of life, the one who remains silent, forgiving, and able to go where you do not go, the one who will still be standing after die — what would that I say to you or tell you.

4. Write about the other life this other I might be living. In other words, give yourself free rein to imagine another identity and write about it.

5. Write a poem describing a time when you felt you were unpetalled by life or by another person.  What effects has it had on you? (Note: The word “Unpetalled” seems dangeroulsy close to the English term “deflowered",” which refers to loss of virginity or, by extension, loss of innocence or some form of extreme disillusionment. I do not know if similar metahors are used in Spanish; Certainly, there have been attempts to unpetal others in drastic ways. In this sense, you could say military boot camps serves to unpetal someone, to strip the person to the core).

6. Recall a time when you felt yourself expanded, or as if everything around you was alive; and if you have not had such an experience, give yourself poetic license and imagine what it might be like. Write about what did or could inspire this state? What was it is like, or could be like, to be in such a state?

7. Write a poem describing how someone surprised you or how you learned something about him or her you did not know or suspect and how this changed your image of the person. For instance, I recently found out that a friend I have known for several years is actually a 911 survivor and knowing this about him changed my image of him.

8. Write from whatever else in the poem inspires you or from elsewhere in your life.