Dispatches from 7/23 Poet Laureate Office Hours (prompt included!):

It’s a really special thing to spend a Saturday morning talking poems! We had a really rich discussion on Limón’s “How to Triumph Like a Girl,” mostly in awe of the transformation that takes place in the span of the poem and how sequencing and imagery lead to what the poem uncovers. By the conversation’s end, the poem was referred to as a “revelation.”

We looked at some of our own poems and thought about how we can recreate the human body and its functions in the world of our own poems.

Finally, we sank into every word of "I Come From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be Seen," by Kari Gunter-Seymour. The poem is doing SO MUCH, but we focused on just a few of its many fascinating themes: longing; the consequence and gifts of memory; how external forces affect our inner world; and the fullness through which losses can be represented, particularly when a poem is populated with elements of the natural world--the paradox blew our minds!

We came back to the final line “Everything alive aches for more” and this was a springboard for conversation (featured in the photos) and ultimately our prompt (also featured in the photos). Maybe you want to write your own poem? I did and it took me to a surprising and important place.

Grateful to talk about and engage with reading and writing poetry. It is a blessing. Thank you Jacob and David for the joy of this morning. Looking forward to sharing these moments with you in the future!