1) Read the Prologue, Invitation, and Chapters 1 through 3 in Saved by a Poem.

2) I recommend that you choose a poem as a companion each month (or at whatever pace is right for you) Read it daily, learn it by heart if you so choose, speak/read it to others, journey with it.

3) An Autobiography in Poems. All of us have been touched by poems at crucial moments in our lives. Even if it wasn’t a poem, there have been song lyrics, or prayers, or chants that have helped you through. I’d like you to choose 2 or more periods in your life when, in Neruda’s words, poetry touched you, and write about them. Please include the poem, or a link to the poem, and write about how that poem infused your life at the crucial moment. When you’re finished writing, copy your material and paste it into a “comment” below.

4) Writing chapter Three of Saved by a Poem was one of the biggest thrills and steepest learning curves I encountered in the process of writing the book. It was so much fun to write each of those stories, to research them, to do the interviews, to the find language to convey the miracles they held.

SUGGESTION: Write your own Saved by a Poem story. Maybe it is a story of someone you know or have heard of. Maybe it’s something that happened when you gave a friend or a client a poem. Maybe it is about a moment in your own life when you were saved by a poem (feel free to expand on one of those you mention in your Autobiography in Poems). Maybe you MAKE IT UP and create a fictional character and situation. Maybe you take a historical event or person and use your imagination to embellish a story — a jewish person reciting poetry in the concentration camp, for instance, or someone in the time of Sappho or Homer. Have a good time!

ONE LAST NOTE: Your replies to each other MATTER! Please do comment on each other’s posts, even simply by quoting a few lines back to the writer, so she knows what touches you as you read. Do this by hitting the (very small) “reply” at the end of each person’s posting.

I can hardly wait to read your words!!

Blessings to all,

Kim