On Foreshadowing & Intuition

Some thoughts, a poem & a writing prompt

Hi, Friend.

I’ve been thinking a lot about intuition. When do we know what we know? And what about before the knowing—when we have a prickle, or a sense of unease? I spoke to Amanda de Cadenet for her podcast, The Conversation, a few weeks ago, and it was a sort of deep dive in lightning-round form: a handful of very big questions. The very first question Amanda asked was, “What is the one big way you have changed for the better?” This was my answer:

I trust myself more than I ever have. I think I spent a fair number of years only listening to the inner voice if it said what I wanted to hear. If that little voice, that intuition voice, told me something I didn’t want to know, or wasn’t pleased with, I would sort of dial the radio station to a different frequency.

Intuition is tricky like that, isn’t it? When the little voice inside tells us something painful or inconvenient, it’s tempting to ignore it or discount it. To shake it off. Later, looking back, we can see what we weren’t able—or ready, or willing—to see. In You Could Make This Place Beautiful, I wrote about being unable to see my own life—and particularly my own marriage—clearly, except in the rear-view mirror.

It’s a mistake to think of one’s life as plot, to think of the events of one’s life
as events in a story. It’s a mistake. And yet, there’s foreshadowing everywhere,
foreshadowing I would’ve seen myself if I’d been watching a play or reading a
novel, not living a life.

Intuition might offer us foreshadowing if we pay attention. Otherwise, we only see and understand in hindsight.

When I answered Amanda’s question, I was thinking about all the work I’ve done over the past several years to trust myself more, and to listen to what my intuition and my nervous system are telling me. I hope I’m raising my children to do the same.

As I was metabolizing all of this, not to mention trying to process the alarming news over the past week, I stumbled across this poem by Sarah Green in the latest issue of Sixth Finch. It’s in her forthcoming collection, The Deletions, which I can’t wait to get my hands on.

I love this poem—the matter-of-factness of its tone, the juxtaposition of images within and across stanzas, the suspenseful line breaks, and the emotional resonance of the closing. I also think “Foreshadowing” makes for a strong writing prompt.

So, this is your prompt: Write your own poem, titled “Foreshadowing,” with an epigraph to give credit: after Sarah Green. List events and observations from your own life, and play with the order: What makes the strongest opening? What makes the most compelling exit? What images spark off of one another if they get to live in the same stanza? If prose feels better than poetry as a container for this thinking, try it as a prose poem or an essay, with paragraphs instead of stanzas.

May we trust ourselves more, and may we listen more—to the voice inside, and to the voices of those we respect.

Take good care,
Maggie