More than ever, we need art to help us imagine & understand the experiences of others, because when we do, we are more likely to honor our vast & varied humanity.
Each of us has a place in the ecosystem, and there are many roles to play if one cares to engage with, & contribute to our culture, our democracy, & to the future. Here are 2 roles that need to be stepped into right now:
unsettlers
carry forth the Long Memory, forgo magical thinking, face the uncomfortable & frightening—like facts about the planet’s rising temperatures—and respond with heart & vision. unsettle expectations by proposing imaginative alternatives, rather than reacting & existing in a defensive mode.
parlayers
have power & influence, resources & connections, & use each skillfully. accept leadership & don’t assume that someone else will do what they can do, now.
*
Poetry Immersion, Winter: Contemplative Beginnings listen to your longing to write poems & spend more time engaged with art & ideas…
learn more about this first session of my new, online Poetry Immersion program here. There is room for 12. We begin January 6 and you can participate from anywhere in the world.
*
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be unveiling my new website & course offerings after nearly a year of deep reflection, imagining, connecting, creating & collaborating.
I maintain my belief in the sustaining power of art, Nature, & devoted inquiry. I continue to practice & teach resilience & collaboration. My intention is to offer you an opportunity to see the world, & your role in it, in a new way.
In our family we share poems at the table. Here’s one that feels as relevant as ever.
Thanks
by W.S. Merwin
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
Read the rest of the poemhere.
The 21 Day Poetry Challenge begins in one week. Consider joining me to end the year in a reflective and and creative mode. Our focus this season will be poetry by women.
What use is poetry? Why read and write it when our country calls to us to do the work of solving such far-reaching social, political and environmental challenges?
I have asked these questions since I was 15 and coming of age as a poet and activist, and I firmly believe that we must work for change AND nourish the human spirit with art and ideas.
We must also cultivate and defend space for our imaginations.
For the last four days I’ve woken and wrote—just like any other day. I’ve felt sad, uncertain, confounded and off-kilter, but writing and reading poetry helps me to feel more myself, and to anchor my body on this earth. To transform despair is an act of personal revolution. To turn off the news and read a poem is an act of resistance.
Everywhere I look, fellow humans are looking for meaning and perspective through literature and art becausewe need this form of wisdom.
I am a poet in the world and a peace-making rebel and I have committed my life to resisting the war against the imagination. I’ll be hosting the third annual December 21 day writing challenge for those who want to end the year with poems and writing provocations that to embolden a solid creative practice.
We begin Dec. 1 and conclude on the Solstice.
Readings will include selections from Wislawa Szymborkska, Muriel Rukeyser, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Natasha Tretheway, and others who can help us through this period in American history. Enroll here.
“Art Is Food! Art Soothes Pain! Art Wakes Up Sleepers!”—Bread and Puppet Theater
I wrote these words on my phone in the parking lot of the town hall where I voted on November 8th. They reflect my hope, my deep ache after such an awful year of political campaigning.
May we come together after so many bitter words and such division.
May our minds open to the experience and points of view of those who are not just like ourselves.
May we heal from sexism, racism, bigotry, and misunderstandings of all kinds.
May we have imagination enough to transform hate.
May we practice compassion, empathy, patience.
May we work together to steward the planet, the water, our benevolent institutions, our children, our future.
May we strengthen and expand a political process that excludes too many of us.
May the arc of the universe bend toward justice.
May kindness prevail. And decency.
May neighborliness take root—let’s get to know one another. Let’s find ways of living together without walls.
May we come to understand that we are multitudes, and that is a good thing.
May we nourish the seeds of peace in our interactions with one another, because how we speak to, and treat one another matters.
May we find our place, and do the real work that needs doing, and trust that we each have a role to play in creating a healthy, inclusive, resilient, beautiful society.
May hearts open, open, open, open, open, open, open, open, open wider than before.
Paul Reps
Today I need these words more than I realized I would when I wrote them. Rereading them to myself gives my swirling mind something to focus on, and helps me shape my energy toward the good, the loving, the possible.
How we address the future is up to each of us—and our myriad, delicate, expanding imaginations.
If you have a prayer or blessing or poem for this moment, please share.
I am honored that the good people at Gratefulness.org wanted to repost these words on their site.
It’s hard for some of us to write about what we do, especially if there isn’t a single easy term to describe what that is. And writing about who we are can feel even more daunting. I used to envy professionals who could simply say their title, and anyone would know what they meant by it. Carpenters, chefs, arborists: I have an immediate sense of what they do in the world.
I’ve always worn more than one hat at a time. Activist—Poet—Farmworker. Flower Harvester—Professor—Writer. Community Organizer—Screenprinter—Editor. Designer—Film Crew Member—Water Warrior. Jewelry Designer-Poet—Etc. (Like a lot of artists, I’ve taken a winding path.)
In truth, even though poetry has been a common denominator throughout my life, who knows what that means, or what I mean when I say it to describe myself. (It’s not just about writing poems.)
So I’ve had some practice thinking about and writing about the kind of work I do in the world, especially in the last four years, when just doing what I do was not enough. After a move to Massachusetts from Michigan, I knew that my reputation would not precede me as it might done at home, where I’d been building relationships and collaborating in my community for over a dozen years. I needed to create a space in which introduce myself to those who might be interested in connecting with me—for those I want to connect with to find me. Not easy. Not even for me, and I write for a living.
That’s me on a climb in the Sierras—a perfect metaphor for the creative process
As a result, I’ve studied the functions and pitfalls of “About” pages, that place on your website where your people will likely go to find out more about you. No more is this just a version of your professional biography or resume. It’s an opportunity to reach your people in a more personal and direct way, which usually involves close attention to narrative, voice, and clarity about who you are trying to reach.
This coming Monday, October 24, I’m running a workshop on this subject in Traverse City, Michigan. My hosts are the dynamic creative force begin the live storytelling event, Fulfillament. I believe in their mission and “The Do Series” is a chance to build skills and take concrete steps to make your work more real in the world. I’m delighted to be involved in their project, and the last time we offered this we sold out all the seats (of which there are just 20.)
The workshop is designed with freelancers, artists and entrepreneurs. Basically, if you are working for yourself, and find it difficult to get words on the page to talk about what you do, and why, please come. It’s easier when you have a guide and I will do my best to share everything I’ve figured out along the way.
(A personal side note: My DIY web-designing efforts have given way to a rich collaboration with a small team of people who are helping me do what at I do, but better and smarter. This means that later this season I’ll launch the website they’ve been designing for me.
Besides creating a useful and inviting environment for those who come to visit me in cyberspace, they’ve helped me focus sustained attention on telling the story of what I do, how, and why. Who cares? This has been an important question for me to answer for myself, and I’ve been glad for conversations with others who can make the case for me, and for all of us, who have a place in the ecosystem, and something to offer of real value.
The amount of invisible work to make something like this tangible is staggering. But also exciting. Thankfully, I’m being guided through the process with good questions and thoughtful feedback. We can often do for each other, what’s hardest to do on our own. We can offer perspective, but also strategies, examples, encouragement.
That’s how I work and what I can offer you next Monday. More info follows.
WORKSHOP: Use the art of narrative to shape others’ understanding of who you are and what you do. Ideal for artists, freelancers and entrepreneurs.
WHAT: Walk away with strategy and insights to help you write a compelling and authentic bio or “about” page for your venture, as well as greater conviction in the value of what you do in the world.
WITH: Part of the Fulfillament: Do Series, this workshop will be facilitated by award winning writer and creative advisor, Holly Wren Spaulding (Poetry Forge, STORYhouse)
WHY: Because our work matters but it can be difficult to talk and write about it (and ourselves) in a way that feels authentic and true, and yet most of us need to do this throughout our professional lives, and especially on the web. This workshop will help you write about yourself and what you DO, with more ease!
HOW: Through powerful questions, simple writing exercises, group discussion, and self-evaluation, Holly will help you articulate a clearer understanding of who you really are and how that empowers the work you currently do (or wish to do) in the world.
We trusted that taking care of ourselves would have an equally positive effect on others.
We wondered more. We began with curiosity rather than opinions.
We re-found our kid-like sense of awe.
We lived by the credo that there’s room enough for all of us—and made room for those who need it.
We trusted that generosity multiplies. That kindness begets kindness.
We forgot what we already know in order to be beginners from time to time.
We remembered what’s still wild—and defended it in ourselves, each other, the world.
We tuned-in to our own hum.*
(*Book artist and writer Suzi Banks Baum said something like that recently, and my response was: ahh. Yes. She also wrote her own version of this list. Read hers here, it begins with morning birdsong.)
What I just wrote is a response to something Seth Godin posted recently. Once I’d read his “what if” proposals, my own appeared easily during a quick free-write, thanks to his example. My friend Sara Nolan saw this opportunity, as well, and created a writing prompt for her students who are all writing college entrance exams. You can see how this is a great way to get at a personal philosophy. Sara’s list begins “What would happen if we chose to say what we mean without being mean.” What if?
If you have the urge, please share your own proposal in the comments area. (Be sure to look at Seth’s if you need a little provocation.)
By the way, I first came across Seth Godin a couple of years ago when he was interviewed by Krista Tippet on her wonderful radio show, On Being. It’s one of my favorite podcasts for ideas, poetry, and conversations about what it means to be human and to seek meaning. The most recent conversation, with Alain de Botton has been on my mind all week. I may post about it in the coming days.
“I think of a tree/ to make it / last.” Lorine Niedecker
The more I work with visual artists; the more I think of poems as forms that can shape a person’s experience of space; and the more I think of art as something that can, if we let it, provoke new feelings and experiences of familiar settings and situations; the more I want to push past the margins of the page to make texts that interact in and with the world in ways that exceed our expectations for what poems do.
Reading in silence at home in a chair is wonderful—one of my favorite things—but what happens to a reader when the text is encountered while walking through a landscape, whether urban or wild, and when the movement of the body, the presence of the sounds and scents of trees, for instance, somehow informs the understanding of the words and where they’re found?
Entrance to The Bryant Homestead, Cummington, MA
While researching for a course I taught last fall in the Comparative Arts Department at Interlochen Arts Academy, I came across an interesting passage in Brian Eno’s memoir, A Year: With Swollen Apprendices. I came across it again during this morning’s reading:
“Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences (Roy Ascott’s phrase). That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue about whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andres Serranos’s piss or little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ (…Suppose you redescribe the job ‘artist’ as ‘a person who creates situations in which you can have art experiences’.”
And if the words provoke a person to react, to confront, even to destroy them in their place, is this also art? Is this happening? Is it an indictment of the words? Or of the person who’s been unsettled by their encounter with them such that they want to erase the words?
This weekend, something happened, albeit not what we had planned to have happen.
Around the Equinox I spent two days installing a series of temporary, ephemeral, poems in trees in three locations (The Bryant Homestead, Notchview, Field Farm) in western Massachusetts. The project is called Here, Stands, a collaboration with artist and writer Melanie Mowinski, supported through funding from the Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire, in partnership with The Trustees of the Reservations. The words are hand-made from abaca pulp and although they disintegrate over time, in the elements, this installation is slated to stay up for just five weeks.
I was sick with a desperate head cold both of those days, but still enjoyed every aspect of walking in the woods, selecting trees to host our words, and literally hugging the trees while attaching paper words to their trunks. I loved the way those long days in the woods helped me to perceive the subtle shifts in the quality of light, and to notice the shifting sounds of the woods as we walked the sites where our poems will hang for the next couple of months.
As we returned from hanging our last words at The Bryant Homestead, former home of the 19th century poet William Cullen Bryant, a nature lover and proponent of the land conservation movement, we passed a woman and child on the Rivulet Trail as they came upon one of the first sets of words in our series. The girl seemed to be learning how to read, and it was a thrill to hear our fragment of poetry in the voice of an eight year old who wanted to know what “linger” meant, a question that resulted in a sweet exchange between the duo as they ambled deeper into an old growth forest that Bryant had loved his whole life, and which influenced his own writing in profound ways. Melanie and I looked at each other and smiled. It felt like we’d accomplished something we’d hoped for: a moment of wonder, of conversation, of thinking about what it might mean to “linger/among trees.”
Two days later I returned with my husband and seven year old daughter to show them what I’d been working on over the past year or so. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that the words that had so captivated that other little girl were gone, as were a few others. I even found one set of words torn and wadded on ground at the base of their chosen tree, a beautiful mature maple. This wasn’t done by someone who objected to our words because they are dedicated to the”leave no trace” ethos, as had been my theory for why the other words had been removed. So what’s the problem? And who would do this? And why?
I wondered if we’d offended someone’s sense of what a nature trail should be, although this one is not part of a designated wilderness, and there are already permanent plaques with Bryant’s poems along the same route. I wondered if the tone of the poem had offended, with it’s gentle suggestion to take a little time to become even more present to the forest surroundings. I wondered if the person or people who’d damaged our work had felt they were better judges of what belonged in the landscape, although one of the express purposes of the programming at the Bryant Homestead is to encourage a deeper connection and more interaction with the natural environment, through art and literature. I wondered if the poems themselves (many of them are composed of just a couple of words) just weren’t that great, and so a hiker felt justified in returning the path to a more natural state, without our words. I might have spent more time doubting my own creation if I didn’t feel so shocked that someone else would take it upon themselves to pass judgement in this way.
As a society, we know we spend too little time outdoors and so many of us just don’t have much of a connection with the trees and plants and creatures that can be found there. And we also know that we are far less likely to defend our natural world from things like over-development, or pollution, or resource exploitation, much less the realities of climate change, if we don’t have an actual relationship with these places. The purpose of the Here, Stands project is to bring attention to the trees, and to provoke some thinking about their place in the ecosystem, which includes both the practical and the poetic ways they provide for us human beings.
On the path at Notchview, Windsor, MA
I was disappointed and saddened to be faced with such a swift rejection. No, it was a violation. We’d spent the last year developing this project and already it had been damaged—just two days after installation. A familiar sense of isolation filled me. Too often I think that I don’t belong to this time, and to this culture, and Sunday was one of those times when I felt this especially viscerally.
Why is it the norm, and essentially okay, to plaster our public spaces with corporate logos and injunctions to do this, and not do other things, and yet when we bring a piece of subtle, silent art into a public space we’re met with antagonism?
Four days later I’m philosophical. I’ve decided that the vandalism of Here, Stands is a reflection of how art really does have the power to cause strong responses in people. Maybe this means that we’ve done something, even as it’s been undone. Or maybe it’s more mundane than that and it wasn’t personal, and we just I have to accept the times we’re living through, which are hostile, and as divided as ever, will result in petty displays of individual dislikes (I’m thinking here of friends who’ve had their political yard signs damaged by strangers).
What are some other ways of thinking about this that still give credence to what we’re doing with this project. Other people have already expressed their enthusiasm for it, so we’ll continue to write these poems, and partner with parks and other natural areas to engage the public in thinking about trees.
While almost everyone else I know of watched the first Presidential debates the night after this all happened, I decided to curl into my chair and read poetry instead. This poem by Alan Dugan, “On Looking for Models,” gave me comfort:
I want to say that I have loved everything about this project: collaborating with a visual artist I admire and have learned so much from; spending time in the woods, thinking and learning about trees; and partnering with the good people at The Trustees, who get it, and want to create these spaces in which art and artists and the public can interact around the topics of conservation, literature, art, love of the natural world, and the meaning of our place within these wilder landscapes.
I’d be glad to hear your thoughts on anything this post brings to mind.
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about, though Adrienne Rich wrote these words all the way back in 2001:
“Our senses are currently whip-driven by a feverish new pace of technological change. The activities that mark us as human, though, don’t begin, exist in, or end by such a calculus. They pulse, fade out, and pulse again in human tissue, human nerves, and in the elemental humus of memory, dreams, and art, where there are no bygone eras. They are in us, they can speak to us, they can teach us if we desire it.”
I found this passage in Christian McEwen’s thoughtful little book: Tortoise Diaries: Daily Meditations on Creativity and Slowing Down. Regular readers of this newsletter know that I admire McEwen’s writing and thinking very much, and have appreciated her literary influence (and wise friendship) in recent years.
I am writing to let you know that there’s just one week left to get the Early Bird rate for my Fall Poetry Apprenticeship Program. I designed this online course to meet the needs of busy people who want to read and study and write in a deep and pleasurable way but don’t have much time, can’t afford to go to grad school or to conferences, and mostly do this sort of thing out of a pure form of love, and because they want to immerse themselves in an act that helps some of that busyness (and even some of life’s nonsense) to recede. Your apprenticeship is with and to the books and poems you admire and read, as much as it is with me, a working writer who has ideas about how to bring poetry into daily life in a real way. In the eight week course do this by:
Reading poems every week and using them as pathways to our own new work (via assignments)
Having conversations about the way we work and why, and trouble-shooting things like resistance, self-doubt, stuckness (via private tutorials)
Thinking about what we want to do with our lives (really . . . it happens internally and is inherent to the process.)
Stretching the space that poetry occupies so that there’s more of it, and fewer low-grade worries, negative rumination, and noise in our heads (via practice)
This whole P R O C E S S allows the mind to go a little wild. Allows language to arise and crystalize. Allows restoration of the nerves. Allows for softening of self-judgement. Allows your work to be M A D E R E A L. I could go on.
You will leave the Fall session with 8 new poems-in-draft and you will feel good about them (I’ll tell you why). You will have greater comprehension of some of the elements of craft, and more faith that this sort of activity–that poetry itself–has a role to play in your life, and in our changing world.
Poetic activity is a profound tool for personal transformation as well as an antidote to the misuse and abuse of language and ideas that is all too prevalent during election times. We need more poems and more poets and less punditry and politics. Don’t you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section if you like. It’s nice for me to know who’s reading me when I send these notes into the void.
(With thanks to Muireann De Barra for taking this photo of me looking at the Pamet River in West Truro, Cape Cod.)
My poem-elf fantasy—and one of the reasons I write this blog—is that a poem I leave behind falls into the right hands at just the right time, and a life is enriched, a perspective altered, an experience understood. When I place a poem in a tree or on a sidewalk or store shelf, I always imagine the person who finds it. Let’s call that fantasy, named after today’s poem, “Sometimes, a poem.” As in, sometimes a poem can change everything. But also, sometimes a poem changes just a little thing. Even a little thing is a lot work for a few words to do.
Unfortunately, the only time I’ve been aware of Sometimes, a poem happening, it’s been happening to me. And once again, Poem Elf has elf-ed herself. “Sometimes, the Field” caught me unawares even after I had chosen it, printed it, and thought about where to put it. Over several readings, the poem illuminated an experience I had had. There was no lightening bolt of understanding—just a burrowing into my conscious life and a permanent residency there.
I came across this poem because poet Holly Wren Spaulding made a comment on Poem Elf. Her beautiful name intrigued me. Turns out she’s a poet who spends summers in northern Michigan, as I do. I decided to put one of her poems up north, in its native habitat, so to speak. When I looked through her work, my choice was instinctive: “Sometimes, the Field.”
I have my own field, you see, but I’ll get to that later. First, Spaulding’s field.
The field in the poem is dark and moody, full of movement and the drama of a coming storm. The poem’s speaker has come here with a restlessness of her own, a soulful hunger. She wants something. What she wants is not to have the hunger she came with.
I mean to come clean of everything—
No reason to want what isn’t.
As she steps into the field, she observes her environs with a quiet respect that draws me in. Somehow the way she knows her place in the field makes me feel tender to her. She sidesteps the ants’ work. She waits quietly in the weeds and wet earth. She admires the skill of the birds not crashing into the wildly flying branches.
As she waits in the milkweed and withering thistle, she becomes absorbed into the landscape, and the external and internal storms come together:
It fills my mouth.
I am a wet outline now.
The heavy humid air has connected her to the memory of a long ago road trip, a lost romance. Overwhelmed with grief, she falls to her knees.
We don’t know if the storm will wash away her pain. She may well leave the field with the same hunger she came in with, the wanting what isn’t. But at least she’s been able to mourn it openly, dramatically. Cathartically, I hope.
My tenderness for this speaker grows as I picture her on her knees in the open field, weeping, giving over her body to grief. The field allows her to express emotion un-self-consciously, a great gift. You can’t cry this way in a cubicle or mall unless you enjoy being stared at or whispered about. If you fall on your knees anywhere but church, someone will call an ambulance.
(With thanks to Muireann De Barra for taking this photo of me looking at the Pamet River in West Truro, Cape Cod.)
Holly Wren Spaulding 