Write Out — the place-based writing adventure — happens in October, but we’re starting to spark some interest by offering poetry prompts. I took the one from this week — with The Valley as a mentor poem — and used repetition for my own.
Peace (in the wander),
Kevin
(Note: this is a shadow silhouette just down the street from the Emily Dickinson Museum. Next to it is another shadow silhouette, of Robert Frost, who also lived in Amherst for parts of his life, as a professor. They would not have known each other, due to years lived, but Frost no doubt knew of Dickinson’s poetry)
I’ve long admired Emily Dickinson for her poetry and her amazingly fertile mind. I’ve read books about her and explored some of her poems. What I hadn’t done is visited the Emily Dickinson Museum. Which is odd, since it is only about a 20 minute drive from where I live and I passed by the Amherst, Massachusetts site often enough on the way to other things.
I fixed that yesterday, spending a few hours at the historical site, which has two main buildings: the home where Emily Dickinson lived and wrote, for most of her adult life, and the adjoining home where her brother and her sister-in-law lived. (Her sister-in-law, Susan, was a key player in Emily’s life, with plenty of romantic speculation, but at the very least, Emily wrote and sent nearly 250 poems to Susan).
You learn a lot about her life, of course, but I found the most interesting space was her room, and the chair and little desk where she spent so much time, thinking, and then writing her poems and letters. The desk is set in front of a window that, at the time, presented a wide view of the center of Amherst (with farmlands in between). There is a sense of wonder at the mind at work, in the quiet, and mostly by herself, as she penned poetry that would one day become the fascination of the literary world (thanks to her sister, who discovered the 1800 poems after Emily’s death).
I had some inklings about the legal battles that took place over her poems, but the more I learned about the two camps — one, led by her niece, was to keep her punctuation and words intact, while the other was in favor of heavy editing, adding punctuation and rhyming word replacements — the more I thought of Emily, writing her days away, capturing the world on scraps of paper, stuffed into her pockets and desk.
Observation: I was the only male in our tour of about 12 people. Most of the other were young women from around the country, and most had not only watched the Dickinson TV show (on Apple, which uses historical information but with a modern twist) but were fascinated by the props that the TV show donated to the museum, and were rapt listeners as the tour guide shared poems throughout the event. I had the sense that some of these young women were writers and poets, come to see how Dickinson lived and wrote in the world.
If you want to learn more about Emily Dickinson’s poems, my Western Massachusetts Writing Project colleague (and former site director, and my good friend) Bruce Penniman is hosting a virtual workshop through the museum in late August entitled “Through The Dark Sod” and it is designed for educators. More information is here.
Peace (and poems),
Kevin
The prompt for DS106 Daily Create today is all about the International Day of Friendship. I made this loop track for all of my CLMOOC friends out there. You know who you are.
Peace (and song),
Kevin
I appreciate the unexpected elements of the prompts for each month’s Open Write at Ethical ELA. Here are my poems from this month.
Peace (and poems),
Kevin
We went to a jazz fusion show last night — Tony Vacca and the Fusion Nomads — that just blew us away, and I woke up, still thinking of how magical it was to see this amazing group of musicians in such a small performance space.
So, I used the memory for this morning’s Open Write poem.
Peace (and sound),
Kevin
Google’s AI Labs is a place I peek into every now and then, to see what they are up to. I came across something called Infinite Wonderland and fell into the hole of explorations.
The AI site uses the text of Alice In Wonderland. After choosing an artistic style from five different options (all very different and odd, but also including the style of original book illustrator John Tenniel to play with), you open up the story of Alice and choose sentences/passages. The AI then generates new art for each sentence you have chosen, creating an original picture book image for any sentence you want through its AI image generator.
I have to admit, this use of AI for story was intriguing as an interactive reading experience, and even toggling through the five styles on a single passage, it was fun to see what the AI could create.
Here is a video of the artists at work.
Peace (rabbit!),
Kevin
The first newsletter of Write Out for 2024 (theme: Poetry For The Planet) arrived in my email bin (I am also helping with some facilitation) with an invitation to use Mary Oliver’s Can You Imagine? for inspiration to craft a poem. The place-based Write Out takes place in October.
Read the Write Out Newsletter and consider writing/sharing a poem of wonder.
Peace (while dancing in the rain),
Kevin
A recent collection of poems, edited and curated by Ada Limon, inspired me to write some of my own poems, borrowing lines to build off. The original lines all come from poems in You Are Here: Poetry In The Natural World (edited by Ada Limon)
The sky is a century with no windows
from ‘To A Blossoming Saguaro’
by Eduardo C. Corral—
lost count long ago
of how many rainstorms
arrived after you wandered
the windows left open, too,
time just dribbling in
with the wind, letting rotations
moisten the frame around which
the world might be watched,
one tear after the other year
until the canvas of sky
disappeared entirely
i’m sorry to the trees i grew up with
from ‘You Must Be Present’
by Jose Olivarez
–
I couldn’t find you now in the woods even if I tried
which sends me sad but maybe makes you glad
that this thief with a knife and a Sunday morning free
can’t add to the harm that was done to your skin,
the rough outline of a curved saxophone swallowed up
but for my dreaming, the protective sap that stuck
to the edge lip of the knife, how hard it was to wipe it off,
never closing tight ever again, like my eyes
in the remembering – the cut but not the place
where blood was drawn
make small steps.
in this wild place
there are signs of life
everywherefrom ‘Lullaby For The Grieving (at the Sipsey River)’
by Ashley M. Jones–
slow go slow
this we know
but always forgotten –
that the wild places
wild spaces have stories
to tell, poems composed
beneath roots, reverberations
of a turning Earth, cursed
to forget the role of reader:
slow go slow
this we know
I only use words like stones because we are far away
from ‘Close-Knit Flower Sack’
by Cedar Sigo
We used to search
riverbeds and
shore lines
for the flattest of stone,
the thinnest of story,
just smoothed-out words,
in order to skip across
the surface as if
what we were saying was
lighter than air,
but no longer –
now we spend time
on the odd rocks
with strange angles,
the kind that makes
a distinct sound
one rarely forgets,
before plunging under
water
the moon mistaken
for a hole in the skyfrom ‘If Fire’
Jake Skeets–
fingers
in the stars,
then,the galaxy,
a tapestry
of etchingsI’ve begun
to come
unwoven againfilling space
with words
and dreams
… the rivers
will set their stones and ribbons
at your door if only
you’ll let the world
soften you with its touching
from ‘Reasons To Live’
Ruth Awad
–
Raw sound bathes
the boy, the ripples
of river on stone,
he submerges himself,
nearly but not really,
alone, his mind, a million
miles from home
Thanks to all the poets who wrote and to Ada Limon for choosing and supporting those poems and poets.
Peace (in the natural world),
Kevin
