special sharing of November 15

Yesterday, thanks to Rose-Marie, we heard this amazing reading of the poem  I was in a Hurry : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPCXnL_AQiA

She also sent this amazing link sent to her by  Kenny Lerner who said it is old but which has so much resonance today with all the chaos in the Middle East. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7YWCuPaDcs

Kenny Lerner and Peter Cook of Flying Words Project were inspired by a visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to create this poem. Humanity can be the author of destruction, but it can also bring beauty. We need to make a better world. This poem was created in Amboise, France in 2015.

** Saturday, Nov. 18, 1:30, Bob Darling, who teaches at Keuka College,  will be presenting the poetry of Richard Wilbur at the meeting of Just Poets.  It will be held at the Pittsford Community Center. 35 Lincoln Avenue, 2nd floor.  For Nov. 15-6 we discussed The Beautiful Changes and Hamlen Brook

 Here are others he also included:

A Barred Owl: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49432/a-barred-owl

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World (one of my favorites, and I believe we've discussed several times!) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43048/love-calls-us-to-the-things-of-this-world

Still, Citizen Sparrow https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43054/still-citizen-sparrow

Year’s End https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43052/years-end-56d221b9e6bd8

The Writer https://poets.org/poem/writer

Judith read her "holiday" poem -- as she put it:" I will be eighty-nine years old in January and I am effing fed up with this nonsense!"

  

O little town of Bethlehem can we see thee at all?

When winds blow north and also east th’art covered by a pall

Of ash and smoke and fragments from murderous lust to kill

The echoes of the drones and bombs rebound from hill to hill.

 

Not silently, not silently, those winds of hate do blow

But with a horrid resonance malevolence do show.

Whatever gods rule over this poor distracted land

Can neither stay nor yet assuage hate’s raging heavy hand.

 

Thus in thy dark streets shineth no glimmer of a light

But everlasting woe and pain with no relief in sight. 

No glint of hope is shown us this winter’s frosty night

Appeals fly up but are they heard?--just gripping, aching fright.

 

 

Bethlehem is just 64 miles north and east of the Gaza strip.

 

Judith shared by email  another poem, and also news about World Philosophy Day... 

By All Things Planetary

 

By all things planetary, sweet, I swear

Those hands shall not contain these hands again

Until I get me gloves of ice to wear.  

For you are the headiest of men, your speech

Is whiskey and your grin is gin.  

I am well drunken, is there water near?  

I’ve need of gloves of ice to hem me in.  

But come here, let me put it in your ear, 

I would not want them now.  You gave me

This wildness to drink, now water seems too pale

And now I know deep summer is a bliss 

I have no wish for weathering the gale.

So when I ask for gloves of ice to wear

Laugh at me, I am lying, sweet, I swear.

 

                                                                                    Gwendolyn Brooks

 

UNESCO World Philosophy Day Thursday November 16, 2023-- 4 links provided: 

Is Moral Rome Possible, by Nicolai Olmenchenko

new Erich Fromm website >fromm-online.org<

Paper, British Moralists and the British Empire by Dr. David White: The Midwest Conference on British Studies

List of Western NY societies: American Canoe Association; Master Gardener Network; NY Archives Conference, 

+ Performative Philosophy (utopian societies: The Burned-Over District by Whitney Cross (1950)

School of Dreams, “I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” (Henry David Thoreau)