The idea: introduce people who have never attended Poetry Oasis or O Pen to interactive poetry.
So, 4 people, Kathy Potteti, Resident Services & Community Outreach Coordinator, Valley Manor and I
gathered. I shared Phyllis Cole Dai, "How to Pick and Eat Poems"-- just repeat these lines, and you will feel your lips smacking as you "taste the words".
put a poem on our lips! Chew its pulp!
Not everyone had the poems, so it made a shared reading impossible. However, after hearing them, each participant was invited to share what brought them here.
David is new to poetry and curious to find out more.
Robin is an artist and also intrigued to go beyond the words to get a better sense of meaning.
Toni shared how she had written poems about her garden, and recently the niece to whom she had sent the one written after the birth of her baby, mentioned this poem, now decades later!
Debbie had to leave early, but we'll look forward to hearing what she has to say.
John, wearing his "Bird Watcher" shirt, read a poem he had written in 1973 about the experience
of viewing Chicago from an airplane -- the streets like concrete veins... the railroad like slashes of rust... not a person in sight. Very much like now with quarantine.
Poems slated:
The Question Mark by Gevorg Emin
Wedding Poem by Ross Gay
Snow Drops by Louis Glück
Characteristics of Life by Camille Dungy
Paul Robeson by Gwendolyn Brooks
Ishidourou (Japanese Stone Lanterns)
The Question Mark: We enjoyed the humor, the way the speaker of the poem uses a gentle tone asking the personnified punctuation about the "force which bent it over"... about how once it was
an exclamation point... and that last visual description of the bent shape, as if weary... and then
wise... turned like this!
The Wedding poem has delicious sounds, such as sunflower curled its giant/swirling of seed,
images brought alive with amusing descriptions, and again, personnification of sunflower and finch as falling in love. Ross Gay chronicles gladness. The looping of one sentence switching back and forth from short, then longer lines adds to the insouciant, innocent and very real gladness.
Snowdrops, from the point of view of a flower surviving underground... remembering how to push up and respond to light... is an apt metaphor for quarantine... and a reminder that when this is over, we will again have a chance to cry out, "yes" -- risk joy// in the raw wind of the new world."
Characteristics of life: timely poem for Earth Day's 50th anniversary... Not much commentary on
the spineless species-- and our similarities... especially now... Encouraging to think if a firefly
sends his signals which look to us to be an "impossible hope" to find a mate to satisfy his longing... our wordless desire as well, is worth note...
For Paul Robeson, I mentioned how, even if you didn't know this remarkable man,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson
you feel the power of the Bass Baritone voice, singing old Gospel songs like "Steal Away" with the hidden codes for the Underground Railroad; you hear the work song rhythms sung by slaves that kept hope alive.
I closed with Ishidourou -- Stone Lanterns in Japanese -- which serve to add balance, harmony, and offer light. You can find it here: https://rundelania.com/3614-2/
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