Napowrimo -- Day 7- Unlying Questions Run (Dance)

Underlying Questions Run in Italics (in the Fog) if stones were glass and twilight single, one square of silence in every stone as the river whispers a scoop of perhaps questions question... water curves would finger truth, a tingled whisper stretched comma by lone comma, until gathered into a scoop of perhaps questions, question the swinging flail, the swiple thrashing grain, seed settling like ashes, one by one waiting to be scooped up and kneaded, question after question after question. ** (Swedish proverb: worry gives a small thing a big shadow) ** part of a collaboration with Christine Fendley and Park Avenue Dance

Discussion (Rich) 4/4/2012

Adrienne Rich: Passionate political activist, feminist who appeared in the 50’s, said “Art means nothing if it simply decorates the table of the power which holds it hostage.” **** Discussed: 3 poems by Adrienne Rich and epilogue by Ellen Bryant Voigt. I initially said that I chose the poem Epilogue, by Ellen Bryant Voigt as tribute to her. Now, I am not sure I meant the word "tribute". Rather, a counter voice to Adrienne Rich. Epilogue ends Voigt's book "Kyrie" (published 1995) which tells of the 1918 influenza epidemic through a sequence of linked blank verse sonnets. There are sonnets of reflections; sonnets about different people, like Mattie, the Doctor; sonnets that are strictly metaphor. The epilogue, written in six tercets draws the curtain with a snow storm. Something about ending a book about a devastating subject with a work horse, let out in the storm, and the choice that a different horse might be indoors, munching his oats seemed a different way of looking at "the truth and dread" we experience, season after season. In a way it is like Adrienne's expression of what it feels like to be violated; her observation of how our response to violence is not sufficient, just as our words cannot serve just causes. A snowstorm comes, everything is temporarily whitened, blanked out, like a palimpsest, ready for the next script. Adrienne Rich: 1. What Kind of Times Are These 2. Delta 3.The Burning of Paper Instead of Children 1. What kind of times are these; don't be fooled is a theme -- and yet that a thread of hope, answering "why should I tell you anything", is that we will listen -- that we will come to terms with the fact that "truth" can be filled with dread, and is not "good news". We thought of other women, much more at risk -- and yet, whether Akhmatova, or Allende, or ourselves in our safe America, we have have been silent when our "truth" is not safe to share -- whether it be about Indians, Slaves, protesting war. a time when it’s safe to talk ; Isabelle Allende... 2. Delta: Adrienne Rich has an admirable style that is both direct and clear. The 5-fingers of the river at the Delta could indeed represent 5 different aspects of her voice carried in her river: feminist, lesbian, activist, jewish, american citizen... and how art for her, this task of using words well, becomes creative residue... Kathy shared "In the Classroom" (which appeared in an early book, "Time's Power".) In a Classroom Talking of poetry, hauling the books arm-full to the table where the heads bend or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud, talking of consonants, elision, caught in the how, oblivious of why: I look in your face, Jude, neither frowning nor nodding, opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table: a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking What I cannot say, is me. For that I came. ** the last lines reminded us of a famous line from someone else, Kathy recognized later as "Selves - goes itself, myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came. ( Gerald Manley Hopkins:"As Kingfishers Catch Fire") 3. The Burning of Paper Instead of Children Mary said the epigraph by Father Berrigan immediately triggered memories of the Vietnam war. We took a moment to remember how differently news was reported in the late 60's; the striking images of LIFE magazine. What happened to us that we do not respond to injustice that way anymore? It is frightening that our words would appear to have even less power now. Are we too asleep to look at Durer's Melancholia? Are we that much in the present, that few in America know the name Herodotus, let alone, know what he meant about open-jawed crocodiles with tasty bits in their teeth? How many times have there been book burnings? What happens between us has happened for centuries we know it from literature Still it happens. What IS Artaud saying with the words "Burn the Books": Dadaist nihilism -- destroy museums, culture... Burning as a way of guarding secrets and maintaining power through torture ... the Inquisition, the Nazis, or Fahrenheit 451. David reminded us of Heinrich Heine's quote posted at Dachau: (translated in English): When one burns books, one soon burns men as well. Does art have a moral obligation? What happens to Beauty and truth if there is not? As Sonnia remarked, the term "dialectic" is appropriate and throws some of us back to days when we talked in Marxist lingo. Martin spoke of the last poem as a collection of disparate, raw data, but wonders how the reader is to make sense of it... Similar questions: how to understand the "language of the oppressor" and language in general. Adrienne Rich spent her life writing about power, and understand the power of language. Her determination, her strong voice, unwavering authenticity command that we listen... and more, that we too find again what it is in us that calls a spade a spade, and that we use it to dig, diving into our metaphorical wrecks.

napowrimo - April 5 -- 100%

The prompt, 100%... and meeting with fellow "Beets", Tricia providing a word list which included "aglet" -- the part of a shoelace that gathers all the threads and fastens them, keeps them together... The idea of Cavalcanti, addressing his Ballatetta entered as well... Running Back Home 100% trouble has not yet begun to unravel. However, you see the start of it, in the damaged aglet holding your shoelace threads together. You are running over rubble and gravel stumbling to reach the other edge of the city to deliver a message. Whether you and the message have become traveling companions is not yet clear. You are sure the message is tethered to you, as if pinned to your tongue. Nothing will keep it from arriving. But you arrive at your door, out of breath, your shoe laces tangled, panting— as if you have escaped from a den of thieves and you press the latch, enter and there is your mother, and all you can say is mommie, mommie, mommie. ** use of the 2nd person... effective? as the poem unraveled, by the end, it revealed the memory of being maybe 5-6, and the scariness of straying up the street with my older sister and our neighbor, and ducking down as we passed a house with shades drawn -- not because someone had died, but because BURGLARS lived there!

napowrimo April 4 -- Univ. of Rock

univ. of rock* In rock-shaped-sun today by the cairn, in the shimmy of a grove of skinny hawthorns he brings new rocks, hoists a dragon head with a clean-split jaw, just as a roar of March arrives to whistle through. Here, let me show you the slit, how rock too, shifts how at one point, a man in the sun of spring day can find a dragon-head, roll the rock, find pleasure as he shifts it into a place. It’s his rock, now, sun-shaped, shadow licked. *This is his universe, not where he works, called by caller ID, univ of roc ** One poem prompt was to write a "communication poem" -- a tweet... postcard... just about anything. I wouldn’t have written the above without my dear man emailing me (while I was in a different part of the country) about working with rocks, and how he found that dragon head. What a contrast with the sort of message that just gets deleted, to clean out the “in box”, or one of the stuffed envelopes asking for money from an organization you don’t know, or countless appeals to subscribe to services and goods you neither want nor need. Real communication, as opposed to phone calls a computer identifies as pub-intrst-grp, out-of-area, not-provided. When my good man calls from work to tell me he’s on his way, the caller ID tells me, "univ of rock" and my heart skips a beat!

Napowrimo April 3 -- Caught in the gazing

Caught in Gazing You cannot see the sun yet, nor know the gold in the slit of scurried cloud will be tossed to the field below. Even as the sun bulges, bouffant, gravid flaming up out of the horizon, you cannot predict how it will shrink, as it rises through orange-flecks in a mauve sky, nor augur what happens next: a veil of cloud bank drops like deadweight curtains all light, so quick on the heels of a scoop of golden perhaps admired in gazing's catch. ** this is thanks to a friend's kind observations two drafts ago; Wordsworth's Glad sight wherever new with old Glad sight wherever new with old Is joined through some dear homeborn tie; The life of all that we behold Depends upon that mystery. Vain is the glory of the sky, The beauty vain of field and grove Unless, while with admiring eye We gaze, we also learn to love. ** Artist Breakfast Group. Comments on collaborations; on pros and cons of technology; on looking again at the futurist manifesto and speed being coupled with beauty -- and finding antidote in the beauty of slowing down to share. Very golden scoops !

Napowrimo April 2 -- Anagram KATHRYN

Yesterday the idea of friends providing oars, balanced with filling our boat with what we need as we seek our direction came to mind. A prompt was to write an acronym of your first name. I chose KATHRYN, my given name, eponymous for my grandmother. Knowing’s silent K paddles past Act after act, Tightening yes and no, like wings. How heartening the knell Resonating Yes, No ** good comment: 'tightening yes and no like wings" I want to know more. Take out or unpack. I think take out. yes and no would not be a very good pair of wings, in contrary motion, and I'm not sure I see how you would tighten. Knowing’s silent K paddles past Act after act, Triggered by yes, no. How heartening the knell Resonating Yes, No

NAPOWRIMO -- April 1 : Spring(____ A.D.)

There is so much to write about with April 1st, a beautiful sunrise, a sense of beginning... the role of fools... but today, I will start with this poem, penned in response to a fracking compressing accident in Pennsylvania which happened the same day Adrienne Rich passed away. In honor of her courage to speak authentically. APRIL 1 Spring ( _ _ _ _ Anno Domine) What is danger but D with anger daggering some message awake. What is anger but A for age blazing, for announcing someone figured out how to go to the moon, fracture the earth to extract gas, create amazing weapons of mass destruction. (This is not an order.) An age of something doesn’t feel right as we prepare over-plump chicken, tasteless, but perfect tomatoes, and our ears. This morning, a fracking compressor exploded for some, somewhat close for others somewhere in someone else’s neck of the woods for others, billowing black smoke blows through the window. What is dungeon but D without unguent, few awake. A dark age of someone says using the eye to view screens instead of each other. Domine, Domine. To some sort of god, some sort of time.