A Poetic Experience Anyone?
/Poetry is not only a dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before." - Audre Lorde
How are you?
Me—-
This past week a dear friend wrote to encourage me to submit some of my poetry to a magazine. (With her help, thank you friend, I did. With a sense of fun and adventure!)
In our series of exchanges she shared someone else's bio ( I can’t find that email or I’d share it!) who lovingly exclaimed, that perhaps poetry might be an amazing direction to turn our words and listening towards, in these times. And my friend imagined that I, like she, probably felt the same way.
I leapt at that thought, like I had been laying in wait for it to swing on in and lift me out of the mundanity of so much of my common speech!
What we listen to, becomes us.
Did you know there are some countries that lift up poetry and poets like we do professional athletes, musicians and actors?
Imagine what that shapes in their listening bodies?
Would you be open to wondering who you/we might become if words pouring out of our mouths, became shaped and formed from a poetic landscape?
Could policy be shaped poetically? Parenting…ah, the list goes on…
Rather than wax poetic myself---
How about joining in an experiment?
Here it is.
For the next 30 days. Mark your calendar. Give yourself 3-7 minutes.
Listen or read a poem or two or three a day. (invite others, read them at the dinner table, or team meeting, on a stroll, or enjoying tea or coffee together.)
Choose to memorize one.
Can be short and sweet.
Or long and languid.
You may be inspired to write one!
"If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel." -Jim Morrison
And then at the end of the month.
Pause. Reflect.
What are any subtle, nuanced, or clear, shifts or changes you are noticing?
Let me know how it goes.
Respond to this email!
Send and SOS.
Write me letters in the sand, or sky, or in your dreams.
I’ll feel them! (smiling)
To poetic landscapes abounding in the world,
P.S. I really appreciated this essay about listening to rocks. And HERE. a listening song from my days in Junior High School!
P.P.S. Here are a couple options for listening to poetry HERE and HERE. Reading online HERE
And Books HERE and HERE and David Whyte, and Ross Gay, and William Stafford I also love.