That’s my TED talk for today. I’m over all the shaming that implies that if you’re not doing all the things someone else thinks you should be doing then you’re not doing enough to stop the fascist regime that’s taking over our country. We’re all in the same boat and all the responses are valid, especially the ones that BUILD community instead of creating even more layers of stratification and binary us vs them hoo-hah.
Post written on Thursday, but edited now on Friday morning to add: I support (100%) what Gavin Newsom and other Democratic governors are cooking up right now, which is a bit two-faced of me, since they are DEFINITELY using the “us vs them binary” in quite a powerful, in-your-face way. I guess the difference in my mind is that they are shaming the ones who actually deserve it, while us little folk without the power they wield, need to keep doing what we can with who we are and what we have. And in a way, they are doing what I advocate: building a community of leaders with the hutzpah to fight back.
I’m having more fun with my personal Sealey Challenge this year than ever before! Right when it came out, I bought the big hunka-munka A CENTURY OF POETRY IN THE NEW YORKER 1925-2025. It’s been sitting on my desk ever since…until now. My challenge is to spend 30 minutes a day reading from it. I usually open to a random spot and go from there, keeping my notebook open to jot juicy words (including ones I’ve never heard and need to look up, as was the case for scaturient), titles of possible mentor texts, memories that are sparked by my reading, connections between poems, etc. I am also keeping my notebook open when I read through the Poetry Friday roundup, which is how I wound up writing this poem, which was inspired by “On Starting” by Phil Kaye from Tabatha’s post last week! The photo is via Wikimedia Commons. I’m too proud to use a picture of my yard, but it would certainly do.
Molly has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Nix the Comfort Zone. Remember, next week Heidi is subbing in for Margaret, who will take Heidi’s original spot on September 5.
NOTE THESE CHANGES IN THE POETRY FRIDAY HOSTING SCHEDULE: Heidi and Margaret are changing places, so Heidi will now host on August 15, and Margaret will host on September 5.
Image from the front page of The Burlington (CO) Record
I thought I was writing this poem to the photo that appeared on the front page my hometown newspaper, but as it turns out, the poem also has echoes in an extraordinary book that I finished just last night. THE ANTIDOTE by Karen Russell is set in Nebraska in 1935 between two cataclysmic environmental events: the Black Sunday dust storm and the flooding of the Republican River (24 inches of rain in 24 hours). So it’s a story of the land, but inseparably, it’s a story about the people there. Here’s how Russell (with James Riding In) describes what she attempted to do in THE ANTIDOTE:
THE ANTIDOTE uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in people’s private and collective memories, the willful omissions passed down generation to generation, and the myths that have been used by the U.S. government and White settlers to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native lands.
It was a book that puzzled me at first, then fascinated me, then horrified me, then made me read the last hundred pages at a gallop (which is why I’m “late” posting), then ultimately left me with some measure of hope.
Which brings us back to the photo and the poem. I grew up at the edge of the same Pawnee lands in THE ANTIDOTE, in a part of the country where White farming techniques have resulted in loss of topsoil and the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. And I grew up with the myth of the noble (White) farmers, who toiled at the whim of the sparse rainfall and the destructive summer storms, and whose hope was what kept them going.
It’s time to tell the truth. All of it. And it’s time to listen to the land and agree to change the ruinous human part of our relationship with her. She wants to live, and she can heal, if we let her. If we help her.
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Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Marcie Flinchum Atkins. You can find there the Poetry Sisters who had the bandwidth to write to this month’s challenge, to write a sedoka, along with others who joined in the challenge.
PLEASE NOTE THESE CHANGES IN THE POETRY FRIDAY HOSTING SCHEDULE: Heidi and Margaret are changing places, so Heidi will now host on August 15, and Margaret will host on September 5.
Poetry is not news. It is not a comment upon it. Art does what art does, which is often a tricksy thing. — Pádraig Ó Tuama
You’re an artist if you create something! You’re an artist if you don’t see the worrld the way it is, if you hate white walls! No one else decides what art is, no one can stop you loving whatever you like, the cynics and critics can have control of all the other crap on the planet..but they can’t decide how hard your heart beats! Become whatever you want, but don’t become one of them. Art is a fragile enough light as it is. It can be blown out by a single sigh. Art needs friends, with our bodies against the wind and our hands cupped around the flame until it’s strong enough to burn brightly with its own power. Until it’s an inferno. Unstoppable. — Fredrik Backman
Welcome friends! Welcome all whose hands are cupped around the fragile flames of art and hope, activism and radical self-care.
What a world. I used to love rollercoasters. Now that I’m living inside of one, I don’t feel the need to go to a theme park.
But seriously, look at all the training opportunities we’re being provided. We’re learning over and over again how to stand up for what’s right. No longer do we assume government is working in our best interest, we’ve been trained to keep a close eye on what’s going on and be ready to pick up the phone or fill in the provided form to protect libraries, public lands, schools, and (still hopeful as I write this on July 2) funding that will keep nursing homes and rural hospitals open. We know now, more than ever, that We The People are the only ones who can save this country by working together in ways that feel new and unfamiliar, but which are completely (in all the best ways) HUMAN.
It’s messy right now, but let’s make a convoy and keep going.
The Poetry Sisters’ challenge this month was to write a raccontino, a poem that tells a story starting in the title and continuing in the end words of the odd-numbered lines of couplets that contain even-line rhymes. Not at all complicated. Oh, no. Not at all.
Did you try one? Did you start with the story and the rhyme-scheme (that was my method), or did you just write from your heart and knead that dough until it fit the form?
As with any challenge, after the gnashing of the teeth and the tearing of the hair, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.
Then I remembered our year-long sub-challenge of writing “in conversation.” Oops.
And yet, the unwritten text of the poem is steeped in human conversation — vetting two companies before we chose one, using Google Translate to communicate with the Brazilian Portuguese-speaking crew who did all the work — as well as in figurative conversations between noise and silence, destruction and repair.
Tanita has her poem, along with this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at {fiction, instead of lies}, and the rest of the sisters’ poems are here:
Next week, on Friday, July 4, please consider joining the Inklings in writing poems of protest for our nation’s birthday. Let’s use our voices and our art to make some noise! Feel free to write in praise of democracy and patriotism if you’re so moved, or write in frustration and befuddlement over the “leadership” in the White House and/or Congress and/or the courts and/or and/or and/or. The roundup will be here!
Another garden/yard poem this week. I wondered in my comment on Ruth’s post last week if I’d see fireflies this year. I will never again take any of my more-than-human neighbors for granted. But we’ve been blessed. They are still here…for now. Gratitudes to Linda for the “clunker” from which this poem was born: “stir stars in a clockwise motion.”
Next week is a Poetry Sister challenge week (and I think I better get started now!): we’re writing Raccontinos.
The week after that, on Friday, July 4, is the challenge I posed on the roundup host calendar, doubling as the Inkling challenge:
Please join us in writing poems of protest on our nation’s birthday. Let’s use our voices and our art to make some noise! Feel free to write in praise of democracy and patriotism if you’ve just about had it up to here with all of the assorted “Nonsense on Stilts” (a term coined by Jeremy Bentham and also the title of a book by Massimo Pigliucci that Mr. Mary Lee is currently reading).
I missed the Poetry Sisters’ challenge last week because I was too deep inside the whirlwind of preparing for Ohio’s Casting for Recovery spring retreat (our first spring retreat and our first at our new “forever home”). It went REALLY well, in spite of the pouring rain on Friday. The weather cleared, lots of fish were caught and released, nature and laughter and the power of being SEEN by those who have shared like experiences gave us all a respite from The World.
To review, the Sisters were writing golden shovels using a line from Elizabeth Bishop’s “Letter to NY” and trying our best to stick to our year-long theme of conversations. For the record, my poem was written in May, in time for the challenge. It just didn’t make it here.
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Fast forward to today, the Thursday before the first Friday of the month, which is when the Inklings share their responses to a member’s challenge. I came home from the retreat with piles of laundry and miscellaneous after-retreat tasks to prioritize, but also to the final full day of the replacement of siding and gutters (bam bam bam BAM BAM…then blessed silence when they finished), putting the yard and beds back in order (at least a pint of nails left behind on the ground), washing screens and windows outside (AJ) and vacuuming piles of dust that sifted in from the corners of every. single. window. (me), a blood draw and doctor’s appointment, book club, volunteer work, and teaching a clothing embellishment with embroidery class. Whew!
The Inklings challenge, was offered this month by Heidi:
Watch a few videos from the WE DO NOT CARE CLUB on Instagram or other platform.
Read some comments. Die laughing (or crying).
Write a poem that lists or explains some things that you as a woman no longer care ‘bout for whatever reason. It does not have to be because of peri/menopause. Try to replicate Melani’s deadpan delivery, if that’s possible in a poem. TWIST: include something that you DO care about, that requires you to make space by jettisoning some of the other stuff.
And now I don’t care that I didn’t manage to post my Sisters poem last week, because what a conversation that poem and today’s poem are having! What a conversation I’m hosting inside my head between my now-self and my then-self! Friends, it is beyond hard to rid yourself of the teachings you learned implicitly and explicitly from your mother and from society. We are all works in progress. It is never too late to start accepting yourself for who you are and others for who they are. Full stop.
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As Tanita mentioned in her post last week, the Poetry Sisters blew right past their monthly online work/gab session. Well, so did the Inklings. I’m not sure who’s posting, so I’ll let you find them in the roundup if they make it this week. A whole bunch of Life is happening this weekend for lots of them. Have fun, ladies!
A(nother) Year of Reading 