Movement and Our Song-Map
This past Monday, I read new poetry by indigenous women, and they made my migratory bones hum. It spoke to the question: What is my deepest need? My instinctive answer is movement. At the Ghost Ranch Retreat 2015, I shared how the white feather can be a symbol for our journey, inspired by the Cherokee Beloved War Women, whose extraordinary courage and compassion merited a swan wing. Here’s what I’ve learned about our...
Working in Silence
Silence is your treasure. Do not exchange it for an easy life. This is my revision of a sentence by Zen-Getsu, which I came across as an epigraph and am keeping as my watchwords for these next few months up in my room. The original subject is poverty. What I understand to be at the heart of the counsel is the worth of the difficult thing. Difficult gifts–poverty or silence, possibilities for greatness, whatever your own...
Windows
June 24, 2014 When I wrote my application for the Gift of Freedom, one of my essays followed some words from Virginia Woolf offered as a prompt. The quote began like this: “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time, the very walls are permeated by their creative force…” I’m now six months into my Gift of Freedom, six months in the room of myself. If I were writing a poem about this, the walls would be...
“Beautiful Caves”
Kate Gale asks Gift of Freedom winner Diane Gilliam, “In a world where almost anyone would rather be involved in commerce or consumer culture or interaction with the screen, why poetry? It’s not as active as football, not as immediate as mall shopping, not as intrusive as Facebook. It is ancient and quiet, sitting on the side, waiting. It is contemplative and has no place in our modern culture. Or does it? What is...
“Two Edges”
March 28, 2013 As I begin to feel my way toward speaking about Virginia Woolf, there’s a song that keeps coming through and since I’m a believer in anything that keeps trying to come through I’m going to let it in. It’s a song by Joan Manuel Serrat based on a small poem titled “La saeta” by Antonio Machado. It speaks to a traditional Andalusian song type, sung this time of year to the “Jesus de la agonia” in which the singer asks...
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SUMMER WAVES | 2024
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A Clearing in the Waves Mar 29, 2024
