Shakespeare to watch while waiting for a new post

From Shakespeare in American life at the Folger Shakespeare Library:

The Plays

2004. The Merchant of Venice

2000. Hamlet

1999. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1999. Titus

1996. Romeo + Juliet

1995. Othello

1993. Much Ado About Nothing

1990. Hamlet

1967. Taming of the Shrew

1953. Julius Caesar

Inspired by Shakespeare

2006. Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss. Animated version with feuding seal families.

2006. She’s the Man. Twelfth Night in a private boys’ academy.

2001. O. Othello in a modern high school.

2001. Scotland, PA. Macbeth in a fast-food restaurant.

2000. Romeo Must Die. Romeo and Julietadaptation with kung fu.

1999. Let the Devil Wear Black. Hamlet in southern California in a violent film.

1998. The Tempest. The Tempest in the Civil War South

1996. Looking for Richard. Documentary with interviews and scenes from Richard III.

1996. Love is All There Is. A comic romp inspired byRomeo and Juliet.

1977. The Goodbye Girl. Romantic comedy that includes a production of Richard III.

1961. West Side Story. Film version of the musical inspired by Romeo and Juliet.

1953. Kiss Me, Kate. Film version of the musical inspired by The Taming of the Shrew.

From Shakespeare in American life at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre.

Creating a collection

Perhaps I should divide all my poetry--all my writing--into two new blogs (1) Personal and (2) Political.  Poems like Kitchen Eden and At the Train Station are more personal; and titles like Origami Memories and Kindness are more political.  To obscure the edges a little and accept that the line between the personal and the political isn't clear cut, I might call the personal blog "Life Goes On" and the political one "Urgency."  Or maybe the opposite.
         The question came up for me today when contemplating how to select poems for my first to-be-published collection.  I was never one to separate the personal and the political, though some of my writing provides more story-like detail and some less.  Readers seem evenly split on whether they enjoy the specifics or generalizations more.  I like best how the personal writing can be read allegorically and politically, though at times readers miss the larger relevance.  Recently, Friends Journal rejected three poems because my writing is "too personal."
          I have been thinking of gathering my poems that reference childhood to create a collection I could call Child Play or Sun Fishing.  But would that contain enough urgency?  And is there any reason to publish anything anymore that is not urgent?     I am, of course, asking again, why write, what is this Way that God has opened before me, here and now?  
          If anyone has the answer, please help me along the Way to enlightenment!  It may be that the question needs a committee for clearness.  It may be that I should just do it, something, anything--and then wait and see.

Wonder

Wonder.
How/when did I come to understand wonder?  
The connection between WOW and wonder?
Wonder Woman?
Wonder bread?

I have been trying to write a poem about wonder, a word close to wander, wonderful, one world and a word dear to my heart.  Instead of writing the poem, I am stuck in wonder like a broken record . . . and if you wonder what that is: it is a vinyl disc that contained recorded sound, sound released by a needle while the disc is turning at a certain speed on a device known as a record player.  Wonder.  A"broken record" isn't, like, smashed, but it has a deep scratch that causes it to play one sound, word, or phrase over and over as if the needle were stuck in a groove.  Indeed it is.  Stuck in a groove.  Where I am today with wonder.  Walking with wonder as if wonder was a playmate who took me out to play.  Or if Wonder asked me out to play and Mom said no, but O Wonder!  We did it anyway though I did not move an inch.   

Groovy.  Dadada dada dada.  Life is groovy.

I went to Goodreads and copied these thoughts on wonder for me, and for you.  Let them be friends.  Please add more wonderful readings on wonder in the comments!

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in't!”

― William Shakespeare

 

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
― Rachel Carson

“A Second Childhood.”

When all my days are endin
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber’s dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And I find that I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.

― G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton

http://store.feminist.org/posterspecial.aspx

Please add more inspiring readings--or links to inspiring readings-- on wonder in the comments!


Thank you. 










 

Hal Sirowitz

GREEN LINE PRESENTED: 

             Hal Sirowitz

          at the 

          Green Line Cafe

4426 Locust st.

Philadelphia, PA 19104

on Feb 19 at 7:00 PM 

  

I went and had a WONDERFUL time!

          Treat yourself to a Hal Sirowitz experience.

The poems Hal Sirowitz treated us to at his reading tickled me--really--in the way a family member can when you don't want to break and laugh but have to.  Leonard's family moments hit me like that--I recognized the situations in my funny bone and couldn't hide the groans and laughter even at such things as brown spots on underwear.  I went home from the reading and read all I could find of, by, and about him on the internet.  

I had the presence of mind before leaving the Green Line Cafe to tell Hal that he had given me the courage to step down off of the pedestal of poetry where the set ideas live about how to make it denser and denser.  He gave me trust in the day to day as subject matter for poetry.  

Thank you, Leonard Gontarek, for presenting this evening and others like it every month.

See: 

1. Three Poems by Hal Sirowitz
2. http://www.halsirowitz.com/
3. Hal Sirowitz/Poetry
4. Hand Drawn Animation (You Tube)--poems by Hal Sirowitz

See Sirowitz's amazon.com author page here.

What is "True Vogue" ?

Chelsea Bednar blogs at  Artistic Adventures.

I am truly moved by Margaret Bedner's poem "True Vogue" and her daughter's drawings posted under that title on Margaret's blog:  Art Happens 365 - My Photography & Poetry.  Here is the poem's first stanza: 

Designer trends,

make a woman

or so they say

I hope you will go to her site to see the rest.

It is a short poem, about loving our selves and our own poetic souls. The drawings make it especially vivid.  

I, too, have written about this, over and over, but in poems so raw and youthful that they need major revision before I will post them again.  Irony?  

"True Vogue" is a good lens into a never fully-answered question:  Where do we live and create without pretense?  I went through various phases in answer to this question, and when I taught in high school I tried to help my students face the issue.  I wanted them to see they had to make strategic choices. This is a hard lesson to teach and learn as a writer who believes authentic voices are more and more needed.  

When I read "True Vogue," however, I am reminded of our craft as poets.  The need to "re-envision" has occasionally more to do with creating poetry than with trying to hide a creative soul.  The spareness of this free-verse poem that moves forward through images and metaphor--what is buttoned and unbuttoned--shows true art.  The poet does not try to do everything; she does not make the poem comment on itself.  She cuts all but impressions to underline her double-sworded title.  

Vogue means  "a temporary fashion trend." What is truly vogue?  In which phase of our lives--mine and yours--will it be popular to be as naked as our hidden selves?  At which point do we begin to take the real risks that could make our art worthy of being seen and celebrated?  

What is love?

Today's Poem-a-day: Sometimes with One I Love by Walt Whitman Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for    fear I effuse unreturn'd love, But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay    is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was    not return'd, Yet out of that I have written these songs.) I wrote a prompt on 13 February 2013 at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads that gave some variety to the traditional Valentine's Day. Some gorgeous poems reside there, including mine.  I am astonished to finally be finding so many positive images in a growing up time that I used to love to hate.  Walt Whitman expresses that, too, in his tiny poem above.  What a switch to learn that love is returned, noted, felt and moved, moving in return.

Historic Day

President Obama’s second inauguration.
The Public one: 1/21/2013

Obama calculates his repetition
to be the jingle we all sing as we
leave and live:   We the People. 
We the People.
We the People.

He was made for this moment,
to stand and to stop “treating
name calling as reasoned debate.”
To reason, remake, reform,
revamp and re-energize.

Obama reminds citizens we must
execute God-given rights, that we
must be equal not only in God’s
eyes, but in our own eyes be
we, the People.


I had forgotten and worked with my poetry correspondance right through his inaugeral address.  I just finished listening to it at the  NYTimes and You Tube.  As impressive as his others, this one stripped away the icing and went straight to his points.  He said words like slave and strap and sword and, in general, made no bones about his agenda.  He never said the word compromise--he said "Do it for your children and grandchildren."  Everyone looked frozen except for Obama who is as if a torch in our midst. 

This is our history, he says. 
This is what we said we believe. 
We, the people, still believe it.



 

Check in for the new year

I have been silent for a while, living in family out there and living in poems in here, mostly posting them at Susan's Poetry and on Facebook.  I answer letters, respond to comments, and sit down for way too many hours in the day.

I have made two decisions based in the past year's experience which some may call New Year's Resolutions:  (1) boldly write about what I have been silent about, and (2) make sure to have an "artist's date" at least once a week.  The latter is from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a book I worked with almost 20 years ago. I plan to combine walking with seeing places in Philadelphia that I haven't seen: museums, parks, stores, riverside sites and more.  I started with a Pendle Hill retreat over New Year's eve and day.

One writing word-shop ended in December and another begins next week. There, my mentor Alison Hicks encourages the growth of my novel The Storyteller and I plan to bring in pages for the other writers in the workshop to read.  No longer shy about writing, liking my chapters, seeing the conflicts and plots grow--I am amazed to be insider to what is for me an extremely slow process.  V e r y  slow.

That's all for now, folks.