"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty
Thanks and Love to that fabulous poet-sister Amy Tudor for posting the article that inspires today’s prompt.
“Adults in America don’t sing communally. Children routinely sing together in their schools and activities, and even infants have sing-alongs galore to attend. But past the age of majority, at grown-up commemorations, celebrations, and gatherings, this most essential human yawp of feeling—of marking, with a grace note, that we are together in this place at this time—usually goes missing.”
Deadline: After first 500 submissions are received.
While Aji publishes poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, graphic art, and photographs on all subjects in every issue, the theme for our spring 2017 issue is music, the tempo of a city street, the dissonance of a conversation—what are the melodies, the harmonies, and the rhythms of your life? Send us work on music of all types, classical, jazz, experimental, pop, and of course the thundering and whispering of storms, the jangling of traffic, the noise in your head that won’t let you sleep. We’re a small staff—we will close submissions after the first 500 submissions. www.ajimagazine.com
I grew up in Hurricane Alley, eastern North Carolina, so the preparation for these big storms is something I learned early. Hurricane Matthew has ripped through Haiti, and is on his way to the US East Coast. All my provisions are laid in, flashlights and emergency equipment in place and ready, and I’ve battened down as much as I can. But sometimes Mama Nature’s just too big and unpredictable for any kind of preparation.
Make art about preparing the best you can.
10/5/2016
Thinking a lot today about all the ways people find their way to, or demonstrate faith. Took me immediately to one of my top three favorite songs, The Mountain, by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer.
Excerpted Lyrics by Dave Carter
Some build temples and some find altars, some come in tall hats and robes spun fine. Some in rags, some in gemstone halters, some push the pegs back in line.
I see the mountain, the mountain comes to me, I see the mountain and that is all I see.
Make art about temples or altars or shrines, faith in some unexpected way.
10/6/2016
Road Angel Andrea at Walmart today told me about her grandmama teaching her to sew, first by making curtains, long straight hems, she said, over and over again, summer curtains, winter curtains with their heavy lining. She said her grandmama was patient but tough, making her tear out crooked stitches, and try again til she got it right. “I learned to take my time,” she said. “I learned to take my time, look ahead of the foot, and how a pair of curtains can make all the difference in a room.”
Make art about curtains. Or about what you learned from an elder.
I was in West Virginia this past weekend for a house concert style poetry reading in Scott Depot WV, hosted by the kind and generous Mary Imo Stike and John Stike 🙂 The mountains as always were beautiful, my hosts warm and lovely, and the audience, around twenty-two people in attendance–were spirited and funny and smart and a very eclectic talented bunch themselves, in sooo many ways! We were also blessed with the beautiful musical talents of The Wild Hares! Awesome, funny, Doug, Jim, and Mike rocked the tunes before and after the reading 🙂
The conversation after the reading was just amazing! Talk of–yes, poetry :-)–but also of physics and spirituality, language and issues of class bias, tradition and preservation, the search for truth in so many ways beyond academia. I learned–and laughed :-)–with every conversation. I felt blessed to be in their presence. And twenty more copies of my crazy books out into the world! 🙂 Thank you, Mary and John, and thank you, West Virginia, for an incredible reading experience!
I do believe these house readings, the revival of the salon, are crucial to the future of poetry. So many readers and thinkers and lovers of words outside the insulated walls of academia! I’m grateful for that, and I can’t wait to meet more of them! ❤
Headed off to wild and wonderful West Virginia for a reading. Driving through these amazing Appalachian mountains always fills me with such awe.
Make art about the mysteries felt in mountains.
14 August 2016
Road Angel named Bay, a very large beautiful young man working as a cashier in a roadside stop, his smile like a bright bright beacon, caught me doing a lil dance in the aisle to the BeeGees piping in overhead. He grinned and immediately started dancing too 😀So we finished out Stayin Alive while I paid 🙂
Make art about dancing with strangers. 🙂
15 August 2016
Feeling this this morning, the music.
“Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song/in my own breath”~Philip Levine
Make art about the music you hear, in anything, in everything.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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