7 May 2016
Thrilled and humbled and honored and NERVOUS 😀 Headed back to my alma mater as the invited commencement speaker for the English Department graduation today. Ohhhh back in Pirate country! To the place–the school–the faculty–who made me believe!
Make art about what you would teach the next generation.
3 May 2016
Exam week, and it’s crazy here 🙂 Make art about things that test us.
4 May 2016
Star Wars Day 🙂 Even as a little kid, I stared at the sky expecting to see a UFO zipping across those wide coastal skies every time I looked up 🙂
Make art about what you see in the stars.
5 May 2016
I both gave and received help today. It was awesome. Make art about people helping people.
And it’s out!!!! So excited and thrilled to let y’all know that my newest book, A Little Blood, A little Rain, is now available from FutureCycle Press!!!!!
2 May 2016
“It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.”~Paulo Coehlo
Make art about knowing something has reached its end.
Happy May Day! So in love with life today 🙂 Love is Liberation.
Make art about one of the ways you Love the world.
Happy Last Day of National Poetry Month 2016! Although, of course, I think every month is Poetry Month, and every day is Poetry Day 🙂
The prompts will continue 🙂 But since I started with one of my top three favorite poems (Power by Adrienne Rich), I have to close out this month long celebration with the other two poems that fill out my top What-Poems-Would-You-Take-To-A-Deserted-Island three.
Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
And….what may be my favorite (if I have to pick) poem ❤
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Make art about kindness, blessings, peace.
Happy National Poetry Month! The first collected works I ever owned, my mama gave it to me for my twelfth birthday, was William Carlos Williams. The spare and earthshaking power of a single image–in his hand, it was miraculous.
Make art about walls.
Happy National Poetry Month! One of my favorite poets, and one of my favorite truths 🙂 “A child’s wisdom is wisdom still.”~Jewish proverb
Make art about what children know.
Happy National Poetry Month!
Another of the poets who made me want to be a poet, one of the voices of my childhood. This poem still takes me to my Appalachian grandparents’ table.
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
Make art about the old ones.
Old Couple by John Biggers
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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