Daily Prompt <3 What You Would Have Said
17 June 2016
“They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying.”~Neil Gaiman
Make art about what you wish you had said before they died.
Posts tagged ‘author’
Daily Prompt <3 What We Believe
16 June 2016
“I believe there is a song that is stranger than wind, that sips the scald from the telling…”~Karen Volkman
Make art about the first thing that comes to mind with the phrase I believe….
flowers-1680-1050-wallpaper
Daily Prompt <3 The Smallest Masterpiece
15 June 2016
We’ve had a sick kitty cat. Ulli, our twelve-year-old rescue, a tiny delicate graceful gray creature who, because of the trauma she experienced before we got her, even after all these years, still jumps at loud sounds and runs from strangers, who will panic herself into an asthma attack in one minute, then turn and stalk a deer in the next. Ulli is definitely one of those cats who make you feel awed and grateful when she stops for that second to allow you the privilege of petting her, or when she musics the air around you with the low distant train rumble of a contented purr.
My oldest son, a large bearded Viking of a man, is completely devoted to this animal, and as age inevitably creeps into her bones, slowing and thwarting some of the natural processes, he becomes the one anxious, determined to give her the best care and most love he can. We both went to the vet to pick her up from a required hospitalization for twenty-four hours, and he loaded her little bitty crate into the car, saying, “It’s okay, Ulli. You’re all better now. No more tummy trouble. No more doctor. We’re headed back to Mimi’s for a little bit.”
I laughed, at being Mimi to this grand-cat, and in relief that our Ulli is okay, and in gratitude that my own child is so relieved to have his beloved old lady cat back in good health. The blessings of family, y’all. That’s what it is today.
“The smallest feline is a masterpiece.” ― Leonardo da Vinci
Make art about animal family.
Sometimes the Prompt is Your Own Pain, and Growth
14 June 2016
Five years ago today, my beautiful funny sexy irreverent brilliant soulful husband, John Little Bear Eaton, walked on to the next life.
“what remains with me vividly to this day is my recollection of a circle of light that shone out from Rafe and enfolded us both, and the deep sense of comfort and familiarity between us, as if we had somehow always known each other and were merely resuming a conversation that had gone on from eternity.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Love is Stronger than Death: The Mystical Union of Two Souls
Make art about the eternal nature of Love.
Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Family, and Heartbreak, and Fragility
Daily Prompt Catch-Up
6/11/2016
Beautiful day with family today.
From “On Family Regathering Seen One Night Through a Window” by George Moor
All flows; the person has no permanence.
The children will grow up, the parents die.
For each precarious present the past tense
Is waiting; all is sort of a lie.
The clean cut fruit in dingy crystal bowls;
The fading chairs; the family sitting down.
For reassurance meet these traveling souls,
Each with an intimate sadness of his own.
Old habits calm. Old stories of old days….
Make art about family.
6/12/2016
Just don’t have words. Heartbroken.
6/13/2016
My son and I found this tiny nest yesterday, tumbled on the grass beneath the Guardian Oak. No babies, wounded or otherwise, in sight, just this miracle of weaving, bits of bark and straw and leaf and string. Inside the tiniest shards of shell left behind, thin and white as paper. I was struck at how delicate—and how strong—it is, kinda like Love.
Make art about the fragility, about the persistent strength, of Love.
Monday Must Read: Dawn Lundy Martin: Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
This week, recommending Dawn Lundy Martin‘s Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life, from Nightboat Books. Dawn earned a BA from the University of Connecticut, an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University, and a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Martin’s first full-length collection, A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering(University of Georgia Press, 2007), was selected by Carl Phillips for the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her second collection,Discipline, won the 2009 Nightboat Books Poetry Prize, chosen by Fanny Howe(Nightboat Books, 2011). Her most recent collection is Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life(Nightboat Books, 2014).
In 2004, she co-edited, alongside Vivien Labaton, The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (Anchor Books, 2004), a collection of essays on modern theories of activism in America. She also wrote the Afterword, titled “What, Then, is Freedom,” to Harriet Ann Jacobs’ 19th century slave narrative, Incidents of a Slave Girl (Signet Classics, 2010).
Martin is co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation in New York, a national grant making organization led by young women and transgender youth, which focuses on social justice activism. She is also a member of the Black Took Collective, a group of experimental black poets embracing critical theory about gender, race, and sexuality.
Martin has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, The New School, and Bard College. In June 2013, she was a was a featured writer for Harriet.
Buy Dawn’s Beautiful Books
Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
http://www.nightboat.org/title/life-box-pretty-life
Praise for Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
from Fanzine
“Shades of a Bruise: A Review of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life” by Paul Cunningham
“I think of the contorted poems of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life as themselves boxes. Imprisoned voices. Entering one of these boxes might feel more like something akin to giving one’s self over to crisis. Or chaos. How exactly should one feel about their participation in these boxes? I think it depends on the reader. The reader could possibly feel like they’re looking into a mirror; another might feel like they’re gazing down a corridor of Hell. Again, the reflection/refraction depends on the reader. Perhaps a reader will feel like they’re stepping into familiar territory, or they might feel explicitly uninvited once immersed within these boxes. Or even suddenly, violently deformed by these boxes. Defamiliarized and/or re-shaped by these boxes. Strengthened and/or bolstered by these boxes. One might also not know how to feel. These boxes might induce sweat, nausea, discomfort…”
Read the full review here: http://thefanzine.com/a-review-of-dawn-lundy-martins-life-in-a-box-is-a-pretty-life/
Discipline
http://www.nightboat.org/title/discipline
A Gathering of Matter / a Matter of Gathering
(Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize)
Read More from Dawn Lundy Martin Online
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/dawn-lundy-martin#about
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/dawn-lundy-martin
https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/new_american_poets/dawn_lundy_martin/
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/04/29/five-feminist-poems-for-national-poetry-month-5-modern-frame/
http://www.readab.com/dmartin.html
Interviews
http://lithub.com/on-the-black-avant-garde-trigger-warnings-and-life-in-east-hampton/
https://bostonreview.net/poetry/NPM-2016-karen-lepri-interviews-dawn-lundy-martin
https://pen.org/interview/three-questions-dawn-lundy-martin
https://www.loc.gov/poetry/interviews/dawnlundymartin.html
http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/split-this-rock-interview-with-dawn.html
Hear Dawn Lundy Martin Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5UX66tOxPM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nIpt-B-lA
And So Important Today: Dawn Lundy Martin, Claudia Rankine, and Messiah in Conversation: Readings and Discussion of Justice Poetry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuFE5ybTFhM
Beautiful reading, y’all ❤
xo
Mary
Daily Prompt <3 When the Ancestors Are Us
10 June 2016
Your ancestors will surround you as you sleep
keep away ghosts of generals presidents priests
who hunger for your
rare and tender tongue
They will keep away ghosts
so you have strength
to battle the living
from “Tal’-s-go Gal’-quo-gi Di-del’-qua-s-do-di Tsa-la-gi Di-go-whe-li/ Beginning Cherokee” by QWO-LI DRISKILL
Make art about ancestors, about what we can do to be good ancestors.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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