"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

Posts tagged ‘choosing peace’

Daily Prompt Catch-Up! Storms, and Shrines, and What We Can Learn <3

10/4/2016

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.

hurricane-preparation-checklist

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.

my-curtains

 

Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Leaves, & Autumn, & Just Going From Here

10/1/2016

Walking in these West Virginia mountains 🙂

“The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil in your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.” ~Thoreau

Make art about ‘garden enough.’

pipestem-wv-e1472219030381

10/2/2016

Driving back from WV, I stopped for gas, and Road Angel Louise tells me her story of trying to recover from the recent flooding, what it’s like to lose so much. “Just go from here, I reckon,” she said.

Make art about rebounding from tragedy, about how we ‘just go from here.’

636024400462649924-ap-aptopix-severe-weather

10/3/2016

Dreamt someone I love brought me apples, Honey Crisp and Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Winesap, even a couple of Arkansas Black. He sliced one with his sharp knife, and smiling, said, Here you go, Missy. A taste of what’s to come.

Make art about the taste of autumn. Or about what’s to come.

apples-and-birds-2

 

Monday Must Read! Pattiann Rogers: Holy Heathen Rhapsody

The most recent book from one of my always favorite poets, Pattiann Rogers.

pattiannrogers_newbioimage_0Ms. Rogers has published eleven books of poetry; two book-length essay collections, The Dream of the Marsh Wren and The Grand Array; and A Covenant of Seasons, poems and monotypes, in collaboration with Joellyn Duesberry. She is the recipient of two NEA grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award for poetry. She lives in Colorado.

 

Read the title poem here in American Scientist

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/holy-heathen-rhapsody

Buy Holy Heathen Rhapsody

https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Heathen-Rhapsody-Penguin-Poets/dp/0143123882

Praise for Holy Heathen Rhapsody

I believe Pattiann Rogers walks the world at night when we are sleeping. Her poems are translations of our dreaming life—what we know to be true but fail to remember. We read her words, sentence by sentence, image by image, and return to all that is beautiful, mysterious, and erotic.”
Terry Tempest Williams

Pattiann Rogers is a visionary of reality, perceiving the material world with such intensity of response that impulse, intention, meaning, interconnections beyond the skin of appearance are revealed. Her language, unmarred by clichés, springs up out of a sense of how various and endlessly amazing are the forms of life and the human ability to notice them.”
Denise Levertov

How the densely detailed, thickly textured, imaged stanzas of Pattiann Rogers result in so much light-as-air wonderment is surely one of the greater questions—one of the greater magics—of contemporary poetry. But however it happens, we must be thankful—for both the science text and the psalter of her work, for both the physical abundance and for the spirit flimmering over it.”
Albert Goldbarth

Read More from Ms. Rogers Online

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/pattiann-rogers#about

http://www.terrain.org/2014/poetry/two-poems-by-pattiann-rogers/

https://orionmagazine.org/poetry/pattiann-rogers-poem/

https://imagejournal.org/article/speak-rain/

Interviews

http://www.missourireview.com/anthology/interview-with-pattiann-rogers

http://www.pw.org/content/interview_poet_pattiann_rogers?cmnt_all=1

Ms. Rogers on Merging Science and Poetry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gicNcqk08Pk

http://www.cennamology.com/home/pattiann-rogers-review-merging-poetry-science-and-philosophy

Reading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vBelOceSMA

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Daily Prompt Love <3 Faith v. Fear

9/30/2016

Make art about the struggle between faith and fear, or about faith overcoming fear. 

be-not-afraid-with-watercolor-clouds1

Daily Prompt Love <3 That One Breath

29 September 2016

Make art about that moment you just need to take a deep breath. 

just-breathe

 

Daily Prompt <3 What the Stones Remember

 

9/28/2016

Dreamt I sat by a river, stacking stones, gray pebbles, that I built into a small curved wall, then dismantled, piece by piece, the stones smooth and slick in my hands. 

Rocks act as the memory for our planet. By examining their elemental makeup and physical structure, scientists can understand the history of the earth. The fossil records left in rock formations literally describe our planet’s journey through time. Seen in this light, even the stones and pebbles we find in our backyards are pieces of the ancient past and the secrets of how we came to be in this vast universe.

Make art about what stones remember.

stones

Daily Prompt :-)

9/27/2016

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”~George Bernard Shaw

Make art about the political mess we’re in. 

 

politician-flag-4597372

Daily Prompt! <3 "Dangerous Men"

9/26/2016

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”T.E. Lawrence

Make art about dangerous dreamers.

dream-door

Daily Prompt Love <3 Old Music and New

9/24/2016

Found some healing and comfort last night from listening to old school outlaw country music that my mama loved. 

Make art inspired by a song remembered from your childhood. 

 

 

25 September 2016

Make art about another beginning. 

 

Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3

9/20/2016

It’s my oldest son’s birthday today. I never could have know, twenty-eight years ago, that I wasn’t just having a baby: I was meeting one of my best ever friends.

Make art about adult children. Or about best friends.

fullsizerender

With my oldest son J, early 1989

9/21/2016

Make art about lighting a candle for someone you Love.

light-a-candle

9/22/2016

Been thinking all day about living in other times. I would have made a terrible Victorian woman 🙂

Make art imagining yourself in another time, another era.

victorian-women

9/23/2016

Love is a Verb.

Make art about Love in action in unexpected ways.

love-is-a-verb

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