"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 ‘Nature’

Daily Prompt <3

14 July 2016

Make art about finding somewhere to land. 

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Daily Prompt <3 Hard Travelin' for the Tender Hearted.

29 June 2016

“It’s hard to wake up sometimes and look back at your life with clear eyes, isn’t it? All the Hello’s and Goodbye’s, and all the things said and left unsaid, whether they were timely, or easy, or uncomfortable or boltfree, or jarring, or just plain true, at least for you, in the moment of their saying.And once you’re awake you have to listen to the now, or ignore it and pretend that it’s just not there. Tricky stuff for the strongest of us, and hard travelin’ for the tender hearted. Like pilgrims on some dusty trail, the long line of true believers stretches into nothingness, and the shadows of the don’t fit in’s move along like so much smoke, pungent and ethereal, lingering toward home.”~John Little Bear Eaton

Make art about the don’t fit in’s. 

Bear 2007

John Little Bear Eaton

Daily Prompt <3 What Lightning Desires

23 June 2016

Wrote a poem this morning 🙂 Haven’t done that in a while 🙂 Called “The Girl Lightning Loved” 🙂 

The Girl Lightning Loved

didn’t know how deeply she burned, was burned, her bones wicked through lifetime after lifetime….~Mary Carroll-Hackett 

Make art about what lightning, about what lightning desires. 

lightning girl

 

Daily Prompt <3 Yogananda on Opportunity

18 June 2016

“Opportunities in life come by creation, not by chance. You yourself, either now or in the past (including the past of former lives), have created all opportunities that arise in your path. Since you have earned them, use them to the best advantage.” ― Paramahansa Yogananda

Make art about opportunity, about creating your own opportunity. 

yogananda

#WeAreOne

Can we start a movement? 

dialogue

 

The Birds of Grief

This week I keep going back to a poem I wrote a couple of years ago, about grief, about sheer physicality of grief and loss. About feeling helpless. About how loss, no matter what, belongs to all of us. 

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I Want to Bring the Birds

inside, hold them in my hands, tuck them inside my shirt, claws and all, feel the sharp tic of each frightened beak, surround them with my fingers, cradle them against the cage of my ribs, whisper shh shh shh—until they each find and linger in their place: the titmice tatting nests into my hair, crested sparrows and juncos perched and singing from my feet, the jays who see me as so much meat, supplier of suet and otherwise foolish and useless, each take a shoulder, their alarm squawk sudden and hard as a couple of crows stand sentry on my back. The chickadees, those flying golf balls with their punk rock eyes and ebony mohawks, bossy and brazen, take my ears, letting me know just how they see this whole thing going, while the shy nuthatch hides, its cinnamon shadow disappearing under my shirt as it hops up my ribs and nuzzles in like a newborn near my heart. A pair of doves, and then another, their wings ash gray and spotted with apricot, nestle in on the soft give of my belly; I touch them with just the tips of my fingers, hoping, praying, they’ll teach me the tender songs only possible in the dark. One by one, they all settle in, on my limbs, my skin, feathering, resting, and maybe, so will I, settle for real, for the first time in years, as I hear and feel their heartbeats steady, slow, ease finally, into a companion rhythm with my own. Or mine to theirs? In my dreams, it doesn’t matter. In my dreams,we are the same.

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This poem is included in my collection The Night I Heard Everything from FutureCycle Press

birds of grief

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. 

talking to the dying

 

 

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

flowers-1680-1050-wallpaper

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.

family

 

6/12/2016

Just don’t have words. Heartbroken.

orlando

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

nest

Hundreds of Prompts! Right Here! :-)

Finally got around to getting this website updated 🙂

Including all those Daily Prompts! Right here! 

Check em out and get your creativity flowing! 

Mary Carroll-Hackett Daily Prompts!   

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