10.29.2003
from The Life of Poetry
--Muriel Rukeyser
Dead power is everywhere among us--in the forest, chopping down the songs; at night in the industrial landscape, wasting and stiffening new life; in the streets of the city, throwing away the day. We wanted something different for our people: not to find ourselves an old, reactionary republic, full of ghost-fears, the fears of death and the fears of birth. We want something else.
We're throwing an event in the city tonight, if any of you are in San Francisco and can come by, here's the information:
A Poetics of Peace
Fear and Beauty in the Heart of America
with Michael Meade
October 29, 7:00 pm
Lone Mountain Center, Room 148
2800 Turk Street
University of San Francisco
www.mosaicvoices.org
An array of stories, poems and song that address issues of war and peace, the necessity of cultural change and the question of who makes meaning in America.
Join us for a unique evening of stories, poetry and discussion as we seek meaning in a world increasingly uncertain and fearful. As a poet already said: ‘A false sense of security is the only kind there is.’ There is no ‘homeland security,’ there is no homeland except the ground where language reinvents itself and meaning breaks into new shapes.
Below the false rhetoric of success and the rise of terror, the deep language of life keeps forming in the secret rivers of the earth. Genuine hope lies in a ‘poesis,’ a ‘making’ through which we, who have become almost speechless, make culture real again. Beauty is the antidote to fear, the dream of life being shaped anew, the impossible trying to be born again. This is the real battle, the battle for beauty and inner nobility of the soul trying to break through the spells of cultural confusion and numbness.
Fear and Beauty recalls the 'other America,' the land of welcoming and tolerance; it inspires a re-imagining that shifts 'olders' into elders and returns youth to the study of ideals; it shapes an artful ceremony that deepens the sense of shared meaning and community.
Everyone Welcome – Donations Appreciated
Donations support A Poetics of Peace, work with at-risk youth, Walking With and other cross-cultural and inter-generational projects.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 6:20 AM link | comments []
10.28.2003
Last night in the early twilight, we walked out and then swam into the dark water of Tomales Bay. A friend rented a house on the water in Marshall. At first, it was like swimming into the sunset, the orange-pink surface glimmering, still. Up the bay Hog Island held the mouth, and to the south, towards home, hung a slivered moon and its evening companion, Venus. In the east, Mars. We swam with light strokes, not wanting to break the surface, or the silence in the darkening water.
Afterwards a perfectly positioned hot tub provided the best seats for viewing that moon, and above her, the milky, starry sky.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 7:15 AM link | comments []
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