Batter our cymbals

When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself.
~Langston Hughes

Midnight Golfer by E. J. Martin

Happy Poetry Friday! It's almost Black History Month, but any time is a good time to celebrate Black excellence. Today we have Langston Hughes and Airea D. Matthews.

To You
by Langston Hughes

To sit and dream, to sit and read,
To sit and learn about the world
Outside our world of here and now—
Our problem world—
To dream of vast horizons of the soul
Through dreams made whole,
Unfettered, free—help me!
All you who are dreamers too,
Help me to make
Our world anew.
I reach out my dreams to you.

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excerpt of Eviction
by Airea D. Matthews
for Wislawa

If one sister is silenced into salt

without body that remembers,

then I will batter my cymbals

bearing witness for us both

with what body still remains.

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excerpt of ‘Black Ecstatic Ode’
by Airea D. Matthews

Praise to that which endures
To old doors, layers of paint
To years of storm beating solid oak
Praise to the gable roof that is a ceiling
coffered ceiling that is also a floor
Praise to open wombs and caskets
To any mother who must decide either
Praise to what shoulders weight
To brackets and load-bearing walls
beams and spindly skeletons
sacred geometry and tangents
To levees and pregnant summers
the bullet-ridden body
To coilspring and wheel

Praise, soon, to the crown and seed lowering
To both the thorny and fertile soil
Praise to the ground unfastening
To every earthworm bristle
and every seraph’s six wings
Interlocked in songdance of welcome

To the body relenting only to dust
the spirit ascending straightway to stars
Praise to all who rejoice in becoming
To all who rejoice in return

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Bookseed Studio has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Jan!

The Brave zine has been updated! We added two poems that came in late.

Sipping Grief by Betsy Kahn ("There is actually a firehose of grief at my disposal, but everybody knows you can’t drink from a firehose. So when these images float up, I just take a little sip of grief, and mourn the loss")

Poetry Temple with Sage Cohen. February 8 from 3-4:30

Kim Tschang-Yeul

It was in Paris, in fact, that [Kim Tschang-Yeul] first embarked on his monumental water drop painting titled Événement de la Nuit (1972), where a single oversized water drop hangs, its shadow projected against the dark ground; within the droplet, a reflection of the window of the artist’s studio. Ever since, for fifty years, he continued to present works featuring water droplets that would transform into his trademark.
~Adam Hencz

For Art Thursday, Kim Tschang-Yeul. More from Artland's Adam Hencz: "The water drop motif straddles the space between the real and the abstract...water’s nature of being transparent while simultaneously having substance has been interpreted as a metaphor of emptiness or peace.

The meticulous practice of producing works, the painting process, and the creative act itself served as a self-healing journey for a generation of Korean artists [the Dansaekhwa movement] that grew up in the midst of the chaos of the Korean war...Creating patterns with the act of repetition is central to the practice of these artists. "

Kim Tschang-Yeul

Kim Tschang-Yeul

Huddled Masses

I lift my lamp beside the golden door
Remember what I stand here for
~Shaina Taub

Shaina Taub:

The Round-Up

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good – in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
~Robert Graves

Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome! It's lovely to have you here.

Sending thanks to participants in Jone's New Year's Postcard Swap. I have enjoyed receiving your warmth and creativity on these cold days.

It's been a transformative week. What are you and I being transformed into? My hope is that we will become more clear-eyed, generous, imaginative, curious, and brave.

I thought about "stiffening the sinews" the other day, so I had to share Shakespeare's Henry V, Act III, Scene I [Once more unto the breach, dear friends]:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage:
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head,
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height.



Thank you to everyone who contributed to my collection of brave poems (and to Elena, who formatted it)! You can read it online here and you can print it here. (Choose "print on both sides" and "short edge." Heidi also says that the print command is in the "little 3-dot dropdown," which is different than printing your own doc from your own Adobe account. If you have trouble printing from Adobe, let me know.)

I had thought I would pick my favorite poem to give the $50 Bookshop gift card to, but when it came down to it, I couldn't decide. Congrats to Irene, who was chosen by the random choice generator. Happy book shopping!

Isn't the image below cool? It's on a Wikipedia tshirt and says (in small letters) Free Knowledge For Everyone! I'm a huge fan of free knowledge in general and Wikipedia in specific, so I bought one of these tees for a family member. It was a hit with my kids and their SOs.

If you'd like to learn about how to keep info/anything on the Web safely archived, check out this DIY Web Archiving zine by Quinn Dombrowski, Tessa Walsh, Anna Kijas, Ilya Kremer, and Amanda Wyatt Visconti.

Time to add your link!

Spirals

Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping.
~Julia Margaret Cameron

I try to draw an animal every day. Yesterday I picked a snail illustration to use as a mentor drawing but ran out of time before I got around to it. Thinking about what to post for Art Thursday, a snail's spiral shell popped into my head.

When I looked up "spiral shells" on Wikipedia, my curiosity was piqued by "spirals in animals" generally. What other spirals do animals have? There are millipedes, ammonites, other sea animal shells, dog tails, chameleon tails...

Woo, chameleons are impressive-looking! (I'm including the Black-headed dwarf babies at the end even though you can't really see their spirals very well because, aah, so cute!)

Blue-legged Chameleon (Calumma crypticum), Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar
Frank Vassen

Eastern Cape Dwarf Chameleon (Bradypodion ventrale)
Marius Burger

Amber Mountain chameleon (Calumma amber) male Montagne d’Ambre, Madagascar
Charles J. Sharp

Female Chamaeleo africanus digging a nest
Benny Trapp

Cryptic Chameleon (Calumma crypticum)
Julien Renoult

Indian chameleon From Kanakpura, Karnataka
Girish Gowda

Black-headed Dwarf Chameleon (Bradypodion melanocephalum)
suncana

I saw my people

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
~Woody Guthrie

photo by Ted Eytan

Am I sad that an arsonist is being put in charge of the fire department? You bet. Am I going to keep walking that freedom highway? Absolutely.

For Music Monday, This Land is Your Land:

The seeds are still growing

Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one.
~Joan D. Chittister

Hi folks! Happy Poetry Friday!

photo by N. Chadwick

I'm not sure where I saw this poem by Leslie J. Anderson (did one of you post it?) but it feels like this is a good time to share it again anyway:

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Thank you to everyone who gave me poems for my Brave compendium. Elena is formatting it and it will be ready by the 20th.

I signed up for Coursera's Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop but I can tell I am going to have a hard time getting myself to follow through. Does anybody else want to do it and hold each other accountable?

The Miss Rumphius Effect has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Tricia!

Harmony

I make collages. I join the shattered world creating a new harmony.
~Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

For Art Thursday, a painting and a collage that go well together and then a self-portrait in stained glass.

Marcel Duchamp trivia:
Upon his return to Paris in 1923, Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist. Instead, his main interest was chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities. (Wikipedia)

La sonate (Sonata)
Marcel Duchamp, 1911

Au Vélodrome, 1912
Jean Metzinger

Self portrait
by Pauline Boty

Coloring

People are visual and hands-on learners.
~Wolfgang Puck

Today for Wellness Wednesday, I'm going to make an unexpected suggestion. If there's something you've been wanting to learn, consider coloring pages.

One of my goals is to learn more about plant identification. I wanted a plant ID quiz app, something like Duolingo, but it doesn't exist. Well, you can make your own if you upload your own quizzes, but that doesn't hold a lot of appeal for me at the moment.

A few days ago I remembered that I'd downloaded a medicinal plants coloring book a while back so I printed it and have been using it. Wow, so helpful! I use photos to make sure I get the colors right. Coloring pages would also work well if you wanted to learn geography or anatomy. Basically, if there's something that requires some visual memorization, you might want to color it.

Why is this a Wellness Wednesday post? Learning is food for the spirit, and so is succeeding at a goal (not to mention coloring!).

The Breaks

And if you deserve a break tonight
Somebody say alright! (All right)

For Music Monday, Kurtis Blow singing "The Breaks" live on Soul Train:



This live video made me think of Wings of Pegasus, where Fil Henley talks about who is really singing live and who is miming, who is using pitch correction, etc. If you're interested in authentic vocals, you might want to check his channel out.

Doing something gorgeous

I am a book of snow,
a spacious palm, a meadow,
a circle that lingers,
I belong to the earth, and to its winter.
~Pablo Neruda

Happy Poetry Friday! Today's poem "I Hope This Email Never Finds You" by Anna Stacy comes from Apricity Magazine, The University of Texas at Austin's lit mag. I heard about the word "Apricity" and that ended up leading me to the magazine. 'Apricity' means the warmth of the sun in winter and comes from the Latin word 'apricitas' (sunny).

photo by unixasket

I HOPE THIS EMAIL NEVER FINDS YOU
by Anna Stacy

I hope this email does not find you well.
I hope this email does not find you
And instead arrives to a desk overgrown with moss,
Lit quietly by a shard of light through your collapsed apartment ceiling
And that the silence that it finds there is simply deafening.

I hope this email does not find you
And that it goes around the corner to your kitchen
Where your discarded dishes stand like lichened towers,

read the rest here

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Kathryn Apel has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Kat!

P.S. Last call for Brave poems! Email me at tabatha(at)tabathayeatts(dot)com with them by the end of the weekend.

La Musique

Music always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque music on low in the background. Chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like.
~Haruki Murakami

For Art Thursday, a baroque painting by Michel Boyer (1668–1724). I like that he chose to place the music within a large space (click the image to embiggen).

La Musique
Michel Boyer

Some baroque music so you can feel like you're there while you're looking at the painting:

JAM

Have patience with every one, but especially with yourself.
~St. Francis de Sales

For Wellness Wednesday, JAM (Just a Minute) card:

What makes JAM Card so special?

​ Available for free in card or app form, JAM Card is a discreet, silent and easy device for telling others that you need ‘Just A Minute’ in any scenario.

​ It was originally developed by and for those with learning difficulties and disabilities, but has now expanded to include anyone with a hidden disability or communication barrier when they need more patience and space in a given situation.

​ Despite its simplicity, JAM Card has grown into one of the leading accessibility and inclusion tools for its service users. There are now over 1,800 JAM Card businesses and 168,000 service users across the world.

I love things that make our world more livable, kinder, so I am thrilled that this exists. Making space for someone needing more time should be an ordinary occurrence.

Always a poem

To me, faith is not just a noun, but also a verb.
~Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter, 2013, Commonwealth Club

Thinking about Jimmy Carter this Poetry Friday. He was such a genuinely moral man, a true inspiration.

Two of his quotes to live by: "We have an ethical obligation, I think, to prevent suffering wherever we can."

"In our democracy, the only title higher and more powerful than that of president is the title of citizen. It is every citizen’s right and duty to help shape the future legacy of our nation."

ALWAYS A POEM, JIMMY
by Indran Amirthanayagam

The melanoma spread from
skin to liver to brain and
President Jimmy Carter
started to fall often, walking

in the peanut field, at church
on Sunday, at home. He wrote
Always A Reckoning. I wrote
The Elephants of Reckoning.

We exchanged our reckonings
in 1997 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.
I was assigned to the American
Embassy and sat down with Jimmy,

Rosalynn and Chip to talk
politics, health and environment.
The President visited to gather
facts in his fight against

read the rest here

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Another quote to think about, from Jimmy Carter at his inauguration:

"In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: 'We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.'"

(A nod of appreciation for giving a shout-out to his teacher :))

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Another Year of Reading has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Mary Lee!

The call is out for BRAVE poems (until Jan 12).

Mandora

Few occupations pass the solitary hours more fruitfully than the playing of a musical instrument.
~Stephen Hough

For Art Thursday, a beautifully-carved musical instrument circa 1420 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

This is the most elegant example of three extant small European stringed instruments dated to the early fifteenth century... whether it was played with a bow or plucked with a plectrum or fingers, remains unclear.

Cupid, armed with bow and arrow, hovers over the couple, a young man represented as falconer (the falcon denotes loyalty and trust) and a maiden with unbound hair who clasps his arm. A dog, likewise suggesting loyalty, sits at their feet. The rich iconography of the instrument unites art and music in the service of romance.

What might a mandora have sounded like?