Poetry for a wild March, Hares and Coots, and plenty of leaping. This has been a wild week, Pi Day, Einstein’s birthday, Ides of March, St. Patrick’s Day, Ducks becoming number one seed, all having to do with the Poetry Slow Down, and in memory of John Updike, 85 ish today . . . speaking of hares . . . rabbits? Still alive for us as a writer, in this season of March Madness, about a basketball player, how about that?: “Ex-Basketball Player†(John Updike).
Irish Proverb: Cheshire Cat Magnetic Belts, Persian New Year, Pre-Gaming Ides of March, and St. Patrick’s Day, and Other News in and of and by Poetry
To the tunes of Chet Baker, Bob Marley, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, and the Happy Wanderer, guest host Emily Dickinson helps us welcome March, along with e.e. cummings, William and Kim Stafford, Derek Walcott, Jorie Graham, Leigh Hunt, Elizabeth Bishop, Luis Garcia Montero, David Wright, Gerald Stern, Judith Viorst, Philip Larkin, Seneca, Rumi, Hafiz, Stephen Grellett, C. K. Williams, Eleanor Lerman, Mark Doty, Hilarie Jones, Marilyn Nelson, Kim Adonnizio, D. H. Lawrence, and yours truly . . . the news we need, the news we heed, the news without which men die miserably every day, according to our muse Dr. William Carlos Williams, physician poet healing himself, and us, with poetry: speaking of news–here was this in the newspaper, from a story about a woman who dies in a nursing home with agonized helpless witnesses trying to help
What the Old Guys and Wise Guys mean to today’s young leaders and scholars—a snapshot onto our world, a wake-up call, and that’s waking up to smell the coffee and see with amazement the morning sun rising gloriously. To the tunes of Van Morrison’s “Dwelling on the Threshold,†Mel Carter’s “Hold Me Thrill Me,†Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game†and Patti LaBelle (Lil Kim, Pink, Christine Aguilera) “Lady Marmalade,†we’ll hear Emerson and Einstein, Galway Kinnel, Emily Dickinson, James Wright, Wordsworth, John Muir, Lewis Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Thoreau, Bill Holm, D. H. Lawrence, Kabir, Chuck Tripi, Marie Curie, Milton Glaser, Pablo Neruda, e.e. cummings, Mary Oliver, Nancy Willard, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jennifer Franklin, and others, and feature Gerald Durrell, eloquent and poignant voices our peeps on the threshold have taken to heart, and taken heart from.
