I shall grow old but never lose life’s zest, Because the road’s last turn will be the best.—Henry Van Dyke

“The difference made me bold”—celebrating Emily Dickinson’s life of service, in honor of her 185th birthday; the meaning sharing one’s life can make to the spirit with which we each go forth boldly where no one has been before, with May Sarton, Ruth Stone, Tillie Olsen, Wendy Barker, Sandra Gilbert, Linda Gregg, Lucille Clifton, Deb Casey, and moi, and not only feisty ladies including Sphinx but the guys, Dante, Eliot, Gerard Stern, Stanley Kunitz, Donald Hall, W.S. Merwin, Charles Gibilterra, and Charles Tripi, with special tributes to Jack Gilbert and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

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The music says it all:

Roberta Flack, Killing me softly with his song
Wizard of Oz, Courage (Lion’s Song)
Pinocchio—Jiminy Cricket “When You Wish Upon a Star”
Footloose, “Almost Paradise”
Elvis, “It’s Now or Never”
Sound of Music, Climb Every Mountain

CYRANO (opening his eyes, recognizing her, and smiling as he speaks: the actor must try to convey the multiple meanings of the word panache, a feather, the plume in his hat, display, swagger, attack, or just spirit.):

My panache.

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That’s Nikki Giovanni, her Kidnap poem, kidnapping you today for our annual Thanksgiving PoetrySlowDown ANK OU ERY UCH, or, LET’S GIVE THANKS FOR THE POEM I’M WRITING (AND THESE WORDS I EAT) and this is your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, as we hear (hear! hear!)

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I reflect that kind is three quarters kin. Our bonds, the actual equation of us, the Mayan saying, you are my other me. Emily Dickinson’s I’m Nobody draws us in to this secret shared identity. We are in this together. We ARE this together. We are the metaphor, that impossibility of connection,  the poet’s vision. Dickinson is providing me spiritual leadership during this time of a French which is a world crisis. Our poetry organizations, you, Poetry Slow Down listeners, provide me solace of community as we reel from the revelation that no place is safe. But we have to live as if it is still our beloved world.

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A show about memory and the spirit and spirits of what we treasure and hold precious when we slow down, and the role of Muse, of poetry, in bringing life to life. Music is “Memory,” from Cats, Got a Lotta Living To Do, Elvis Presley, I Remember You, Frank Ifield, That One Day, That Summer, Nat King Cole.

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