This poem, the last in October’s four-part series, typifies aging in a social context. Beyond personal attributes, life-course opportunities (present or not), or historic life-changing events, we now catch a glimpse of a shared age-related experience. In this prose poem, Will Hecht illustrates the cohesion of relationships and tradition, along with the topics and mood that generally pervades older adult conversations.
This poem, written by J. Vincent Hansen – a veteran of the Viet Nam war, illustrates the direct impact of an historical event on an individual’s aging experience. In these lines the writer shares the memory of a military incident that resulted in a lifetime of personal regret and interrupted peace.
Coming into conversation with “Face | Off” by Su Hwang, Alison Hendley unearths buried, devastating violence, reminding her of traumatic experiences in her own childhood. In doing this, she reveals the healing power of poetry.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. Our current guest editor is Judith Feenstra. With last week’s poem, we reviewed the aging process by exploring the fact that
This brief poem reflects an attitude of actively confronting age as opposed to passively accepting the disadvantages of growing old. Bernie’s poem, filled with imagery, invites the reader to give thought to their own approach to late-life stages.
“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality,” the novelist Ayn Rand wrote. But was she correct? It seems people are entirely capable of ignoring nature’s messages, of missing the evidence that shows us the costly consequences of human destruction of natural habitats and species. In March this year, as the Coronavirus caused lockdowns world wide, UN environment chief Inger Andersen said, “Nature is sending us a message.” That the failure to heed a warning is costly, is something most of us learn only through experience–if we ever learn at all. Minnesota poet Judith Feenstra was educated in Social Gerontology, and maintains an interest in the field of aging by paying special attention to works of poetry that reflect the aging perspective. One of those perspectives, which she brings to this poem, is the wisdom of experience, formed by a life attuned to the messages of nature.
Welcome to this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a breast cancer story-poem by Minnesota writer, Hedy Tripp. “In the spring of 1996, I was diagnosed with stage one intraductal
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer, followed by a prompt to help you write your own poem. Poetry and dreams share this
September returns. Students return to school and their letters, while the Jewish High Holidays (or literally translated, the “Days of Awe”) approach. In Bill Meissner’s poem, “Letter by Letter,” the themes of learning, forsaken ambitions, disappointment and regret, the passing of time, and the sorrow of contrition, converge with a sprinkle of hope that things are, nevertheless, somehow all right. This is a poem that for me perfectly captures the paradoxical joy-grief of September, a season that poignantly reminds me that things pass away, thereby heightening my awareness that life is beautiful.
Parents, during different developmental stages in their children’s lives, often wonder/worry how their children will navigate new life challenges—and with what degree of ease or difficulty. Ozzie Mayers wrote “Vegan Child,” he explained, “as an attempt to cope with the transitions his younger child was going through from adolescence to young adulthood.” As the poem unfolds, readers are gifted with a tender portrait of both the poet-father and the child to whom this poem addresses. Posing questions without answers, musings full of speculations, Ozzie offers readers a personal window into a process and format for asking questions living inside each of us that might be worth our time exploring.
What would make Minnesota nicer? What would make Minnesota authentically nice? How might we create meaningful connections between diverse people? What can we do to strengthen our communities? Life seems
One of the “founding mothers” of a small poetry blog created as a safe haven for women to read and critique each other’s work, Colleen TwoFeathers is not afraid to explore whatever moves her deeply or tickles her funny bone. I’m especially moved by poems she writes related to seasonal changes, birds, grandchildren, depression, and a vast array of social justice issues. the day i stole a yellow boat paints a strong visual portrait of how slowing down and spending time in nature can often bring oneself back to the center of one’s poetic life.
Amy Rea’s rich in wordplay poem, On Using Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler for the First Time, entertains the reader with some much needed humor, as well as offering a fun read-out-loud mouthful!
Sandy Bot-Miller will be the guest editor for Sunday Morning Lyricality in August, 2020. She is an artist-poet with a desire to address a personal and planetary search for peace, beauty and meaning.
Music often exists in the sonic realm, much the same as the spoken word. What is spoken word, but simply vibrations cultivated by our vocal musculature? Listen as Simon’s lyrical guitar “speaks,” as it contacts his inspirations, such as nature and spirituality. Be mindful of where your mind wanders when listening to a “song without words.”
Sometimes, this isn’t a more perfect time for a hopeful, optimistic song. With her acoustic guitar and bass/percussion accompaniment, Lisa Deguiseppi shares with us her words for moving forward. We’ve all had the urge to throw in the towel, and this piece stands as a beacon for better days to come. She reminds us that it is not foolish to look to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but a necessity, to be okay.
With a moving acoustic guitar ostinato and flowing violin melody underneath, Marco sheds light on the breadth of opportunities that pass us by while we work fervently for safety and comfort. He offers a solution: Take risks with unknown outcomes or trajectories, like paper planes. He closes with a message to his daughter, asking for patience and positing support, both virtues we all could benefit from adopting as we continue down our own roads.
Over a gritty guitar tone, VINJE challenges our perspective of ‘broken.’ His piece ‘Just Because’ is a call for us all to examine how we piece together those around us from the lense of our own experiences. An awful lot can appear broken if we struggle to complete the puzzle. If we can shed our mental shackles and take time in stride, perhaps we may not need to ‘fix’ that which is ‘broken.’
In Carrying Water to the Field, Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen has made a poem that soothes and cools my deep longing to know simple human kindness. The childlike innocence of this poem is akin to poems by Emily Dickinson and William Blake. But apparent simplicity is often significantly more complex than we assume. There is some poetic (artistic-linguistic-musical-mathematical-philosophical) genius at work in this astonishingly perfect poem.
Get the Complete Set of Stone Gathering Volume 1, Issues 1-5 HereSubscribe now to receive every issue of Stone Gathering, Volume 2 Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer, followed by a prompt to help you write your own poem. Kris Bigalk’s poem “Crow Pose”
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. Do our efforts make any difference at all? Do we matter? Ed Bok Lee’s “Random Floating
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer, followed by a prompt to help you write your own poem. Dr. Dorothee Ischler of the
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer, followed by a prompt to help you write your own poem. When things get difficult, frightening,
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer, followed by a prompt to help you write your own poem. “Dear Mimi” is addressed to
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer, followed by a prompt to help you write your own poem. How rich this poem is,
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. When will we get back to normal? This poem may be asking us to consider that
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, currently featuring “Light” poems by central Minnesota writers. This is a poem that aims straight for the heart. It reminds us that while life is challenging
Poetry is not just one thing, and talking about why it matters is akin to talking about why everything matters. poetry matters because living matters. But a lot of people aren’t able to recognize the beauty and consolation and celebration available through poetry because, as poet Mark Conway said, poetry suffers from several problems right now.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. Easter Sunrise: Halibut PointTracy Rittmueller We face the sunwe cannot seebecause nothing we have done can stop the
In this time of uncertainty, poets, artists, and other creative types have much to teach us. This poem hints that, when desire to understand what is beyond our knowing, making art (drawing, painting, sculpture, music, dance, poetry, basketry, weaving, crafting, or any kind of creative “making”) is a healthy response. When we find ourselves in unfamiliar situations, taking an open, creative approach allows us a sidelong glimpse at patterns we might, due to a primitive fear of the unknown, be incapable of observing and seeing with a rational-logical mindset.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, currently featuring “Light” poems by central Minnesota writers. Poets are able to manipulate all of human experience, even the pain of grief, into art, each in
Slowly and thoughtfully reading Simple Attendance by Charles Wm. Preble,
I’ve discovered that contemplating these poems is like folding down the hurricane shutters and making myself cozy. Yes, the pandemic-storm is raging, but these poems muffle the howl and minimize breakage.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. In times of despair, when we can’t see where we are going, what will comfort and
Welcome to Light from Lyricality, featuring poems by Minnesota writers to inspire hope and courage. UnvanquishedDelores Dufner When spring returns I learn once morehow deep the darkness dwelling in me,feel once
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. Yesterday the On Being Project’s weekly newsletter came with the subject, “A care package for uncertain
On a bright morning in early December, 2019, I visited with Mary Willette Hughes at her Waite Park home. We had come together to talk poetry. The living room was pleasantly warm and bright, the house was filled with rainbows cast by the prisms hanging in every window, and my body and soul were flooded with calm. I had crossed a threshold from the busy, demanding world into a place of peace.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. This deceptively simple poem addresses the contradictory feeling of despair mingled with hope. Although the poet
In Minnesota we’ve been enjoying a winter thaw, raising our spirits and awakening our hopes for spring. This week, instead of a Sunday Morning offering, I give you a song written by Tony Barr for a lucenarium celebration–an ancient form of evening worship. This is a hymn to honor the twilight hours of the day.
Laura Hansen’s recent collection of short-form literature, The Night Journey: Stories and Poems, is an invitation to wander through the realms of legend, myth, dream, memory, and encounter, in search of the heart’s home.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. This poem questions what is required for happiness. Charles Wm. Preble came to poetry late in
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. In poetry we find a curious affiliation between words and the empty-white space (silence) surrounding words.
“The Return Stroke” by Mike Finely appears to be confronting us with the uncomfortable reality that our puny brains are far from perfect and easily tricked. We humans are vulnerable, gullible, and delusional, and our planet is only one of at least 10 trillion planetary systems in the known universe. And yet, the poet reminds us, inexplicably, we matter.
d Poetry Central Minnesota, a One Book, Four Counties community poetry read program kicks off its inaugural year by encouraging everyone in Sherburne, Benton, Stearns, and Wright counties to read Bodaga: poems by Su Hwang.
This poem by Juliana Howard reminds us that to live a whole life, it’s important to sometimes stop doing in order to make room for simply being.
In his “Author Statement, Ed Bok Lee writes, “If, as Czeslaw Milosz wrote, ‘language is the only homeland,’ then poetry is the oldest, most beautiful, most generous and ‘real’ house of worship on our collective earth that I know. Every time I look into my daughter’s eyes to see the future, I’m reminded of this, and that the forces forever writing and revising every single biological cell in our bodies—in sometimes harmonious, sometimes conflicting, sometimes revolutionary ways—feels exactly like poetry.
Bodega is one of five finalist books chosen by Paige Riehl for Lyricality’s “Read Poetry Central Minnesota 2020” program. Lyricality aims to introduce Minnesota poets to new audiences, and to encourage book groups to consider poetry collections as a way to facilitate lively, meaningful discussions. People who read Bodega might gain insight to foster compassion around some of today’s most politically divisive topics.
In a conversation with Lyricality Director Tracy Rittmueller, St. Paul Poet Mike Finley discusses the hobby of poetry as a loving encounter with the world outside of oneself.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. Where do poems come from? Katherine Wallin (pronounced wall-EEN) suggests that poets often begin with paradox,
Enough by Kris Bigalk traces the interplay between the experience of codependency and the myths of Echo and Narcissus,” and calls these poems, “Lyrical, raw, and honest…” These poems are skillfully musical and open-hearted. I would also call them clear, like a crystal stream. 7 states