REGISTRATION: Bette’s Tuesday Happy Hour Poetry Workshop
Bette members: please register for Tuesday’s Happy Hour, May 27, at noon Pacific, where I will be leading a poetry workshop
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Our next community event is Bette’s Happy Hour Poetry Workshop, Tuesday, May 27, noon Pacific
I had the good fortune of attending a poetry workshop in Paris, and as a lifelong poet — and the mother of a poet laureate — I believe poetry contributes to a healthier emotional immune system.
I have always tried to weave poetry into the political work I do here, and indeed, so much of my work has been informed by the great poets who came before us.
In this Byline column featuring Marci Shore, for example, I include the words of a Polish poet:
The poet, Czeław Miłosz, is a Nobel Prize winner for literature, and he wrote A Song on the End of the World.
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.
As I travel through Europe, I often meet people — even strangers — who talk in poetry. Everywhere you go, you find bookstores, new and used, seemingly on each street corner.
On the first Saturday I arrived in Europe, I had the blessing to be invited to a Burns Night — a celebration of the work of Scottish poet Robert Burns. Along with the poetry, the hosts served haggish, as is the tradition.
As I listened to people singing and reciting poetry around the dinner table, I dashed off a few verses to the tune of Auld Lange Syne, which was written by Burns.
Here’s my poem from that evening:
Should old America be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should old America be forgot, in the days of the Orange Swine?
For the Old Orange Swine, my dear, for the Old Orange Swine,
We'll serve a cup of rancid muck, to the Old Orange Swine…
We two who flew across the pond, from morning sun 'til night
The seas between us roared and swelled, since America’s decline
For America’s decline, my dear, America’s decline,
We'll drink a cup to better days, and a miracle divine…
A miracle for beloved America is not impossible, particularly when so many millions of good people are willing to roll up their sleeves to plot a way out of its current capture.
As the poets of history have taught us, a good verse can lift up entire countries.
As Bruce Springsteen just reminded us, a poet can challenge a dictator.
When I wrote my report on Václav Havel’s Power of the Powerless, I learned many important lessons, but one in particular has stayed with me.
He wrote:
If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.
As I wrote in response:
For those of us dedicated to living within truth, we understand that the reason it is suppressed is because of the existential threat to the unstable foundations created by lies, which are brittle and breakable.
Havel writes pages and pages of the reasons why people collectively living within truth are so threatening, causing regime’s to desperately plug up the ‘dreaded wellspring of truth’, because truth can cause ‘incalculable transformations in social consciousness’.
Poetry offers a fabulous subversive way to ‘cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness.’
So, inspired by the workshop I recently attended, we’re going to have one of our own. We’ll use photos as prompts, and everyone will have ten minutes to write their own poems.
I’ll call on handful of you to recite your poem if you wish — you can pass, of course — but I think it will be a great way to reconnect with the beauty in our collective souls.
We are continually doused with performative ugliness by greedy men and women — maybe they have never known empathy — but we can replenish our individual spirits with community and poetry.
I hope you join us.
Our weekly Happy Hours are open to all levels of paid membership, and I look forward to seeing many of you in the squares. Keep scrolling to bottom to register.
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