A Very Special Equinox

Equinox, the time of most balance between day and night, light and dark, happens at 11:09 PM--the very moment I write this sentence tonight.  And the Harvest full moon, brightest of the year, comes at 5:17 tomorrow morning.  A very special conjunction, a time of powerful balance between, as my dear friend Deborah Knighton Tallerico puts it, Yin and Yang, Masculine and Feminine Energies, reminding us "of the importance of balance and harmony in our lives."

The Chinese have long known how to celebrate this amazing Harvest moon.  And according to this link about the Chinese mid-Autumn moon-festival (scroll down to the poets at the bottom) it was the poets who made the festival so popular.  That's a mission I can get into--writing poems to encourage an Autumn moonwatching tradition.

Happy equinox, everyone--and though, as Susun Weed points out, pure balance would not be a living condition, may you savor its brief visit!

Mint Tea, Wine, & a Splash of Inspiration

Slowly I am absorbing Susun Weed's lesson that the plants around us in abundance are offering themselves for our use.  For example, after thinking of mint as "invasive" for years and trying to contain it through violent wastefulness, instead I took her advice and started to consume it frequently, matching the pace at which it offers itself.  It's easy to tear or cut off the tops to use the leaves, and the flowers that the bees love grow right back out of the shorter stems. Wonderful!  And what a great lesson and practice, to gather, in the proportion in which they are given, the other gifts of life, including poetic inspiration.


There's still time to enjoy my favorite new drink: sun mint tea  . . .  pick and tear up a handful of mint leaves and soak in a jar of water in the sun for a while (I put plastic wrap on top to keep the bees out).  Even a few leaves and an hour or two makes water taste magnificent, a drink at once sweet, simple, and sophisticated, loved by both kids and adults---like drinking the sun.

Which reminds me of a quote from Galileo, of all people, that someone told me today at a wonderful harvest feast, a grape harvesting and potluck extravaganza held at Maine Coast Vineyards, our friends' local winery:  "Wine is sunshine held together by water and alcohol." There was a lot of sunshine going around this wonderful harvest celebration, kids playing everywhere, generations mixing, work and relaxation--community grounded in food and the earth.

Summer Swirls

Sometimes my care as a writer gets the best of me as a blogger. I have various posts in the works--one on "Solstice Weddings," since the way I celebrated the Solstice this year was by celebrating a couple of amazing unions.  One on my new Tarot deck (Druidcraft).  One on the amazingness of the garden.  One on Esbats.  And this one--the one that I'm not revising, so it is the one that will be posted.  This one is just to say that it's the height of the summer and I am in a swirl of happy projects before heading to a writing retreat.  Like my garden, I am bursting over.  The fertility and fecundity of life has often overwhelmed me, but this week I am just revelling in it.  I've discovered if I sit back and just let it run, it does!   Happy summer, everyone.  Enjoy!

Wild Weeds Poetry Contest

--I am excited to be judging the first Wild Weeds Poetry Contest in honor of Susun Weed's seven favorite weeds.  I am a serious fan of Susun's work.  My physical health and overall vibrancy in life has been vastly improved by drinking nettle and other infusions as she taught me. My sense of commitment and community as a poet has been charged and enhanced, and the name of this blog even partially inspired, by my completion of her Green Witch Intensive and initiation by her as a Green Witch two summers ago.  And my psyche is still slowly, silently, and I am sure unstoppably, being re-attuned and redirected by the hour my daughter and I spent talking with a small plant, one whose name we learned only later, during her Talking With Plants workshop. 

These experiences have nourished me as a person and also as a poet, strengthening my intuition, my sense of adventure, my capacity to zero in on the wordless core from which true words come, and my sense of how much one person really can help the world to heal.  I'm grateful to be involved in a contest that will help advance knowledge of Susun's necessary and timely work—and I'm looking forward to the poems I'll be reading over the next couple of months!  

If you are curious about my own poems and want to "know the judge" (to quote the game Apples to Apples), there are poems at my website.  Check out the Spiral!

  

Wild Weeds Poetry Contest Details:

--Information on the seven weeds here

--No minimum or maximum length; no entry fee

--Deadline Sept 1, 2010

--Please paste poem into the body of an email (not an attachment)

--Please put Wild Weeds Poetry Contest in subject header.

--Until the winner is announced, entries will be posted here at the Wisewomen Tradition blog--feel free to check out the competition!  The winning poem will be published on the Weed's Wisewomen website in September, and winner receives a free copy of one of Weed's books.  I'll be posting the winning poem and some honorable mentions here also, with some closing thoughts and comments.

Till then, keep it spiralling!

Love, 

Annie

Violets: A Poem by Alice Dunbar-Nelson

In honor of the Susun Weed Poetry Contest, here is a poem by Alice Dunbar-Nelson in honor of one of Susun's seven favorite weeds:


SONNET

by Alice Dunbar-Nelson

I had no thought of violets of late,

The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet

In wistful April days, when lovers mate

And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.

The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,

And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;

And garish lights, and mincing little fops

And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.

So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,

I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;

The perfect loveliness that God has made.—

Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.

And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream

Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten dream.

Poetry as Art Criticism

 Who says poetry "makes nothing happen"?  My Bourgeois post inspired my cousin Charlie Finch, columnist for Artnet, to send me a couple of the poems he's published as a form of art criticism 
over the years:  for example, these on  Deborah Solomon and Elizabeth Peyton, or this on Louise Bourgeois. Even though we disagree entirely about Bourgeois' art,  he has here picked up, albeit mockingly, on her very true message that it is never too late to heal from childhood wounds.  This is one of the reasons I found Bourgeois' late work at the Whitney exhibit so moving--the pain of the child was so close to the surface, and it was clear from the rest of the exhibit how much work and time it had taken her to bring it out to that point.

It's exciting, and surprising, that someone not known for writing poetry would choose serious poetry (not only light verse, which is of course used more often for political and social commentary) as a vehicle for actually conveying ideas in this day and age,

Louise Bourgeois: An Unfinished Poem

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(thanks to the great Lemon Hound blog for photo!)

A couple of years ago, I was on the way to New York and poet Lee Ann Brown happened to mention that she'd enjoyed the Louise Bourgeois Retrospective at the Whitney.  I had heard legends about Bourgeois' salon, and sculptor Judy Fox had been meaning to bring me over, but I hadn't made it there and didn't really know a lot about Bourgeois' work other than the Spiders. But I knew I had to go . .  .

And yes, that exhibit's spiralling journey through the restless curiosity, wild sensuality and heroic courage of her career really blew me away.  What a journey of texture, form, and heart, to the very end when the layers of expertise were peeled back and the raw pain of some of her formative experience revealed! What an inspiration to keep growing younger in heart and soul while older in mind and skill!

I felt compelled to pull out my notebook almost immediately, even during the early totem poles on the lower levels of the exhibit, and kept writing raptly as I climbed the ramps as slowly as possible, spiralling back over and over, notebook in hand, moved over and over to words.