Poison Ivy Season...

Does or did anyone else out there get poison ivy? Last year, using Louise Hay's affirmation for poison ivy/poison oak, I avoided it for the first time since suddenly becoming vulnerable to it 25 years ago.  Here's another post on the same topic.  This is the kind of wisdom I want to make more widely available; I know it would have saved me decades of trouble.  What are your experiences?

Shamanista Dawn

I am in NYC just back from a phenomenal weekend of shamanic work with Shamanista Healing Circle.  It confirmed my knowledge that Witchcraft and Shamanism are the same thing.  The movement of energy, the spirituality of the earth and everything in/on it, the importance of intention, the centrality of freedom, integrity, and respect--it's all there--or can be.

I know I'll be writing much more about all this in future.  For now, I'll just say that after doing a soul retrieval journey for someone this weekend, I felt the need to channel a small healing poem for him--a kind of a charm, talisman, that he could use to embody his healing, carry with him, and re-cast the spell whenever he needed it.

The connection between poetry and healing is ancient.  And one thing I learned this weekend is that the ancient things are not far away, just because they are ancient.  In fact, they may be the closest to us of all, because they are the things that arise naturally out of being human.

My Old Screensaver and My New Screensaver

I've had this screensaver for months now:

 It's a painting by John Singer Sargent that used to hang here in the Portland Museum of Art.  The brilliant curator had hung it at the end of a long, quiet corridor so you got to approach it slowly

Scottish Beat Burning Man Wolf Song

Thanks to Wendy Babiak for telling me about this link to Scottish drummers and pipers at the Edinburgh Festival.  The more I learn about the world, the clearer it seems that we are all so closely linked physiologically, artistically, psychologically.  Meanwhile, I've been thinking about the connections between meter, rhythm, wicca, and shamanism while developing ideas for a workshop on Spell Rhythm for the upcoming Burning Man Festival.  And listening to the incredible music for the Wolf Song play, the rhythms of the instruments, singers' voices, and dancers' feet bringing my words to life as if had always been meant to be heard that way...

Answers for Kailee

Kailee is a high school student who wrote me a note one day.  Here's our correspondence:

Hello Annie,

My name is Kailee Hocker. I live in Hiawatha, KS and I'm a junior in High School. Our english teacher wanted us to do research on a famous poet that we like; as well as contact them in any way and ask questions. I looked at a lot of poets and I thought your poems were very pretty. I would really like to get to know more about you. So, please e-mail me back ASAP :) I have some questions I would like to ask you regarding your poetry!

Anapestic Ribaldry

I read at the University of Vermont a week or two ago, and Glen and I had the pleasure of meeting the very charming Irish-born poet Angela Patten.  Yesterday arrived in the mail a remarkable gift from Angela: a copy of Ciaran Carson's translation of the 1780 Irish comic narrative poem,  The Midnight Court (Wake Forest U Press, 2006).  Wow. Thanks Angela!  I plan to read it on the plane to LA today,  for the story—apparently it's about a Faerie court of women trying a man for his (non)use of his sexuality, rather a pagan theme—but meanwhile, what a treat to see a recently-written poem that uses meter--let alone a noniambic meter!— with such skill and wit!  It's a rare recent poem—or translation— that reminds you why poetry is considered an art for the ear.  I think this one is a must for Poetry in Rhythm, working title for an anthology of metrically diverse poems I am coediting with Canadian poet and Stonecoast MFA student Alexandra Oliver.  Check out this excerpt:

Not long was my slumber when nearby, thought I,

the land rocked and rolled and a turbulent sky

Brought a storm from the north, an incredible gale

That lit up the harbor as fire fell like hail.

In the blink of an eyelid--a thing I still see—

A female approached from the side of the quay,

Broad-arsed and big-bellied, built like a tank,

And angry as thunder from shoulder to shank.

Of her stature I made an intelligent guess

Of some twenty-one feet, while the hem of her dress

Trailed for five yards behind, through the mire and the muck,

And her mantle was slobbered with horrible guck. . .

I could imagine settling in to hear a full reading of this poem, just as I described doing at Michael Maglaras' reading of Hiawatha, which recently kept a sizable audience (and not an audience of poets, either!) happily listening for over five hours. . .

Cousin Chas on Graffiti

One of my favorite of Chas's art posts on the topic of a graffiti exhibit which i hope to see when I'm in LA next week to read from Among the Goddesses @ the LA Festival of Books.  Every time I see great graffiti, I feel like I'm in the presence of a powerful wild animal, one that looks me in the eyes and knows far more than i do--like Aldo Leopold's moment of encounter with the Wolf:  "We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."  Thank goodness, we have learned a bit from the mistakes of that generation and now we can look out the train window and appreciate the wolf's eyes, maybe even bring them into the museum, maybe even begin to build a true ecosystem, like this collaboration between Yo Yo Ma and Lil' Buck.  You  tell em, Chas!