Angels, and poetry in the streets.
Visiting Buenos Aires
Angels, and poetry in the streets.
Category: Poetry
Summer day meditation, week 5
Last meditation class.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are.
He says live with the world inside you.
Contentment is Life living through you.
excerpts from Hokusai Says, by Roger Keyes
Summer day meditation, week 4
In meditation class, our instructor read a poem by Rumi about welcoming all emotions as you would a house guest, even the negative ones, as they may be clearing you out for something else.
Also a poem by Derek Walcott about loving again the stranger who was yourself, published in David Whyte’s book, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. For a time, David Whyte was a visiting poet at a major corporation. I’ve never read a book quite like it.
You can sample some of David Whyte’s poems on his beautiful, rich website. David leads groups on hiking tours in Italy, England, and Ireland, where he reads his poetry and visits artists, cooks, gardeners, farmers, and other creatives committed to their locales.
Summer day meditation, week 3
A moment of pleasure: Sitting under the pergola at my brother’s house outside of Cleveland. Taking in the Cleveland-ness of being here.
I can’t really explain this. Something in the air has a distinctive quality, maybe the humidity and the heat of Ohio, and it takes me back to summers growing up here: listening to the Beatles on my transistor radio (WIXY 1260), swimming with my friend, Nena, at Stafford Park, play-by-play of the Indians’ baseball game always in the background….
In meditation class this week, our teacher read Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, who is from my hometown.
Summer evening meditation, week 1
Tonight I attended the first of five mindfulness-based stress reduction classes, which include instruction in meditation. Four years ago, I took a similar series of classes; this summer I hope to renew and re-commit to my meditation practice.
We followed our breath for several minutes. We ate a raisin, mindfully. We practiced the body scan (progressive relaxation of each part of the body, preferably while lying down.) I thought I was totally relaxed, lying on my yoga mat on the hardwood floor. But when our instructor read Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day,” I found myself lying in a field of grass, giving myself up to it as if I were a kid.
That was my second encounter with Mary Oliver today. The first occurred in my wanderings around the Internet, where I found out she will publish a new book of poems this fall, “A Thousand Mornings.”
When I came home from class, my son had just arrived with fresh-picked raspberries. I ate some with whipped cream. Mindfully, of course.
Try some book spine poetry: National Poetry Month
In celebration of National Poetry Month, here is my book spine poetry.
Try it. This small act of creation will bring you to a different place. Send me yours and I’ll post them.
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Send Me Your Book Stories: Guest Posts Welcome
I’m surprised at how often I’ve read or heard, “This book changed my life,” and “This book saved my life,” since I began writing this blog.
If you have a Books Can Save a Life story, please consider guest posting it here. I’d like to create a virtual scrapbook of stories so we can share our reading journeys and find that next special book to read.
What do I mean by a Books Can Save a Life story? I mean any book that made your life better in a significant way, helped you through a tough time, or guided you through a major life change. Any book that occupies a sacred space in your memory or is intrinsic to your identity.
It could be a picture book, a novel, a memoir, a poem or a book of poems, a biography, a graphic novel, a collection of short stories. Any genre, or no genre at all, from any time of your life.
On my About Valorie page, I mention a few books that made a difference in my life. Books that helped shape who I am and influenced my path in life. I’ll be writing about other reading moments in future posts.
If you’d like to share a story, send an email to valoriegracehallinan@gmail.com with the subject line: My Book Story. Please include a post of about 500 words or less in the body of the email or an idea/book you’re interested in writing about.
If you’d like, include a short bio and a link to your website or blog, if you have one.
If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine. (Of course, you can always post anonymously in the comments.)
Please keep it simple. I’m looking for a personal experience of value to others that’s honest and from the heart.
Mary Oliver: a girl in the woods reading poetry
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” – Mary Oliver
In my hometown near Cleveland, Ohio, there once was a girl who liked to play hooky from school. She’d walk in the woods and read poetry. Back then, my town still had some of its original rural flavor, with creeks, farmland, and forest where neighborhood kids could play for hours. Poetry and nature were the two things in the world the girl loved most.
When she was seventeen, the young woman got in her car and drove to the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in upstate New York. The poet had died, but her sister, Norma, lived there. The young woman stayed for a time, helping Norma organize Millay’s papers and manuscripts, while she also wrote her own poetry.
Years later, when this same woman from Maple Heights, Ohio won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the 1980s, I didn’t pay much attention, even though I’d been an English major in college. I was working in New York City and had left my poetry reading days behind.
It wasn’t until I was in my forties and beginning to do some of my own writing that I thought I’d take a closer look at Mary Oliver, that girl from my hometown, to see what she was all about.
I hadn’t expected to be stunned. I mean, really. Why had I never read her poetry before?
I could describe Mary’s poetry with words like “powerful” and “transcendent” and “life-changing,” but those weak words wouldn’t do her poems justice. Let’s just say it was exactly the right time for Mary Oliver’s poems to enter my life. A lot of it had to do with my novice efforts as a creative writer and with believing in myself.
Mary Oliver grew up in a house just around the corner from where I did, though she left home around the time I was born. Our hometown went through especially hard times around 2008. A Cleveland neighborhood nearby was called ground zero in the mortgage disaster.
Some homes were abandoned, some torn down; wildflowers and weeds took over what used to be carefully tended lawns. Much of the wooded areas are now gone, but occasionally people spot deer, usually at dusk. The town has held its own, though; the people who live there have great spirit.
When I go back home to visit, sometimes I think of a girl skipping school, sitting cross-legged under a big, friendly tree in the once nearby woods, reading poetry.
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New and Selected Poems, by Mary Oliver, published in 1992, includes poems from 1963 – 1991.
Books Can Save A Life 