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Started by Dede, February 16, 2020, 06:32:53 PM

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Dede

Quote from: hermes2015 on February 17, 2020, 03:49:42 AM
Quote from: Dede on February 16, 2020, 09:35:17 PM
Quote from: hermes2015 on February 16, 2020, 07:13:43 PM
Hello Dede. Welcome to our warm little family - I am sure you will enjoy interacting with all the interesting HAF members. You and I seem to have quite a lot in common, since I am also SA-born; in my case half-Jewish with English as first language. I am happy to hear that you practise sculpture and photography, which are two of my interests as well.
Delighted !  I'll participate in the photography group, sure ... I confess to using Auto mode often; for me it's about the composition mostly and I love macro of flowers. Been doing pottery for 50-odd years, handbuilt pieces and sculpture. I dabbled in glass fusing too, and making jewelry from silver clay as well as copper and bronze clay. Thank you for reaching out and saying Hallo!

After I got my final degree I was planning to drop science to become a ceramic sculptor, but life had other plans for me. I've also made silver jewellery, but in the traditional way.
I, too, could only indulge my creativity fully after retirement. I was teaching business courses in S.Africa and after immigration to U.S. I chose to not bother with getting credentialled but work towards a pension at a large municipal utility, as Executive Secretary. Remember before spellcheck, and ask Suri, executives actually had Executive Secretaries who were smart enough to do research, the knowledge of where to access all kinds of information before the internet, and so on? well that was a fairly good job for me and I did NOT have to deal with American high schoolers in a classroom setting, which would've cost me my sanity :-)

Dede

It seems that I can share more stuff about myself, so that you may get to know me, in this thread. It occurred to me that you don't know that I love poetry, and write some myself. Not just any old poetry, but stuff that speaks to me, like this poem below which I'm going to share with you ... by a woman named Ansel Elkins ...

She titled her poem "The Autobiography of Eve" and you can find more of her poetry at https://poets.org/poem/autobiography-eve

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt
to freedom.

Ansel Elkins



hermes2015

Quote from: Dede on February 26, 2020, 02:56:12 AM
It seems that I can share more stuff about myself, so that you may get to know me, in this thread. It occurred to me that you don't know that I love poetry, and write some myself. Not just any old poetry, but stuff that speaks to me, like this poem below which I'm going to share with you ... by a woman named Ansel Elkins ...

She titled her poem "The Autobiography of Eve" and you can find more of her poetry at https://poets.org/poem/autobiography-eve

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt
to freedom.

Ansel Elkins

Dede, there is some strong imagery in that poem. Does poetry inspire your visual art work at all? I remember that a teacher read an Ingrid Jonker poem to us in class one day. It made quite an impression on me, although I usually find poetry hard to understand.
"Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se."
― Charles Eames

Dede

Quote from: hermes2015 on February 26, 2020, 04:14:13 AM
Quote from: Dede on February 26, 2020, 02:56:12 AM
It seems that I can share more stuff about myself, so that you may get to know me, in this thread. It occurred to me that you don't know that I love poetry, and write some myself. Not just any old poetry, but stuff that speaks to me, like this poem below which I'm going to share with you ... by a woman named Ansel Elkins ...

She titled her poem "The Autobiography of Eve" and you can find more of her poetry at https://poets.org/poem/autobiography-eve

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt
to freedom.

Ansel Elkins

Dede, there is some strong imagery in that poem. Does poetry inspire your visual art work at all? I remember that a teacher read an Ingrid Jonker poem to us in class one day. It made quite an impression on me, although I usually find poetry hard to understand.
Yes, that strong imagery is what captured me ... I can see it all, in my mind's eye ... the serpent which had been turned into a pair of sexy thigh-high boots ;-)  the young woman standing on the edge of that abyss, the choice of buying into the church-induced idea of sin and woman being the sinful seductress ...  BUT! she can toss all that out, and blaze herself a new path! and not buy into the 'religious' bullshit of being CAST OUT,  but instead LEAPT TO FREEDOM.  Wow, that's my modern girl!
You mention that in school poetry was hard to understand. I have a wonderful book by Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate of several years ago, titled "The Poetry Home Repair Manual - Practical Advice for Beginning Poets" and I went in search of this little book, minutes ago, so that I could quote two paragraphs from it which, for me, explains why so many poems are, indeed, so obscure that someone has to INTERPRET it for us ... me, I just ignore those, as not worthy of my attention. Ted Kooser writes:
"Part of the reason for our country's lack of interest in poetry is that most of us learned in school that finding the meaning of a poem is way too much work, like cracking a walnut and digging out the meat. Most readers have plenty to do that's far more interesting than puzzling over poems. I'll venture that 99 percent of the people who read the 'New Yorker' prefer the cartoons to the poems.
A lot of this resistance is to be blamed on poets. Some go out of their way to make their poems difficult if not downright discouraging. That may be because difficult poems are what they think they're expected to write to advance their careers. They know it's the professional interpreters of poetry - book reviewers and literary critics - who most often establish a poet's reputation, and that those interpreters are attracted to poems that offer opportunities to show off their skills at interpretation. A poet who writes poetry that doesn't require explanation, who writes clear and accessible poems, is of little use to critics building their own careers as interpreters.
It is possible to nourish a small and appreciative audience for poetry if poets would only think less about the reception of critics and more about the needs of readers.  I believe with all my heart that it's a virtue to show our appreciation for readers by writing with kindness, generosity, and humility toward them."

And then Ted Kooser shares one of his own poems:
Once you were young along a river, tree to tree,
with sleek black wings and red shoulders.
You sang for yourself but all of them listened to you.

Now you're and old blue heron with yellow eyes
and a gray neck tough as a snake.
You open your book on its spine, a split fish,
and pick over the difficult ribs,
turning your better eye down to the work
of eating your words as you go."
Ted Kooser

hermes2015

Quote from: Dede on February 26, 2020, 06:39:55 PM
...
And then Ted Kooser shares one of his own poems:
Once you were young along a river, tree to tree,
with sleek black wings and red shoulders.
You sang for yourself but all of them listened to you.

Now you're and old blue heron with yellow eyes
and a gray neck tough as a snake.
You open your book on its spine, a split fish,
and pick over the difficult ribs,
turning your better eye down to the work
of eating your words as you go."
Ted Kooser

I still have a problem with poetry, but to me this Kooser poem has the clarity and vigour of Walt Whitman. To this day, the only two poets I can read easily are Whitman and Allen Ginsberg.
"Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se."
― Charles Eames