What a wonderful, warm, and far-flung group convened for our session – from around the country (Pittsburgh, the Bronx, Martha’s Vineyard, and beyond) and around the world (Morocco, Greece, India at 4:30 am!).

Our text for this session was “The Trees” by Philip Larkin, posted below. We discussed the poem, which in true Larkin fashion, reveals itself, with close reading, to be far more complex than one first imagines. And so our collective reading revealed the layers of this wonderful piece – like the trees’ “rings of grain.”. Our discussion was energetic and far-reaching. Participants pointed to the poem’s language, drawing a connection between Larkin’s “greenness” as a “kind of grief” to the opening lines of TS Eliot’s “The Wasteland:”

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire…

 We discussed the complexity of man’s relationship to nature – in that we turn to it for solace and reassurance, finding only confirmation of our solitude and our mortality. One participant pointed to the “Russian doll”-like nature of the poem, the ways in which layers of meaning are embedded in its three short stanzas. And a comment about the end of the poem itself being a beginning – “afresh afresh afresh” – not only affirmed this notion but also echoed, with its sonorous repetition, in our participants’ subsequent writing.

We offered the prompt: Write about what roots you. And the pieces it inspired were indeed as multifaceted as the poem itself. Our participants shared generously, and many have posted here. (Thank you!) We look forward to gathering again with you soon.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured. If you chose to draw, your are welcome to share as well, simply email your visual file to narrativemedicine@columbia.edu and we will add and credit it to the post here.

Please join us for our next session: Sunday, May 3rd at 3pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

The Trees 
By Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

from The Collected Poems (Faber, 1993), by permission of the publisher, Faber & Faber Ltd.

Thank you to everyone who attended our session. We were fortunate to have participants from all across the globe — Germany, Italy, Portugal, UK, India, USA, and Bahrain!

This week, we discussed Marc Chagall’s painting “Paris through the window” (1913) (posted below). Our discussion was dynamic and multi-faceted, with a wonderful amalgamation of  perspectives. Participants spoke of the binaries present in the painting — between reality and fantasy, the waking state and the dream-like, the world outside and inside, the past and future, the dark and light. Others called attention to the vibrant colors, the caricature of the human-faced cat, the upside-down train, the flowers growing forth from the chair, and the two-faced “Janus” figure. We noticed how that figure and the cat were together yet looking elsewhere, and we wondered what the Janus figure was seeing, crowded down in the corner. We also considered the meaning of the horizontal figures. People connected the chaotic, otherworldly nature of the image to our current situation, and we considered the artist’s flight from Russia, as well.

Our prompt was: Write about looking through a window. In response to our prompt, participants spoke about seeing the future through the window as well as gleaning reminders of the past. Participants spoke of imagining people congregating again in groups, offering optimism and hope for our own future. We also heard about the window itself — its form, its movement or lack thereof, and how our perspective can change as we look through it. Other noticed the positioning of the body in experience and space, or spoke of the window as an “incomprehensible other”— something that we find ourselves engaging with more often these days. The responses we heard seemed to be prose, compared to the poetry that has dominated many past sessions.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured. If you chose to draw, your are welcome to share as well, simply email your visual file to narrativemedicine@columbia.edu and we will add and credit it to the post here.

Please join us for our next session: Friday, May 1st at 7pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Forty-five people (from Canada, Mexico, Morocco, the United Kingdom, and the United States) participated in exploring Jennifer Packer’s  2017 painting: “April, Restless.” The first observations involved the color yellow, its brightness emanating off our screens. One person said yellow is his favorite color; another liked the “daffodil” color of spring, the way the dominant color echoed the flowers in the upper left corner; another said yellow causes feelings of friction

While keen observers took in objects such as a typewriter, a photograph of the Pietà, a clipboard and scissors, pens or brushes, a table that is there/not there, and the casters under the chair that the central figure occupies, the presence of a person seated (some said “like a monument”) and looking directly at the viewer, prompted the most discussion. Is it a self-portrait? Does it represent a man, woman, elderly, young age? Because we began without revealing the artist, title, or medium, and participants were asked to “bring new eyes” and slow-look, differing perspectives emerged from the encounters between what oil-on-canvas was visible on our screens and what each person brought to the painting (the beholder’s share).

Repeatedly people brought questions of identity: what shading and skin tones, markings on the legs, and the shape of the feet in the foreground could tell us.

There were comments on what appeared to be the sitter’s discomfort. Some participants (especially from professions in healthcare) were aware that they tended to “medicalize” the stillness, the posture, the left eye open and the right closed or drooping, the position of both hands, and considered possible diagnoses or illnesses that the sitter may live with. One person saw a writer turned away from her typewriter and unable to continue working. When the facilitators showed the slide with the title “April, Restless” many felt confirmed that what appeared as stiffness and stillness, perhaps immobility, reflected the sitter’s restless wish to move. Our own experiences of limited mobility and prolonged sheltering-in-place, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was also present, and we wondered what we projected onto the painting. NM thrives on these moments of intersubjectivity, when we are able to include ourselves in the knowing and unknowing of a text and others’ points of view.

Our prompt was: “Draw or write about restless April.”

In response to the prompt many participants turned to their April, 2020 and wrote about what they see through the window or walking in nature. Poets, reading aloud what they had written in four minutes, echoed the colors in the painting–not only with forsythia’s bright blooms but also with a robin’s breast, recalling the red spots, on the sitter’s chest, which some viewers had seen as blood and others as red buttons. 

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured. If you chose to draw, your are welcome to share as well, simply email your visual file to narrativemedicine@columbia.edu and we will add and credit it to the post here.

Please join us for our next session: Wednesday, April 29th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session! On a sunny Saturday afternoon, we had 52 participants joining from across the United States and many from overseas, including Portugal, Bahrain, Bristol, India, Canada, France, Italy, and Morocco.

Our text was an excerpt from “The House of Broken Angels,” by Luis Alberto Urrea, posted below. We read the excerpt once and discussed how language helps us assimilate and the emotional and intellectual labor involved with assimilation, how culture is an integral part of language, and the many ways that language recreates us.

Our prompt was: “Write about a time language re-created your reality.” The responses were in the shadow of the text, with many sharing their experiences of learning a new language and how difficult that could be, the places one recreates language, and even dreaming in the foreign language one is learning (Français was the predominant second language of the day). The words used were colorful and poignant and reminded us of how powerful language can be.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session: Monday, April 27th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Excerpt from The House of the Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

He was temporarily out of words. He, who had taught himself English by memorizing the dictionary. Competing with his estranged father to see who learned newer, stranger, more American words. His father, once a monument of a man, later small and gray and watery-eyed, charming and brutal as ever, but whittled down. Sleeping in Big Angel’s back bedroom for a season—Big Angel ascending to patriarch. Nobody could imagine such things. No Mexicano or gringo.

No way of knowing how language re-created a family. His own children didn’t want to learn Spanish, when he had given everything to learn English. The two men at the kitchen table with cigarettes and coffee and used dictionaries. They captured new words and pinned them like butterflies of every hue. “Aardvark,” “bramble,” “challenge,” “defiance.” One called out a word: “Incompatible.” The other had to define it in less than three minutes. Five points per word. Scores tallied on three-by-five-inch index cards. At the end of each month, a carton of Pall Malls was at stake. If the caller’s accent was too hard to understand, he lost three points. And so, with verbs and nouns, they built their bridge to California.

English exams, followed by paperbacks bought at the liquor store. His favorite gringo phrase at work, which he seldom used at home, was “By golly.” He learned that a mighty lover, in James Bond books, was known as a “swordsman.” He learned from a John Whitlatch action novel that a man with a prostitute for a wife was an “easy rider.” Americans in the ’60s said “easy ice” to bartenders when ordering a cocktail, thus sounding very current and ensuring a bit more liquor in the glass. Big Angel maintained a mental data bank of American secret spells and incantations. Hard-on. Johnny Law. What can I do you for?

Why was he thinking about work? About the past? It was over. It was all over. He was never going to work again. “This second,” his father liked to tell him, “just became the past. As soon as you noticed it, it was already gone. Too bad for you, Son. It’s lost forever.”

(Muy filosófico.)

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st Edition edition (March 6, 2018)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session! This Wednesday evening we had over 35 participants connected to us from across the United States, with some joining from Colorado, California, and Texas, and international visitors from India and Tokyo!  There were many first timers and we really appreciated their willingness to jump in to the activities and share their work.

Our text was: “I Have a Time Machine” by Brenda Shaughnessy, posted below. After hearing the poem read aloud, the group discussed the ways the references to time in the text allowed us to reflect on our own memories and the connections they make for us between ourselves and the people and places we have encountered.  

Our prompt was: “I have a time machine, but…” Participants’ written responses to the prompt ranged from the very individual experience of sifting through one’s memories of a specific event all the way to larger commentary about universal fears, desires, and experiences that we share when we evaluate past choices and their impact on our futures. The discussion after hearing the creative works shared was rich with observation about the commonalities and unique features present in the writing.  As always, we were grateful to everyone who attended and encouraged by the openness and support that all of the participants conveyed to one another throughout the session.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session: Saturday, April 25th at 2pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

I Have a Time Machine
BY BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY


But unfortunately it can only travel into the future
at a rate of one second per second,

which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant
committees and even to me.

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next
moment and to the next.
 
Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—
well not zipping—And if I try

to get out of this time machine, open the latch,
I'll fall into space, unconscious,

then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that.
So I stay inside.

There's a window, though. It shows the past.
It's like a television or fish tank.

But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim
in backward circles.

Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance
to see what I'm leaving behind,

and sometimes like blackout, all that time
wasted sleeping.

Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment
at having lost a library book.

Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting
to be found charming.

Me holding a rose though I want to put it down
so I can smoke.

Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me
because the explosion

of some dark star all the way back struck hard
at mother's mother's mother.

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.
I thought I'd find myself
 
an old woman by now, traveling so light in time.
But I haven't gotten far at all.
 
Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I'd like;
the past is so horribly fast.


Brenda Shaughnessy,
"I Have a Time Machine" from So Much Synth.
Copyright © 2016 by Brenda Shaughnessy. 
Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session! The sea was present in both text and group as several transatlantic participants joined us from Morocco, France, England, and Italy. We were glad to welcome back those who have become a source of warmth and comfort week to week.

The text we chose (posted below) was a song, “Alfonsina and the Sea” (Alfonsina y el mar), originally written in Spanish by Argentinian writer and lyricist Félix Luna, and composed by Argentinian composer Ariel Ramírez. Luna wrote the song in homage to Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938), one of the most revered poets of Latin American literature. The song echoes the influence that the sea had on Storni’s writing and life, alluding to her suicide on La Perla beach in Mar del Plata, Argentina. While this text was particularly delicate, our participants were up for the challenge; together we persevered through the poignancy of its content in both English and Spanish, calling attention to the beauty in its form, voice, and sound. Participants commented on the melodious quality of the work, where the text’s lines themselves seemed to ebb and flow like ocean waves. We concluded that the song was like a ballad, having a rhythm of an embodied performance. The switches in narrative voice, the balance between passive and active elements (what is choice vs. what is taken away), and the wavering between the absolute and the variable/the universal and the particular, were unique features that allowed us to dive all the more into the text’s depths. One participant was reminded of refugees in the Mediterranean, and noted the myriad of ways that texts can be interpreted and appropriated. We are grateful for the willingness of the group to engage with “Alfonsina and the Sea,” which explored difficult subject matter during a particularly difficult time.

Our prompt was: Write about what you are looking for… The facilitators were struck by the original ways that participants incorporated multiple languages, aquatic imagery, and senses into their writing.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session: Thursday, April 23rd at 7pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Alfonsina and the sea
Félix Luna & Ariel Ramírez
 
Por la blanda arena que lame el mar
Su pequeña huella no vuelve más
Un sendero solo de pena y silencio
Llegó hasta el agua profunda
Un sendero solo de penas mudas
Llegó hasta la espuma
 
Sabe Dios qué angustia te acompañó
Qué dolores viejos calló tu voz,
Para recostarte arrullada en el canto
De las caracolas marinas.
La canción que canta en el fondo oscuro del mar
La caracola
 
Te vas Alfonsina con tu soledad,
¿Qué poemas nuevos fuiste a buscar?
Una voz antigua de viento y de sal
Te requiebra el alma
Y te está llevando
Y te vas, hacia allá como en sueños
Dormida, Alfonsina, vestida de mar

Cinco sirenitas te llevarán
Por caminos de algas y de coral
Y fosforescentes caballos marinos harán
Una ronda a tu lado.
Y los habitantes del agua
Van a jugar pronto a tu lado
 
Bájame la lámpara un poco más
Déjame que duerma, nodriza, en paz
Y si llama él no le digas que estoy
Dile que Alfonsina no vuelve
Y si llama él no le digas nunca que estoy
Di que me he ido
 
Te vas Alfonsina con tu soledad,
¿Qué poemas nuevos fuiste a buscar?
Una voz antigua de viento y de sal
Te requiebra el alma
Y te está llevando
Y te vas, hacia allá como en sueños
Dormida, Alfonsina, vestida de mar


Álbum: Mujeres Argentinas
Publicación:1969
Género: zamba
Duración: 4:35
Compositor: Ariel Ramírez
Letrista: Félix Luna

Alfonsina and the sea
Félix Luna & Ariel Ramírez
 
Across the soft sand that the waves lick
Her small footprints are not coming back anymore
Only one path made of sorrow and silence
Reached the deep water
Only one path made of untold sorrows
Reached the foam
 
Only God knows about the anguish that
accompanied you
And about the old pains your voice never told
That caused you to go to sleep, lulled by the song
Of the seashells
The song sung in the depths of the dark sea by
The seashell
 
You're going away, Alfonsina
Along with your loneliness
What kind of new poems did you go looking for?
An ancient voice made of wind and salt
Is shattering your soul and taking you away
And you go there, like in a dream
Asleep, Alfonsina, dressed with the sea

Five little mermaids will escort you
Through paths made of seaweed and corals
And phosphorescent sea horses will sing
A round, by your side
And the aquatic dwellers
Will soon play by your side
 
Dim the light of the lamp a bit for me
Let me sleep in peace, nurse
And if he calls don't tell him I'm here
Tell him that Alfonsina is not coming back
And if he calls never tell him I'm here
Tell him that I have left
 
You're going away, Alfonsina
Along with your loneliness
What kind of new poems did you go looking for?
An ancient voice made of wind and salt
Is shattering your soul and taking you away
And you go there, like in a dream
Asleep, Alfonsina, dressed with the sea

Thank you to everyone who joined in kicking off our fourth week of Narrative Medicine Virtual Group Sessions! We loved seeing regular participants and welcoming new faces from around the globe.

In previous sessions we have been close-reading poems and prose. This evening we chose to explore a text in another medium, as one of our participants put it, “to open our minds to new ways of seeing.”

We ‘slow-looked’ at the painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Pieter Bruegel (posted below). Participants noticed the juxtaposition of earth, water, and sky; warm climate in the foreground and colder in the background; the incongruity of calm water and wind-filled sails; the different directions in which the painting’s figures gaze. Two keen observers noted a small but important detail in the bottom right corner: two legs sticking out of the water at odd angles and the ruffling of otherwise calm water. That brought us to the title of the painting and its reference to both place and Greek myth. Together we wondered: What is the role of the farmer, the sheep, an island fortress, and everything “yonder”? What is the center of the painting? Is it the landscape? What of Icarus, who is off to one side, and has already made his descent? Why did he fall so far from the sun that melted his beeswax wings? Where is Daedalus, his father, who constructed the wings as a way to free his son and himself? We considered the painting’s composition, and how it invites us to follow the gaze of various figures in the landscape, invites us to look down at the earth, up to the sky, and into the water. Most people agreed that neither man nor beast represented in the painting concern themselves with Icarus. Do they focus solely on their work? Do they “know” Icarus and dismiss his pride and daring? Do they not see? Do they not care? The discussion allowed us not only to appreciate how much can be discovered when we take time to slow-look but also to recognize how many questions and possible understandings we were able to generate.

This evening’s prompt: “Write about an unseen splash” took people to swimming pools and other bodies of water with accidents, collisions, and rescues. Others wrote of metaphorical splashes taking place now in hospitals as patients and healthcare workers battle Covid-19 and the rippling effect into our communities.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session: Wednesday, April 22nd at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session! We had 51 participants from the UK, Bahrain, Morocco, Turkey, Canada and 12 states including Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, and California.

Our text for the session was “Sci-Fi” by Tracy K. Smith. Looking at this poem, we considered the tension at the core of the poem. “Sci-fi” begins with promising language “no edges,” but quickly accumulates into a space that is empty, “unhinged.” The language of the poem creates discomfort with sibilant sounds, relentless future-tense verbs, and the turn of the poem on the word “but” that moves the mood from one of  hope to one of dread.  Participants seemed particularly struck by the contradictions in the text— the sense of control in an uncontrollable universe, the presence of realism/reality in a sci-fi universe, hope in a hopeless place. The final commenter turned the group discussion on its head, pointing to such hopeful images as the falling away gender distinctions, the absence of sexual threat, the eradication of early death, and the possibility of positive change. The poem, we concluded, in its very ambiguity trains us to entertain multiple readings and multiple ideas whenever we come together.

Our prompt for the session was “Write your Sci-Fi story.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session: Monday, April 20^th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Sci-Fi
 
There will be no edges, but curves.
Clean lines pointing only forward.
 
History, with its hard spine & dog-eared
Corners, will be replaced with nuance,
 
Just like the dinosaurs gave way
To mounds and mounds of ice.
 
Women will still be women, but
The distinction will be empty. Sex,
 
Having outlived every threat, will gratify
Only the mind, which is where it will exist.
 
For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves
Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.
 
The oldest among us will recognize that glow—
But the word sun will have been re-assigned
 
To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device
Found in households and nursing homes.
 
And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks
To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,
 
Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift
In the haze of space, which will be, once
 
And for all, scrutable and safe.
 


Tracy K. Smith, "Sci-Fi" from Life on Mars. Copyright © 2011 by Tracy K. Smith.  Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press. www.graywolfpress.org
Source: Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session! On a Friday evening we had approximately 40 participants connected to us from across the United States, with some joining from Virginia, California, and Massachusetts, and even some international friends from Canada.

Our text was “Speaking Tree” by Joy Harjo, posted below. After two readings of our poem, the group discussed the sense of trees as humans and humans as trees, and the relationship between poetry/poe-tree. What does being rooted and grounded mean without movement but with the desire to move?

Our prompt was: “Write about a longing.” Prompted writing revealed poetic language in the shadow of the text where time is slowed, there is a longing to dance, and a wind threading rings. In discussion of the writing shared, participants noted the rich descriptions of the connections between individual and communal experiences, the interdependence between our bodies and the natural environment, and the variance in our perceptions of the passage of time.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session: Sunday, April 19^th at 1pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Speaking Tree

I had a beautiful dream I was dancing with a tree.
                                                - Sandra Cisneros

Some things on this earth are unspeakable:
Genealogy of the broken—
A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,
Or the smell of coffee and no one there—

Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry—

Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music—
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft—

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset—

I cannot walk through all realms—
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark—

What shall I do with all this heartache?

The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway—
To the edge of the river of life, and drink—

I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:

Imagine what would it be like to dance close together
In this land of water and knowledge. . .

To drink deep what is undrinkable.


From Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings
by Joy Harjo
Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo
W.W. Norton & Company

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session! We are so glad to be back and running, and to have so many of you join for this mid-day break (or evening activity – given the exciting range of time zones we had in our session today).

Our text was “Cutting Greens” by Lucille Clifton, posted below. Just as Lucille Clifton does with the greens, we tenderly dissected and embraced our text. Our discussion revolved around the many juxtapositions and connections we found in the poem, as the narrator “builds a connection to the living things that she is holding”, as one participant observed. Together, we looked to the “embrace” and the “kinship” woven into the text, and explored the contrast between the black and the green (“a dance between difference”, one participant observed).  We wondered about the significance of the kitchen setting (“one so mundane, yet it’s used to bring people together, to tie relationships, to mix and add things”, someone else commented). In the last few lines of the poem, many found “a peaceful sense of resolution”, as we experienced – as one of our participants said – “a new beautiful bond through the narrator’s awareness of what is going on”.

Our prompt was: Write about the bond of live things. Participants shared wonderful pieces exploring a range of situations – the tenderness of a caregiver, the importance of giving love to the self, a meditation on watching the world through a window pane, feeling the connection between us all even as we are separated, and an exploration of the idea of the virus as “equalizer,” even as it exposes the inequities in our systems and our communities. 

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session: Friday, April 17^th at 7pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

cutting greens
Lucille Clifton

curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black,
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and I taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.

Lucille Clifton, "cutting greens" from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton.