I gave a reading October 14 to a lively group of participants at a Waking Down in Mutuality retreat. The audience had been immersed in a deep process of self-inquiry for three long days, and they were very receptive to the deep transformative channel poetry can guide us in to. I picked three poems that related in one way or another to the explorations in which the group had been engaged. I could have chosen a dozen, but the situation demanded only a glimpse or two.
I started with ALL THE WRONG PLACES from my third book, Letters to Sophie. It’s a shocking poem in several ways, as it considers our very human preference for looking the other way when we encounter the darker facets of existence. The poem came out of a meditation on what I might be missing when I am attracted to familiar and culturally-validated forms of beauty. I started looking the other way and found that most of what is around us, and in us, is overlooked, and rarely considered. I began to visit that, and found it worthy. Next, WAITING ROOM. I think part of why the poem is so funny is that it brings awareness to a feeling many of us have as we make our way through life. I actually began the poem in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, where my father and I were awaiting his checkup. The core of the poem is built around something a friend said to me years ago. I had said to her “I feel like I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what it is.” She wisely said “So what do you do while waiting.” Could be we’re all filling in time, with more or less passion, while we wait. I hadn’t noticed before how that poem fits in with SECOND NATURE from my second book, Natural History. The poem is about the way we practice, practice, practice routines, in order to be always ready to put them to use. Maybe that’s what the juggler, shopkeeper, and reporters are doing in WAITING ROOM. Nothing is happening, so they practice their forms, get something going. In SECOND NATURE the designated form is poetry, and the poem names some of the practices I find essential to the form—but it could be anything from sports, to assembly-line work, to ballet. In this world we have to adjust quickly as new conditions and technologies overtake us with greater rapidity than we have been accustomed to. What we know at the core has to be ready to morph quickly to embrace or take advantage of unimagined situations and means of transmission. We no longer have the easy grace of thinking we can learn one skill and let it support us into retirement. In effect, we can’t know what we’re getting ready for, so we follow our passions into unknown lands, and practice essential skills in order to be ready for whatever we encounter there. At least, that’s what I get out of these poems today. Read them aloud. What do you hear? 10/4/2012 Autumn and Arts WalkOlympia's Fall Arts Walk is tomorrow—the evening of Friday October 5—and continues through the afternoon of October 6. Sorry for the late notice. I’ll have two pieces completed this summer on display along with pieces by other metal workers from the SPSCC welding program. We are showing again at the Euphorium, in the Security Building, at the corner of Fourth Ave. and Washington Street in downtown Olympia. TINE BALL, a piece composed of twenty recycled (and reconfigured) tines from a dump rake, will be there, along with a galvanized steel table I wrote about in a previous posting, called WINDSWEPT STEEL TABLE. The table base is made from some twisty scraps left over when I bent the rings for Ring Dance #3 & 4. Thank you to those of you who took the time to vote in Olympia’s Percival Plinth Sculpture Project. The votes are in, and Olympia sculptor Ross Matteson’s bronze and steel piece “Windstar” gathered the people’s choice award with nearly 30% of the votes cast. Congratulations to Ross! You can see more of his well-wrought wildlife bronzes at Matteson Sculpture. I have not heard how many votes “Ring Dance #2” received, but I continue to hear great response for the piece. You can enjoy it until next June at Percival Landing, and while driving around the corner of State and Water streets in downtown Olympia. The piece is for sale if you wish to continue enjoying it in your home or business landscape. I have three further Ring Dance pieces available, including the musical dyad subtitled “Duet.” We are having a gorgeous extended September here at the southern tip of the Salish Sea. It’s a bit dry, and the light breezes send a crisp sustaining whisper through the curling leaves still on the trees. Every step on the beach trail crunches with the leaves that have already fallen. 10/4/2012 Autumn and A Writing WorkshopA lovely summer September has run over into October, with no end in sight. Doesn’t feel like autumn yet—primarily because it hasn’t rained in a couple of months. Fall will come, no doubt. I gathered a lot of lines over the summer, but only put together one or two poems. The writing group is starting up after a summer hiatus. It’s just about time to process the harvest of summer.
The Olympia Poetry Network asked me to lead a writing workshop as part of their Paul Gillie workshop series. These are free workshops, donations gladly accepted. I’ll be leading the November workshop. The workshop will take place at the Olympia Center, 222 Columbia St. in downtown Olympia. The date is Tuesday November 6, 2012, 7:00 to 8:30pm. Room 101 (I believe. You can ask at the reception desk.) What will we do? Writing exercises. Here’s the paragraph I wrote for OPN about how I want to focus the exercises: When the writer can manage to realize something through the process of writing, readers will find something in the poem that invites and beguiles. The challenge is to get what we think we know out of the way and let the places the world has touched us whisper and sing their deeper wisdom. In this workshop we’ll set some snares and see if we can catch a line or two that points toward new territory. Anyone welcome; bring your own writing tools. If you want to find out what I come up with in hopes of carrying that off, be at the workshop. Come out and play (or in and play.) It’s likely to be beginning to feel like winter by then. Time to write. Come down. |
Art and Practice
Don Freas is an artist, writer, and poet in Olympia, Washington. Categories |
Don Freas
515 Flora Vista Rd Olympia WA 98506 (360) 357-2850 don@donfreas.com |
10/19/2012
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