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Poetry Comes In All Shapes and Sizes A good thing to notice when you are engaged with a poem is how it captivates, surprises, or moves you. Artists of imagination and possibility, poets take as their subject all aspects of the human condition, inspiring, among other things, clarity, self-recognition, or consolation in hard times. Sigmund Freud said, "Wherever I go, I find a poet has been there before me. This is simply because science either walks or runs but art has wings to fly!" May this poem lift you into beauty and wonder. "Scientists find universe awash in tiny diamonds" *
But haven't we always known? The shimmer of trees, the shaking of flames every cloud lined with something clean water sings right to the belly scouring us with its purity it too is awash with diamonds "so small that trillions could rest on the head of a pin" It is not unwise then to say that the air is hung close with diamonds that we breathe diamond our lungs hoarding, exchanging our blood sowing them rich and thick along every course it takes Does this explain why some of us are so hard why some of us shine why we are all precious that we are awash in creation spumed with diamonds shot through with beauty that survived the deaths of stars
(*quotations found in a newspaper clipping on the subject) Pat Mayne Ellis, from Cries
of the Spirit.
Read the poem by yourself, silently, as well as aloud. Read it to family members, friends, co-workers. Become the receptive listener and ask someone to read it to you. What differences do you notice between reading silently and using your voice; between reading it and having it read to you? The author says scientists are learning what we've known all along. What have you known all along, in your bones, that a scientific study would merely affirm, but that you need no proof of? Imagine yourself as a diamond or some other jewel. Write of the color, size, shape, texture. Now, write as the jewel that shines from your innermost being. What voice does the jewel take; what does it have to share with you? Creative Self-Expression: 1. Write your own piece starting with a headline from a newspaper (The National Enquirer is great for this!). 2. Write a poem or piece of prose that starts with the line, "But haven't we always known?" 3. Find the image(s) that captivates you. What adjectives do you associate with the image(s)? Make a visual poem - a collage, with colors, using magazine images, paints, or oil pastels/crayons. Give it a title. 4. Reverse roles with any of the objects in Ellis's poem, such as the shimmering trees, the singing waters, etc. Write through the lens of the shimmering trees' starting with the line "But haven't we always known?," or any other line that you are drawn to.
let me know and you will be added to my list. Peace and Blessings, Krayna Castelbaum, MHS, CP |