Inside The Hearts' Walls

The prompt for next week is: "one of the hundred ways to praise".  Supposedly from something I don't currently have a copy of, written by Oregon's Poet Laureate, Paulann Peterson.

We also have a tentative preliminary prompt for the week after next (sorry Whitney, this is what happens when you're out sick).  We will be (celebrating? commemorating? evangelizing?) reading/performing on the subject of the free speech movement in the Hotshot at 3 as usual on April 19.  More focused attention may be given to the topics of: 1) the responsibility associated with the right of free speech, and 2) the importance of acting as well as speaking.

And lastly, save the date: April 22.  I forget why.

My forebears, they were tall.
So very tall were they all.
Picking fruit in the Fall.
Yet rarely playing basketball.

by Turtle Shell
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This was this week's submission to the Commuter, and was written to this week's "Ancestry" or "Who am I?" prompt.

After far too long being too busy with other things, we finally have a regular weekly poetry prompt again. The prompt itself for next week is "Who am I?" (And why do I have the sudden urge to listen to Les Mis?) Some ideas that were bandied about today as to how someone might want to trim that massive question into something manageable, were to focus on ancestry, or inheritance, or legacy, or perhaps to find a descriptive metaphor with which to approximate oneself.

Also, Wednesday, April 13 is the Words & Pictures reception and readings from 12 to 1 in the South Santiam Hall (SSH) gallery. This is the exhibit of all those photos we were frantically writing poems for last term. Be there or be a total failure to the poetry club and in life (and also your mother probably never loved you)!

The waters came
and they kept coming
covering the landscape
the farms
the houses
the cars
the people.
And the world wept.

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This was by Ruth and was also the poem sent to the Commuter this week.

Have a happy Final's Week everybody! The Poetry Club will be taking two weeks off, meeting next on Tuesday, March 29, in the first week of spring term. The prompt for writing for that meeting is no prompt at all, just write on whatever topic strikes your fancy.

In other news, the Choir Concert was last night (pics here), and four of our poets read their works to the sold out auditorium (500 or so people; the fire-mashal's certificate by the door certified a capacity of 524, but I spotted a couple rows of mostly empty seats over in the crappy corner where the piano would have blocked people's view of half the stage). The so honored poets were John, Teagan, Whitney, and Tav (in that order (chronologically, not in that order in the picture below)).

Next week the poetry club is meeting in the DAC rather than the Hotshot Cafe. Much as how last week we met in the DAC to read poems "in the tradition" of Black History Month, I guess this month is Women's History Month and so we'll be reading poetry in honor of women.

What's more, on Thursday, March 10, four of our poets will be reading their work at the Winter Concert (7:30 at the Russell Tripp Performance Center).  Namely: John Haddenm, Teagan Lochner, Whitney Smith, and Tav Knight.  So good luck to them.

Emotions so great, burning passions withheld. No escape.
Attempting in vain, try, explain. To open our souls, agape.
To write what one feels, senses, loves. Impossible
Words, with no meaning. Myself fully expressed? Dreaming.
Poetry

An outlet, spirits breathing. Easy? Absurd, demeaning.
I sit and I write. Pure gold? Ehh, worthless. No purpose, meaning.
To write what one feels, senses, loves. Improbable
Minds, simple third parties translating. Souls free? Ha! Still waiting.
Poetry

Poets are weird, strange, looney bin. From society, divided, Berlin.
No, I disagree, poets live among the ranks, mothers, warriors, Akin.
To write what one feels, senses, loves. Impossible? No, I refuse to give in.
Us who try, fruitlessly, to send our souls from our depths, apprehend.
Poetry

Beauty, we do not create. Release it from confines, we elate.
Lurking in all of us, a poet. Find him! Too masculine? Oh Ego. Deflate.
To write what one feels, senses, loves. Impossible still? No, Articulate.
Within your heart, sleeps ample love. But your soul’s in chains. Rise above.
Poetry


by John
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The poem I'm sending to the Commuter this week. I hope it's not too long (they say they'd prefer no more than 120-130 words, this one's 172).