I Call You Respond

I Call, You Respond

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A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “Ballad”

Sonia Sanchez is one of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement and is the author of 16 books. She’s the recipient of the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. The lyric poem “Ballad” is from Sanchez’s book, Homegirls & Handgrenades.

 

Ballad
(after the spanish)

forgive me if i laugh
you are so sure of love
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love. Continue reading →

I Call, You Respond

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A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “Ballad”

Sonia Sanchez is one of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement and is the author of 16 books. She’s the recipient of the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. The lyric poem “Ballad” is from Sanchez’s book, Homegirls & Handgrenades.

 

Ballad
(after the spanish)

forgive me if i laugh
you are so sure of love
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.

the rain exploding
in the air is love
the grass excreting her
green wax is love
and stones remembering
past steps is love,
but you. you are too young
for love
and i too old.

once. what does it matter
when or who, i knew
of love.
i fixed my body
under his and went
to sleep in love
all trace of me
was wiped away

forgive me if i smile
young heiress of a naked dream
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.

 

RESPONSE #2: by Rafael Dosman

I chose this video because I feel nature in all of its glory is very symbolic. Most of us have a love-hate relationship with nature but will never fully realize or be able to understand the power that is Mother Nature. We cry to release the joy of great happiness or the pain of great sorrow but will never fully realize or understand the gift of being able to feel those emotions is truly love.


***

Rafael Dosman is originally from Almirante, Panama and self-proclaimed night owl who resides in hipster haven of Fishtown Philadelphia, where he spends most of his late nights pondering the essence of humanity, mental balance and kindness.

I Call, You Respond

Posted on by

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “Ballad”

Sonia Sanchez is one of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement and is the author of 16 books. She’s the recipient of the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. The lyric poem “Ballad” is from Sanchez’s book, Homegirls & Handgrenades.

 

Ballad
(after the spanish)

forgive me if i laugh
you are so sure of love
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love. Continue reading →

I Call, You Respond

Posted on by

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

Call and Response: “The Days”

The late, great Jon Anderson used poetry as a vehicle for stark (and possibly uncomfortable) self-reckoning: “My prime motive for writing is self-confrontation, and I find poems the best way to employ language to do this. My poetry isn’t for everyone. It’s for people like myself who want to contend with themselves. I think of my poems as intimate conversations with close friends, to whom I’m not afraid to reveal my vulnerabilities and loneliness.” The poem, “The Days” comes from In Sepia, which was Anderson’s third book of poems. His poetry is spare and controlled – but movingly precise in emotion and observation.

 

The Days

All day I bear myself to such reward:
I close my eyes, I can’t sleep,
The trees are whispering flat as water. Continue reading →

I Call, You Respond

Posted on by

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “The Days”

The late, great Jon Anderson used poetry as a vehicle for stark (and possibly uncomfortable) self-reckoning: “My prime motive for writing is self-confrontation, and I find poems the best way to employ language to do this. My poetry isn’t for everyone. It’s for people like myself who want to contend with themselves. I think of my poems as intimate conversations with close friends, to whom I’m not afraid to reveal my vulnerabilities and loneliness.” The poem, “The Days” comes from In Sepia, which was Anderson’s third book of poems. His poetry is spare and controlled – but movingly precise in emotion and observation.

 

The Days

All day I bear myself to such reward:
I close my eyes, I can’t sleep,
The trees are whispering flat as water. Continue reading →

I Call, You Respond

Posted on by

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “The Days”

The late, great Jon Anderson used poetry as a vehicle for stark (and possibly uncomfortable) self-reckoning: “My prime motive for writing is self-confrontation, and I find poems the best way to employ language to do this. My poetry isn’t for everyone. It’s for people like myself who want to contend with themselves. I think of my poems as intimate conversations with close friends, to whom I’m not afraid to reveal my vulnerabilities and loneliness.” The poem, “The Days” comes from In Sepia, which was Anderson’s third book of poems. His poetry is spare and controlled – but movingly precise in emotion and observation.

 

The Days

All day I bear myself to such reward:
I close my eyes, I can’t sleep,
The trees are whispering flat as water. Continue reading →

I Call, You Respond

Posted on by

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “The Days”

The late, great Jon Anderson used poetry as a vehicle for stark (and possibly uncomfortable) self-reckoning: “My prime motive for writing is self-confrontation, and I find poems the best way to employ language to do this. My poetry isn’t for everyone. It’s for people like myself who want to contend with themselves. I think of my poems as intimate conversations with close friends, to whom I’m not afraid to reveal my vulnerabilities and loneliness.” The poem, “The Days” comes from In Sepia, which was Anderson’s third book of poems. His poetry is spare and controlled – but movingly precise in emotion and observation.

 

The Days

All day I bear myself to such reward:
I close my eyes, I can’t sleep,
The trees are whispering flat as water. Continue reading →

I Call, You Respond

Posted on by

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “The Lamb”

CALL:

Poet Linda Gregg, who has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of California-Berkeley and Princeton University, writes lyrical poems that speak to grief, seeking and desire with absolute attention to craft. Poet W.S. Merwin has said about Gregg’s work: “I have loved Linda Gregg’s poems since I first read them. They are original in the way that really matters: they speak clearly of their source. They are inseparable from the surprising, unrolling, eventful, pure current of their language, and they convey at once the pain of individual loss, a steady and utterly personal radiance.” “The Lamb,” from Gregg’s Chosen By the Lion is very much a doorway for a reader: to doom, salvation or some limbo in between?

 

The Lamb

It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
The ruined city still seemed noble.
The cathedral with its roof blown off
was not less godly. The church was the same
plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
of the holes God’s fist made in the walls.
All our desire for love or children
is treated like rags by the enemy.
I knew so much and sang anyway.
Like a bird who will sing until
it is brought down. When they take
away the trees, the child picks up a stick
and says, this is a tree, this the house
and the family. As we might. Through a door
of what had been a house, into the field
of rubble, walks a single lamb, tilting
its head, curious, unafraid, hungry.

 

 RESPONSE #3: by Amy Loder Continue reading →

I Call, You Respond

Posted on by

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “The Lamb”

CALL:

Poet Linda Gregg, who has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of California-Berkeley and Princeton University, writes lyrical poems that speak to grief, seeking and desire with absolute attention to craft. Poet W.S. Merwin has said about Gregg’s work: “I have loved Linda Gregg’s poems since I first read them. They are original in the way that really matters: they speak clearly of their source. They are inseparable from the surprising, unrolling, eventful, pure current of their language, and they convey at once the pain of individual loss, a steady and utterly personal radiance.” “The Lamb,” from Gregg’s Chosen By the Lion is very much a doorway for a reader: to doom, salvation or some limbo in between?

 

The Lamb

It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
The ruined city still seemed noble.
The cathedral with its roof blown off
was not less godly. The church was the same
plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
of the holes God’s fist made in the walls.
All our desire for love or children
is treated like rags by the enemy.
I knew so much and sang anyway.
Like a bird who will sing until
it is brought down. When they take
away the trees, the child picks up a stick
and says, this is a tree, this the house
and the family. As we might. Through a door
of what had been a house, into the field
of rubble, walks a single lamb, tilting
its head, curious, unafraid, hungry.

 

RESPONSE #2: by Jennifer Tomlin Continue reading →

I Call, You Respond

Posted on by

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

Call and Response: “The Lamb”

CALL:

Poet Linda Gregg, who has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of California-Berkeley and Princeton University, writes lyrical poems that speak to grief, seeking and desire with absolute attention to craft. Poet W.S. Merwin has said about Gregg’s work: “I have loved Linda Gregg’s poems since I first read them. They are original in the way that really matters: they speak clearly of their source. They are inseparable from the surprising, unrolling, eventful, pure current of their language, and they convey at once the pain of individual loss, a steady and utterly personal radiance.” “The Lamb,” from Gregg’s Chosen By the Lion is very much a doorway for a reader: to doom, salvation or some limbo in between?

 

The Lamb

It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
The ruined city still seemed noble.
The cathedral with its roof blown off
was not less godly. The church was the same
plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
of the holes God’s fist made in the walls.
All our desire for love or children
is treated like rags by the enemy.
I knew so much and sang anyway.
Like a bird who will sing until
it is brought down. When they take
away the trees, the child picks up a stick
and says, this is a tree, this the house
and the family. As we might. Through a door
of what had been a house, into the field
of rubble, walks a single lamb, tilting
its head, curious, unafraid, hungry. Continue reading →