Mindful Poetry July Gathering

We gathered this month to contemplate Elizabeth Alexander's poem "Ars Poetica #100: I Believe". We were joined by sisters Rana Dotson and DeAndra Beard who led the discussion of the poem and lead the group responses. You can find the recorded session above. We will continue to gather to explore the beauty of poetry. Join us August 26, 3pm(est), RSVP here.

Response Poems

Collective Poem
Poetry is this way, and if it is not, it is a song, or a trumpet, or a low howl, but it is not poetry is it?

what, today, is my reason for rising?

And I wonder, what does it mean that so often less is more when it comes to poetry, and when it comes to words of love, and when it comes to saying no or stop or “i can actually handle this intensity if i just stay with it…”?

How can we use poetry to change the world?

And isn’t that truly what we are all searching for?

Can you read me between these lines?

Poetry is a shopping list
What have I forgotten?

Are we able to hold ourselves in the present?

Why am I scared?

Why do I forget that I am enough?

How can we maintain this sense of wonder, this sense of curiosity, this sense of poetry, when we all go back to buses and cars and skyscrapers and calendar invites and conference rooms with dark gray carpeting?

How do we make poetry’s life raft big enough to fit us all?

What fruit will you bear?

Poetry, will you not
deliver us, a collective
flood, futurity

how do we share the joy of poetry with others?

Expanding, expanding, expanding?

How many silent words must we utter before the cacophony of our minds trusts the world with their sound?

Will we keep on baking when this is over?

is poetry not there where our hearts are most vulnerable?

wanna come out and get blind?

This is what poetry is to me. What is your poetry?

can you see his blue eyes glinting off his brothers, the waves?

and how does poetry become this ache that we strangely grow to love

Poetry is asking what makes me alive—I, Alive, today?

How do we breathe this all in?

Who is poetry?

How does poetry dejavou you?

Poetry is….
By Lena Sclove

Poetry is what allows the tear to come when it has been resisting all day

Poetry is permission to feel exactly what i am feeling and not need to change it— the page has space enough

Poetry is never being quite sure if I’m a “writer” or not, and my pen not caring

Poetry is short and to the point, like yes, and no, and please hold my hand I can’t stop shaking

Poetry is wondering if perhaps one of my ancestors wrote poetry, in a different language, with a candle for light in the evening

Poetry is wondering if maybe, at some point in the history of human language, someone wrote this poem, this very poem—can I really be so unique?

Poetry is realizing I have been married for one week and I don’t have words to describe it but I try anyways

Poetry is returning to the room where I was bedridden, where the words of Rumi and Rilke sat on my heart as injuries shifted and scabbed over, and feeling their words, and mine, dancing on the walls like witnesses

Poetry isn’t a metaphor, its a real thing, its the invitation to use words carefully, but also from the deepest bottom of the well of my being

And I wonder, what does it mean that so often less is more when it comes to poetry, and when it comes to words of love, and when it comes to saying no or stop or “i can actually handle this intensity if i just stay with it…”?

What is poetry to me?
By Mahip Rathore

Poetry is in my name; my life is poetry.

Poetry is my experience captured by words that flow out of my heart.

There is nothing that is not poetry as what I say is alive, organic just like the tree standing tall, and the wind blowing the leaves around.

Poetry is in my hands, my veins, that carry the emotions from my heart and spread them on this sheet of paper.

Poetry is the silence that finds its way through me to express itself in the vibrations of my voice.

Poetry is, just is, no words are enough to capture the whole of what poetry is.

This is what poetry is to me; what is your poetry?


Poetry Mine
By Holly Brians Ragusa

Poetry is the smattering of cat fur left atop the warmth of the cushion, a reminder of what we know will return to our side.
Poetry is the ripped edge of a photograph, the lost bit of reality we can imagine into a moment.
Poetry is the satiation of hunger, a plate licked clean, sticking to our ribs.
Poetry is the involuntary sigh released when at last the world believed you.
How many silent words must we utter before the cacophony of our minds trusts the world with their sound?

Ars Poetica #4
By Shiowei Cheng

Poetry is the open mouth
over whose edge I peer

ready to take in
to fall down
to be swallowed whole.

Poetry is the unspeakable
the call
of an unknown home.

Poetry is in the silence
when nothing more is left
to say

Poetry is my heart:
cracked, bleeding,
unbroken, whole.

What if
this is all I have,
and it could be Enough?

Ars Poetica - One Hundred Plus One
by: Jahn Xavier Bonfiglio

Poetry is as big as the sky
What can I say in ten minutes?

Poetry is me
listening to myself
Listening to you
Listening to the world.

Poetry is like dancing with the ghosts of flooded houses.

Poetry is the ocean catching the sun.

Poetry is the silent space between heartbeats.

Poetry is the wisdom of children.

Poetry is the minute that just passed
and the minute that’s coming up next.

Poetry is me.
who am I?
Poetry is you.
Who are you?
Poetry is us.
Who are we?
Poetry is a window.
What’s out there?
Poetry is a mirror.
What’s in here?

Poetry is ephemeral.
Where does it go?

Poetry is a shopping list.
What have I forgotten?

Ars Poetica #1
by Amani Elkassabany

Poetry is my daughter’s boyfriend
calling me to ask my blessing.

Poetry is my neighbor bringing a homemade cornbread
in a chipped ceramic dish.

Poetry is my mother’s tears, the words she can’t speak.
It is her saying, “I want to give you space, but –“

Poetry is the pause.

Poetry is me, on a borrowed bicycle, straining
to make it up the hill on a Sunday morning.

Poetry is relief for my legs, wind in my face.
It is riding the downward slope.

Poetry is the sun coming up another day.
It is Me, eyes open, thinking,
what, today, is my reason for rising?

untitled
by Lauren Sharpe

Poetry is
the smell of my children’s morning breath,
the top curl of a fern.
fishtails,
whiskers,
fingertips on bare skin.
cloth napkins, though there’s no company coming.
gold pyrite square trapped in concrete.
incense tied to the top of a walking stick, smoke curling.
the cicada chorus,
the subway strains,
the thunder clap.

Poetry is a whole life on a single page.
Can you read me between these lines?

Ars Poetica #23 by Sarah Pinho
Poetry is the number 23, because my baby sister has been enamored of the number 23 since time immemorial, because my baby
sister is 23 now.

Poetry is the capacity to notice, the power of noticing, the pause
that noticing brings to the noticer, the fact that just noticing,
and nothing else, is okay.

Poetry is the way the morning sounds when I open the window blinds
and listen; every morning, there is the metal gate swinging gently
(how I hope they never oil its hinges), there are gentle footsteps on
the little footpath below the grass, there is always, somehow, someone hammering
something, slowly, far away, every morning.

Poetry is ritual during a global quarantine.
How can we maintain this sense of wonder, this sense of curiosity,
this sense of poetry, when we all go back to buses and cars
and skyscrapers and calendar invites and conference rooms with dark gray carpeting?

Deeper than me
Kelly Joslyn

This poetry is deeper than me
it is the cold, dark dirt,
the raw grit and gravel,
of memory hard swallowed
this pen an archeologist
of accusation and apology
these lines simple hand tools
of emotional excavation

This poetry is deeper than me
it is a blue, bottomless current
rolling over the sharp coral reef
of our barbed transgressions
its vibrant, breathing skin stretched
thin over the fossilized bone
of Before, pulsing
around the drowned wreckage
of our, oh so natural, disaster,
shards of dishonesty… distrust,
and the scattered, empty
shells of broken laughter

This poetry is deeper than me
it is the dark cave I groundhog into
hypnotized by our Anasazi shadows
flickering on the walls, both alive and not
these phrases the hieroglyphics
of our disappearing past
crude etchings of old narratives
tunneled back to and re-mined
again, again and again

This poetry is deeper than me
it is a far flung Universe of Expectation
a galaxy of worlds gyrating between
the silent canyons of our tongues
the space between us
a genesis of its own
a multiverse of planetary possibility
turning and turning, our Words
revolving endlessly around
our first big bang, and
that last black hole


Ars Poetica (unnumbered)
by Rana Dotson

Poetry is what comes to save youWhat you need when it arrives
Poetry is clear like a thousand ringing waterswashing over my bruised soul
It is the rocks at the bottom of the riversmoothed like bald heads by currents
Poetry is dad's polished bald headstanding in the pulpit last Sunday -- saying Godis Love --- God is Love.
Poetry is the babies' breathand Baby's Breath
The wind blowing homepollen dust to the open blossom
Poetry is what comes to save youWhen you didn't knowyou needed saving
It cuts through the undertowreaching between your back and the stone
Then lifts you to the open blossom
What fruit will you bear?

Ars Coniunctio (The Art of Connection)
by Grace Sanchez

Poetry is
a friend who listens intently

Poetry is
my Tia who calls me and sends out her prayers to all who need them

Poetry is
a messenger encouraging gentleness and humility

Is there kindness in your life?

Bird teachers
by Grace Sanchez

Poetry is
A tiny hummingbird taking refuge in a giant redwood tree

Poetry is
The sound of the cliff dwelling shorebirds Back for another breeding season

Poetry is
A mixed flock of birds foraging in the backyard

What did you take time to notice today?