Pages and Practice

I find it so exciting when meeting someone who has the inner fire for understanding, a willingness to wrestle and search, converse and allow oneself to be entertained, amazed, enlightened and awed.

I experienced this excitement in the meeting of a cello-player at Camp Kiya in Tehachapi, California this past July.

Korinza Shlanta is studying to be a professor of English and is particularly taken with literary theory and the constructs of how we think and convey our thoughts.

In my experience, this has been a rare combination to find or uncover in a first meeting as we did at breakfast one morning when she joined the conversation of a group of old guys (ca. ages 50-80) and engaged fully with depth and a humoring twinkle in her eye.

We had first connected at a couple of different jam sessions that began in camp the night before, beneath the bright stars visible from this remote place in southern California.

She is now back at her studies in northern California with an eye peeled for the beauty in a rose, or a classroom set up, an ear hungering for the words and images which will wrestle and dance to become the lines of her poetry and prose.

And she has just created her literary blog, which I am having fun exploring today! (http://www.pagesandpractice.com/)

I encourage you to check it out and follow her, too.

Visionaries (The language of roses)

Here is another poem that captures my attention

Visionaries

(In Memory of Mary Rudge)

Seekers of the exotic,
riders of water and wind,
shapers of jewels and images,
builders of bridges/breakthroughs,
explorers of Mars, the psyche,
artists, students,
celebrants, elders,
embryos this moment conceived—

whatever we will be in an hour,
tomorrow, a hundred years
or at the last turn of the earth
under moonlight's incantations,
whatever comes
   may we lean toward
      the language of roses.

-Claire J. Baker

from San Francisco Peace and Hope (A literary journal devoted to poetry and art)

A Better Weapon
by Andre

A poem is a better weapon
Than a knife
Because a poem will lead you
To a better future
To succeed
A poem will set your mind free
A knife will lead you
To violence
To jail
And maybe
To death

Published in They Call Me 299-359:  Writings by the Incarcerated Youth of Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop  http://freemindsbookclub.org/our-work/literary-journal


http://freemindsbookclub.org/