The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.0579 Monday, 12 March 2001
[1] From: Kezia Vanmeter Sproat <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 11 Mar 2001 02:07:02 EST
Subj: Re: SHK 12.0459 Re: Poets
[2] From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 11 Mar 2001 15:50:06 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 12.0527 Re: Poets
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Kezia Vanmeter Sproat <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 11 Mar 2001 02:07:02 EST
Subject: 12.0459 Re: Poets
Comment: Re: SHK 12.0459 Re: Poets
(May be off, somehow I missed the start of this thread.) Re. keeping on
writing poetry, Karen's post impels me to share a source of creative
energy, courage, etc:
In 1975 some of my rebel poems were published on campus and I was
invited to join Women's Poetry Workshop (WPW), a new group at Ohio
State. WPW has met now for 26 years, members publishing individually,
and a group chapbook comes about every two years. It's an independent
closed group, but we've had occasional open meetings, have spawned other
poetry groups, and helped build Columbus' arts environment. Most years
WPW is invited to do a group public reading, and several members read
publicly and publish regularly.
We've organized several literary events; e.g., about 1986, a "Festival
of Dionysus," public poetry contest during the Columbus Arts Festival =
a mini-lecture by a classicist describing the original festival in
Athens; serious fol-de-rol open public election of citizen judges;
readings by finalists; barefoot Dionysus in a sheet, vines and flowers
around his head, awarded the prize, etc. Emphasis on poetry being
primarily civic, necessary, fun. A sub-group in WPW organized and ran a
statewide poetry contest for several years; this festival was just one
of their finals.
Ellin Carter, now retired from OSU English, initiated WPW when a poetry
class she taught just kept going, and she's been Coordinator throughout
its life. Without Ellin (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and WPW, my poems would be
stuffed in drawers, but I would still write & have since childhood. We
read next in Columbus around April 10 at Northwood Artspace.
Kezia Vanmeter Sproat
OK here is a little elegy for my mother, that I have from memory.
God will not let us die 'till we are wise
until we see how grass forms riverbanks
how the alligator rests in his chase of the horse
how canelands broke for the buffalo
and how they are breaking now.
Sooner or later we will be wise, and shining
our hands and our voices one
feet unscathed by sorrow
heart of the heavens light.
(c. 1994)
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 11 Mar 2001 15:50:06 -0500
Subject: 12.0527 Re: Poets
Comment: Re: SHK 12.0527 Re: Poets
I was going to offer another account of the difficulty of writing while
taking a PhD and teaching comp classes, but, as I'm on spring break,
I'll just offer the only piece of poetry I've managed to produce in the
past year:
There was a young glover named Will
Who troubled a goose for a quill
He wrote about kings and serious things
And gooses are cackling still
vita breva, ars longa
Clifford