A. Anupama
Seen through water and glass, the stems of cut flowers have a presence like the trunks of trees to me. Just like that, paintings made of water and transparent pigments evoke the real as though it were transplanted from paradise. This week I’m educating myself with a mini immersion in visual arts around NYC. Actually,…
My middle-school homeschool students had a pool party today to celebrate the end of our year reading The Odyssey together. It was epic. They stood in the water scream-laughing about the crushes they dramatically recounted for each other from their pre-Covid schooldays. I was kicking myself: it never occurred to me to ask them to…
So you're already lying on a patio chaise or, better yet, a hammock, reading something with which you're planning to torture undergraduates in the fall? Yes, me too. I hadn't read The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck, though I know that's the favorite among her collections. So, I'm reading it now, educating myself on the…
Where this pandemic will take us all next is always difficult to see. Who expected this second round of Covid19 in India would be so dangerous and heartbreaking. While everyone is doing their best under the circumstances, we can’t help but wonder what should have been done. We can only work with what we have…
Sometimes a song does it. I'll suddenly remember being together with a group of people, playing a game or writing some poems, sharing food and drink. We've been watching some classic musical films at my house for that very reason: nostalgia for the simple joy of just being together. Today, not one but TWO in-person…
When a poem is about to be, keep your hands ready. It might have words, but sometimes instead it has sounds, flashes of light and color, pressure like an April gale, a lift of wing. I always thought it strange that such fragile things as bird eggs are laid high in tree boughs. There’s that…
Just starting to get used to daylight savings time, and just enjoying the sunrise view from my dining room until springtime brings leaves to hide the horizon for several months. A pair of doves waits with me for rosy light to spill over the river. Now. We write a poem on the minutes. If you…
It's as necessary to listen to rain, and then to go for a walk in it, as it is to sit down with pen and notebook. I'm writing a poem in hope of unraveling my thoughts about the shootings in Atlanta this week. Imagine how snarled up those thoughts are for many, between experience and…
"To read is to dream, guided by someone else's hand." - Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet Cloud-like - I've returned to writing poems, while my students fly off to fiction starting this week. It feels so satisfying to have shared some of the energy of poetic craft and then to find myself returned to my…
pi day song - Observing sometimes means counting. How many times over, or how many iterations, repetitions in a pattern—these details are necessary to an act of keen artistic understanding. Time spent observing, letting the eye circle its shrine while interiorly circumambulating the heart’s concerns, isn’t counted. In fact, it puts time back into your…
