Suppose it is not values that are mysterious and elusive, but people themselves. Most people worry about values. They worry about having them. They worry about having the right ones, and they worry that they are not living up to the values they do have. People worry about sharing values in their families, among their friends, in their communities. When a person’s values are at odds with one’s own, fellow feeling is an unlikely condition for either one. People believe that values are essential, even though values often make one—and others—uncomfortable.

Perhaps it’s because values, for a lot of people, are aspirational.

What does that mean? Well, a man may assert that one of his core values is Loyalty, and he means it. He looks in the mirror and sees a loyalty advocate, a defender of loyalty, a practitioner of loyalty. The fact that he is having an affair with a co-worker, or undermined a colleague to get a promotion does not necessarily derail his point of view. As long as one is aspiring, one is trying, so the value—loyalty—is still relevant. Does that make sense? Yes, I’m not sure that it does, either. But it makes sense to the man who says it is so.

A woman claims that the core value Environmentalism is dear to her. She loves the environment! She checks weather reports every day and keeps up with what is going on in environmental studies. She is familiar with climate change science; she just chooses not to believe a lot of it. She opposes a carbon tax and thinks that increasing fossil fuel production and environmental protection will work just fine together.

Then there is the man who embraces the core values of Community and Watchfulness. He believes he most effectively lives his values as a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. He regularly visits white supremacist on-line sites and wishes that immigrants of color would just go back to wherever the hell it is they came from. He is as far as you can get from embodying the inspiring Emma Lazarus lines concluding her poem, The New Colossus: “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” To this man and his brethren, these words on the Statue of Liberty are antiquated and ought to be jackhammered into oblivion.

Values can be contentious. They can drive people crazy. Values can unite and drive people apart. What good are they? Or is this a better question: why isn’t the value of values clearer than it is?

Remember the period in American history when many politicians ran on family values? If a candidate’s family values could be called into question, he’d find it difficult to be elected dogcatcher (if dogcatcher were an elected position). The potency of family values in American politics seemed perennial, until more and more politicians, including prominent ones, were outed as weak on family values (affairs, multiple marriages, sexual harassment, neglecting children).

It appears that values are not about making the world a better place to live. Instead, a value is a raison d’etre for making the world a better place for me! If I happen to be Awake, Compassionate and Sympathetic, so be it. The world outside me may benefit from my experience, from my values. If I am motivated by Power, Wealth and Pride, well, others had better watch out! Values are rooted in desire, in wanting. Welcome to the slippery slope of values—is it not so?

How, then, can poetry possess values? Perhaps any value is outside poetry’s ken. A poet has values or lacks them. Her poetry reflects that presence or absence accordingly.

Are we all clear about values? Well, how does a value differ from a belief? A poet has a belief or not, and the poem reflects that. It’s likely that the poem doesn’t believe in anything. If it’s belief one wants, one must examine the poet in the poem and beyond it. A poem as belief really does not stand alone.

According to the Barrett Values Centre, “Values unite, beliefs divide”. The Centre goes on to explain that beliefs are used to make decisions and assume causal relationships of the past. This can be dangerous, the Centre warns, because old information from the past may not be the best source to draw on when making decisions for the future. “Beliefs are contextual: They arise from learned experiences, resulting from the cultural and environmental situations we have faced.”

Did a red flag flap in your face when you just read that? ‘Old information’—History? Is that the claim? Doesn’t the endless repetition of war and oppression and genocide prove that not only do we fail to learn history’s lessons, we chronically repeat its mistakes? Do we want to say that we’re comfortable and confident in forming beliefs without historical context and the mentoring of history itself?

Values, by contrast, are neither conceptual nor based on past information. Thus, speaks the Centre. Values are universal and “arise from the experience of being human”. The Centre concludes that “When we use our values to make decisions we focus on what is important to us—what we need to feel is a sense of well-being”.

The post Values in a Beautiful, Nasty World appeared first on Robert McDowell.

To the llama, poetry is spitting; to the lama, poetry is prostration.

To the lumberjack, poetry is log splitting; to the crybaby, poetry is quitting.

The tantric mistress & master know that poetry is orgasmic, and poetry is a tremor.

When a buck with fuzzy brown antlers ambles out of a garden and steps on a policeman’s boot, he is walking poetry as he understands it.

The clown makes up to be the essence of poetry
Even though he is wrong, terribly wrong.

The programmer’s head whirs with poetry,
And so do tops & sprinklers.

The old gray women & old gray men of Ashland
Are only as intelligent as their poems.

Don’t be run over more than once by the same person—
That’s a kind of poetry intelligence;

Don’t believe you can buy someone’s love is another kind.

What, if any, are the benefits of applying the gender intelligence model to poetry?

Risking a nugatory observation, the M.F.A. grad student imagines a degree will open golden doors onto the inner sanctum of the chosen choir.

“You have to do something that gets you into the room,” a well-known literary figure said to me. He was talking about his book that had gotten him into the room, and a new book by another poet that presumably was accomplishing the same thing for its author. “You don’t exist if you’re not in the room.”

Yet, almost all of the poets and writers I know, and I suspect thousands of poets and writers everywhere, are not in the room. Somehow, they live, they thrive, they write.

What about the rooms inside the room, the rooms outside the room?

“Human nature,” said Virginia Woolf, “when set upon a throne seems unable to sustain the enormous enlargement.”

*

If you can, please support a new book by poet & scholar Tim Hunt:

TICKET STUBS & LINER NOTES

(Winner of the 2018 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award): available for advance sale (40% off list price):

Ticket Stubs & Liner Notes / Tim Hunt

Comments about Ticket Stubs & Liner Notes:

· a “marvelous book” that’s “a soundtrack to the dawn of the present day” and “a vocabulary essential to our understanding” (David Kirby);

· “mesmerizing” poems that are “not only about music; they create it!” (Wendy Barker);

· “an American soundtrack” that “aligns Whitman’s freedom with Wolfman Jack’s” (David Rigsbee).

Show your inner jukebox some love! Order your copy today.

& please consider purchasing for yourself or sharing a copy with someone of my Poetry as Spiritual Practice. https://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Spiritual-Practice-Aspirations-Intentions/dp/141656652X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

The post Poetry Intelligence appeared first on Robert McDowell.

I can’t figure out why the writer and director made such choices! The Emily that emerges is bitter, disappointed in love and angry. At times, she almost looks demonic! This is not and never was Emily. Almost 2,000 poems refute this image. The movie would have us believe that Emily, rebuffed by Wadsworth, spirals into deeper depression, mirroring her shut-in mother’s. But her mother was not always a shut-in. She took to her bed after her husband’s death and suffered through a long illness, then died. In the movie, she’s actively dying the moment we first see her!

The business with Wadsworth almost certainly never happened. Emily saw him preach once. They exchanged correspondence. Emily was not shattered by the married Wadsworth’s eventual move to San Francisco. I don’t think she was madly in love with him.

Even worse is Emily’s “best friend” in the movie, especially in the first half. Clearly, the writer and director fell in love with this character. She has all the best lines early on! It’s a shame she’s a fabrication. The character existed, yes, but she was younger than Emily and there is little evidence that they ever actually met, let alone became best friends!

The movie shows us that Emily and Lavinia meet Sue after she marries Austin. In fact, Sue was Emily’s best friend! They knew each other well for six years before the marriage. Why didn’t the director focus on this friendship?

Also missing are the parties! The Dickinson girls were vivacious. They were sought after companions. One young man proposed to Emily! No sign of any of this. Lavinia was a terrific mimic and comedian, but we’d never know it from this film. Why?

Also eliminated are the last ten-to-fifteen years of Emily’s life! Where is Judge Lord? Where is the scene, well documented, in which Lavinia walks into the kitchen and finds Emily in the judge’s arms, the two kissing? Lord doesn’t even appear in the movie! Neither does Thomas Wentworth Higginson, one of the great men of letters of the era. He visited her twice, at least, and saw her face-to-face at least once. We know this because he describes her in his journal. He gives us the great description of her in her coffin, too, just before the lid is closed. But in the film, he doesn’t exist.

Austin and Sue’s children, Ned, Gilbert, Martha, never appear or are mentioned. Little Gilbert’s sudden death was the last of twin blows from which Emily never recovered (Judge Lord’s death in 1884 was the first—he died after proposing to her).

other annoying inaccuracies…There is no record that Emily was ever furious about Austin’s relationship with Mabel Loomis Todd. The two were deeply in love and when they met in the parlor, they locked the door. Unlikely that Emily ever walked in on them and read them the riot act. In fact, there is no historical evidence that Emily objected to the affair, which lasted until Austin’s death.

At Emily’s funeral…why oh why didn’t the director put her in a white casket? What an oversight! Also, the casket was not loaded into a horse-drawn hearse and driven to the cemetery. As per her request, six of the workmen employed by the Dickinsons carried her through the gardens to the cemetery. And yes, in the film she is buried in the wrong cemetery! There are two in Amherst. The real Emily lies in the other one. Sheez!

So the film gives us a mature Emily who is spurned in love, bitter, priggish, angry and judgmental—all things Emily was not. That’s disappointing. The movie reinforces a popular image of a depressed, reclusive spinster who eccentrically wrote poems and tied them into bundles. It’s maddening, really.

The movie even misses out on a great closing scene—when Lavinia discovers 1,800 poems in Emily’s room and decides she must find a way to get them published.

This film pricked me until I bled. At first, I imagined Emily being quite cross about it all, but later she visited and let me know she was laughing at the thought that she had eluded everyone once again.

The post A Quiet Passion, a Film almost about Emily Dickinson appeared first on Robert McDowell.

“Now then is my chance to find out what is of great importance, and I must be careful, and tell no lies.” –Virginia Woolf

Yet, it was not always easy for Virginia to tell no lies. Relentlessly honest, intellectually demanding, still she loved jokes and, to some extent, gossip. Family members knew that if you wanted to keep a secret, you did not tell Virginia, though you wanted to tell her! On occasion, she enjoyed stirring pots among her friends. She would often astonish friends and strangers alike by ‘going off’ at a party or at tea, settling on someone for her attention, then launching into a brilliant biography of the person, which she invented on the spot. Vita Sackville-West caught this complex, wonderful character when, musing on her perfect name shortly after Virginia’s death, she observed that her given name was virginal, while her married name had a hint of the fang.

Virginia was coyote, a trickster. She loved games, confidences, jokes. “Exquisite self-containment.” That was her goal, and it could also be a description of the woman and artist she knew herself to be. Aflame, she lived at a pitch of ecstasy that only a genius knows.

While still in her teens, Virginia created the process by which she diligently worked at her craft, navigating through the immense canyons of bi-polar disorder to produce five great novels (To the Lighthouse, The Waves, Mrs. Dalloway, The Years, Between the Acts), a brilliant satire that is also the longest love letter in English literature (Orlando), the best criticism I’ve ever read (the two Common Readers), five volumes of astonishing Diaries, terrific Letters and the inspiring, feminist call-to-action, A Room of One’s Own.

That Virginia deliciously haunts my waking and dream hours is an added benefit I could not have anticipated when I first met her. Intellectually, spiritually and romantically, she lifts me up. I commune and converse with her. Her unbridled, almost hooting laugh is daily music to me.
There is a wonderful way to get to know Virginia better, and that is to listen to her. I listen to her novels read aloud over and over, and I have a hot tip for you. If you can, get a recording of To the Lighthouse narrated by Virginia Leishman. Here is a link for you:

Leishman is superb, beautifully modulating her voice from character to character and sounding so much like Virginia Woolf herself that it’s almost eerie.

*

About ten years after her death, Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Harold, kept company on the terrace at their home (Sissinghurst). It was a fine, soft day and Vita looked up, asking her husband, “Of all the people you’ve ever known, who would you most like to see coming up to the house from the road?” Without hesitation, Harold said, “Virginia”. “Me, too,” said Vita, “me, too.”

Me, too.

The post Virginia Woolf’s Birthday appeared first on Robert McDowell.

Read a Friend’s Heart

Guns, Guns, Guns; Again, and Again, and Again

The fatal shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, just 100 miles north on Interstate 5 from my home base in Ashland, becomes the 45th school shooting in the United States in 2015. Like many Americans and people worldwide, I’m sickened and heartbroken by the ongoing carnage, by the inevitable, histrionic defense of the NRA and their political puppets.

As a national community, we’ll do well displaying our collective grief in the next couple of days, but we’ll remain impotent when it comes to the task of changing laws and minds that would reduce and perhaps eliminate these nightmares. Tightening gun laws worked in Australia, in Europe, but the NRA and our politicians forbid that we try something similar here. As citizens, we have ceded so much power in the last fifty years! Thomas Jefferson once prophetically said, “Govern or be governed.” We are allowing ourselves to be governed.

As I always do, I seek solace and inspiration in the fellowship of poetry. Here are two poems I love, one by Christopher Buckley, another by William Stafford.

Why I’m In Favor of a Nuclear Freeze

Because we were 18 and still wonderful in our bodies,
because Harry’s father owned a ranch and we had
nothing better to do one Saturday, we went hunting
doves among the high oaks and almost wholly quiet air . . .
Traipsing the hills and deer paths for an hour,
we were ready when the first ones swooped—
and we took them down in smoke much like the planes
in the war films of our regimented youth. Some were dead
and some knocked cold, and because he knew how
and I just couldn’t, Harry went to each of them and,
with thumb and forefinger, almost tenderly, squeezed
the last air out of their slight necks. Our jackets grew
heavy with birds and for a while we sat in the shade
thinking we were someone, talking a bit of girls—
who would “go,” who wouldn’t, how love would probably
always be beyond our reach . . . We even talking of the nuns
who terrified us with God and damnation. We both recalled
that first prize in art, the one pinned to the cork board
in front of class, was a sweet blond girl’s drawing
of the fires and coals, the tortured souls of Purgatory.
Harry said he feared eternity until he was 17, and,
if he ever had kids, the last place they would go would be
a parochial school.
On our way to the car, having forgotten
which way the safety was off or on, I accidentally discharged
my borrowed gauge, twice actually—one would have been Harry’s
head if he were behind me, the other my foot, inches to the right.
We were almost back when something moved in the raw, dry grass,
and without thinking, and on the first twitch of two tall ears,
we together blew the ever-loving-Jesus out of a jack rabbit
until we couldn’t tell fur from dust from blood . . .Harry has
a family, two children as lovely as any will ever be—
he hasn’t hunted in years . . . and that once was enough for me.
Anymore, a good day offers a moment’s praise for the lizards
daring the road I run along, or it offers a dusk in which
yellow meadowlarks scrounge fields in the gray autumn light . . .
Harry and I are friends now almost 30 years, and the last time
we had dinner, I thought about that rabbit, not the doves
which we swore we would cook and eat, but that rabbit—
why the hell had we killed it so cold-heartedly? And I saw
that it was simply because he had the guns, because we could.

~ Christopher Buckley

*

Meditation (1983)

Animals full of light
walk through the forest
toward someone aiming a gun
loaded with darkness.

That’s the world: God
holding still
letting it happen again
and again and again.

–William Stafford

The post Guns, Guns, Guns; Again, and Again, and Again appeared first on Robert McDowell.

After being asked to do so, this girl has drawn a picture of Home.

Is the truth of her home in the lines on the board, or in her expression and the oceanic depth of her eyes, or both? In the photograph she’s a child, of course, yet hers are the face and eyes of someone infinitely older. We’ve seen similar faces, similar eyes in photos of children in Berlin’s bombed out streets, in Vietnam, in Darfur, in India, in the Great Depression, in Buchenwald.

How does a child get such a face, such eyes? She’s been emotionally brutalized, perhaps physically tortured, yet she is still alive, and her survival looks like this. She’s crossed over, stepping purposely from the depths of one reality to another and back again, and she is forever changed by the journey. But who is responsible? Only everyone—you, me, make your own list, and every name you record will also be on her list. We are all behind her; we’ve all, in some ways great or small, made her.

I hear someone fretting, “Too much; too harsh!” Really? Ask the child. I’m afraid there is no wriggling free of this inconvenient hook for anyone, not for a single, living human being. For as long as one child looks like this, and draws Home like this, we must hold ourselves accountable.

All right, then; What can be done? What can be done that hasn’t already been done, day after day, year after year, natural catastrophe after natural catastrophe, war after war, divorce after divorce, by those who were more compassionate and empathetic than we could ever be?

To begin, measure yourself against no one but you. Ask yourself, what do you feel? What can you do? And then, what will you do? Will you traverse the canyon between the compassionate thought and action?
How will you do it?

A man I know left everything to assist refugees in Istanbul. He gave up his therapy practice, his club memberships, his beloved vintage car; he even found a home for his two cats and his dog. How long will you be gone? I asked. I don’t know, he answered. He said it cheerily, and he laughed, at the prosaic nature of my question, perhaps, or the absurdity of his plan; perhaps out of relief that he had figured out a way to alleviate the suffering of others, and that once he had made up his mind, everything seemed so simple.

I looked again at the girl’s drawing. The longer I looked at it, the less crazy it seemed. I thought, doesn’t a lot of daily life really look like that? If it does, of course, mostly we look away. Only if someone were to pin us to the task of drawing on a chalkboard the look of a day might we produce a drawing closely resembling the girl’s drawing of Home. I accept this as a revelation about reality; the scratchy reality underneath the artificial realities we clumsily construct to shield ourselves and get us through the days, the nights.

Learning this much is a small step, but it moves me one step closer to drawing a very different kind of home; and if I can learn to erase some of the crazy-quilt, cross-connecting that wants to fill the drawing surface, then anyone is capable of doing it. And so we inch closer towards a more peaceful, harmonious and spare representation of Home and the true place, the reality beneath fear’s surface, that always rewards the increasingly selfless, emboldened seeker.

I want to be that, and I believe you do, too. Let me surprise you; you surprise me. Let’s see what each of us can do to create a different truth of home for every child, and for every child still scratching for fulfillment in a grown-up’s body. Person by person, act by act, we can Rosie the Riveter this process. Let’s begin. Let’s keep moving and never give up despite voices insisting that what you do just doesn’t matter. Like me, I suspect the main voice like this you hear is inside you. Quiet that, and you’re free.

*

A woman and man stand alone in the street

The street is empty.
No human or animal appears.
Even the birds are absent.

They say to each other what
Are we doing here? Where
Is everybody? Lawn sprinklers erupt.

Automatic, the woman says,
Like most of our thoughts—actions
Without meaning, actions while asleep.

And consequences, the man murmurs.
Oh yes, she agrees, always results.
So, what will we do now? The man asks.

Walk, I guess, the woman says.
They slow down at the edge of town,
Listening to the ruckus over the hill.

What do you think? Machinery?
No, she says, it’s people, a lot
Of people. Hear it now?

Sounds like marching. Sounds like weeping,
Yelling, singing. Let’s go, she says. Why?
Because we’re needed. Because we have to.

*

I am accepting new clients for long-distance mentoring on writing/reading projects, poetry or prose, or both. If you’re interested, email me at poetrymentor@mac.com

Proceed with Presence & Compassion!

Robert

The post What Home Looks Like–Read a Friend’s Heart appeared first on Robert McDowell.

The post At Your Door: The Divine Feminine appeared first on Robert McDowell.

Your Freedom of the Impractical is here.

Do you feel a little weary from all the pitches to improve your spiritual, emotional and physical health that you receive every day? I do!

I know. I send them, too. All teachers and mentors reach out to you because they deeply desire to do good work, to be of assistance doing what they do best, and to make a living while doing so. These are all good intentions.

Sometimes, though, the pitches become weighty, producing that feeling we all get sometimes when we’ve had too much to eat or drink. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but wow! The next day!

This is why I’m offering something a little different. To honor Brigid, Mother Goddess of Ireland and Poetry, to honor this month of Imbolc and Valentine’s Day, I am offering a three-week on-line course, Your Freedom of the Impractical.

This is an opportunity to let your hair down, to give voice to your inner wild woman and wild man. For three weeks, every day, I will send you what the Irish call advices, daily suggestions created to inspire and give voice to the precious impractical inside just itching to get out.

In addition, I’ll send you an overview of impracticality, how its blessing balances an active and forward-leaning life—your very own. I’ll also engage with your journaling and responses to your practice of impracticality.

I’ve designed this course to be fun and affordable. To honor Brigid, Imbolc, and your innate capacity to find balance in your life by layering impracticality into it, I’m offering this three-week Happiness Ride for just $39.00, payable by check or via Paypal.

We begin in one week on February 9th, so don’t delay in signing up! Space is limited. Email me at rmcodwell@mind.net or at poetrymentor@mac.com to participate.

If this is not or you at the current time, you might consider my Core Stories Program (details below).

I look forward to engaging with you, to listening to and working with you!

With blessings always,

Robert

*

CORE STORIES PROGRAM

My Core Stories Program guides you through your ten essential core stories. You’ll unlock them, unblock them, engage them and learn to work with them in your daily life.

Join me! Tap into your core stories. Celebrate and explore what makes you unique. Come with me on a journey of narrative healing through meditation, journaling, poetry and lively one-on-one conversations.

This journey heals old wounds, clear obstacles that hold you back and usher you into your creative, unique power.

For ten weeks, I’ll work with you to open up the core stories of your life. Each segment will heal, empower and enrich you in your spiritual quest, your job performance and your relationships.

Would you like to come along on this journey? Then email me at rmcdowell@mind.net, or poetrymentor@mac.com to sign up. The one-time cost for this Core Stories Program is $297.00.

As a bonus, I’ll send each participant, each co-creator, a PDF of five Poetry Talks, personal essays on the wisdom of poems through the ages.

*

NEW BOOK PUBLICATION

My fourth full-length collection of poetry, The World Next To This One, has been published by The Salmon Publishing Company in Ireland and is now available. http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=328&a=257 Order direct from Salmon Publishing, Orders over 20 Euro are shipped free worldwide! Please help us spread the word.

“Robert McDowell’s powerful narrative poems are among the best written over the last fifty years. His para-poems here extend the prose poem form with incisive, probing clarity and startling wit.”
–Ai, National Book Award, Poetry
Thank you again for your work, your interest and support.
Robert

The post Read a Friend’s Heart #149 appeared first on Robert McDowell.

Opening day, Empire State Building
Dear Friends,

Two weeks into 2015, how is your guidance working? Have your readings, consultations or past life mapping steeled your resolve? Will you finally heal the childhood wound you’ve nursed all your life? Will you break through in a relationship, or find one, or launch a new business venture? How is it going, your dialogue with yourself?

If you are still seeking empathetic company on your wild, unique journey, consider joining me for POETRY TALKS, a five-week online workshop that begins on Friday, January 23rd.

Together, we’ll discover a group of poems and unfold their messages that speak to your experience on a deeply personal level. These poems and their insights will help you break through barriers of self-doubt, recrimination and frustration to a place where genuine progress is not only possible but inevitable.

Each poem will enflower and empower you. Each will be accompanied by an MP3 for your listening pleasure (you can take it with you wherever you go). I’ll also suggest writing play that you can engage with in your journal and with friends.

If you’d like to join us, send me an email at rmcdowell@mind.net to sign up. The cost is $77.00 for the five weeks.

Please join us. Enrich your journey! You have only your true self to find.

With blessings always,

Robert

*

CORE STORIES PROGRAM

My Core Stories Program guides you through your ten essential core stories. You’ll unlock them, unblock them, engage them and learn to work with them in your daily life.

Join me! Tap into your core stories. Celebrate and explore what makes you unique. Come with me on a journey of narrative healing through meditation, journaling, poetry and lively one-on-one conversations.

This journey heals old wounds, clear obstacles that hold you back and usher you into your creative, unique power.

For ten weeks, I’ll work with you to open up the core stories of your life. Each segment will heal, empower and enrich you in your spiritual quest, your job performance and your relationships.

Would you like to come along on this journey? Then email me at rmcdowell@mind.net, or poetrymentor@mac.com to sign up. The one-time cost for this Core Stories Program is $297.00.

As a bonus, I’ll send each participant, each co-creator, a PDF of five Poetry Talks, personal essays on the wisdom of poems through the ages.

*

NEW BOOK PUBLICATION

My fourth full-length collection of poetry, The World Next To This One, has been published by The Salmon Publishing Company in Ireland and is now available. http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=328&a=257 Order direct from Salmon Publishing, Orders over 20 Euro are shipped free worldwide! Please help us spread the word.

“Robert McDowell’s powerful narrative poems are among the best written over the last fifty years. His para-poems here extend the prose poem form with incisive, probing clarity and startling wit.”
–Ai, National Book Award, Poetry
Thank you again for your work, your interest and support.
Robert
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/McDowellRobert

The post Read a Friend’s Heart #147 Poetry Talks appeared first on Robert McDowell.

Greetings in the new year!

The excitement, tumult and travel of the holidays and year’s end subside, and we lean in to the delicious opportunities and work before us. Are you eager to deepen your relationships? Will you visit places you’ve yearned for, inner and outer places that call to you? Will you launch a new project long in the making, or step up to the challenge of a brilliant new idea? Are you saying goodbye to old patterns or departed comrades? Will you recommit to your health and charity? Will you see clearly what lies ahead and all around you? What signature will you affix to the 2015 pages before you?

If you’re at all like me (and we’re all like each other in so many ways), you’ll be paying special attention to those stories you need to make sense of; you’ll be mending fences, opening doors and windows. Perhaps you’ll declare, ‘I am here. Engage with me. Call me to serve. I am ready.’ Or you may burrow deep into a winter of intense retrospection. It is all to the good. Be where you are. Be your best self.

Here is a poem I wrote for the journey.

I am 70 percent darkness
I am unknown to myself

We should shake hands
And introduce ourselves

All alone we should look
In a mirror and say I know you now

Nobody listens I know
It all moves so fast as it stands stock-still

Nobody listens and nobody hears
So today I say I’ll try hard to listen I’ll hear

What you’re saying on the other side of the room
On the other side of the planet

Who and what you are is what I am Can you feel that
We’re all so fast and silent We miss everything

But I have a voice and I will cast it
Into the lakes and oceans and rivers

I will send it into the trees and mountains
As I was taught by my ghostly brothers and sisters

I will sing it on your breast and down your spine
And touch my lips to your feet

*

CORE STORIES PROGRAM

MY Core Stories Program guides you through your ten essential core stories. You’ll unlock them, unblock them, engage them and learn to work with them in your daily life.

Join me! Tap into your core stories. Celebrate and explore what makes you unique. Come with me on a journey of narrative healing through meditation, journaling, poetry and lively one-on-one conversations.

This journey heals old wounds, clear obstacles that hold you back and usher you into your creative, unique power.

For ten weeks, I’ll work with you to open up the core stories of your life. Each segment will heal, empower and enrich you in your spiritual quest, your job performance and your relationships.

Would you like to come along on this journey? Then email me at rmcdowell@mind.net, or poetrymentor@mac.com to sign up. The one-time cost for this Core Stories Program is $297.00.

As a bonus, I’ll send each participant, each co-creator, a PDF of five Poetry Talks, personal essays on the wisdom of poems through the ages.

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NEW BOOK PUBLICATION

My fourth full-length collection of poetry, The World Next To This One, has been published by The Salmon Publishing Company in Ireland and is now available. http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=328&a=257 Order direct from Salmon Publishing, Orders over 20 Euro are shipped free worldwide! Please help us spread the word.

“Robert McDowell’s powerful narrative poems are among the best written over the last fifty years. His para-poems here extend the prose poem form with incisive, probing clarity and startling wit.”
–Ai, National Book Award, Poetry
Thank you again for your work, your interest and support.
Robert
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/McDowellRobert

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