Joe, reading poetry. Thinking about poetry, with poets. Being a human.

[nolabear]

Here’s Joe Biden, reading and being part of the beautiful pondering of a poem. This is soul nourishment, wondering about people, about beautiful language and the way we communicate our fragility and our love to one another. This is a human being, who loves other human beings, their strengths, weaknesses, perfections and flaws. This is so much different from what we’ve been hammered with these past five years it’s almost as though we’re different species. But we’re not. Some of us are just profoundly damaged. They cannot reach this place. And I am sad for them. But they can’t be allowed to harm us out of their damage.

Anyway...

https://www.wgbh.org/specials/2021/01/11/president-elect-biden-on-poetry-in-america?fbclid=IwAR10iDCJ70eNnGJ-sKiMu3_3EA4vxxccn6-PmnHBVYHXy0gPqi-x2CZUaIk

[lillypaddle]

1. K&R nt

[Botany]

2. We have a President who reads poetry .... that is awesome

[Geechie]

3. Poetry loving cabinet members...

The poet & Rumi translator Coleman Barks spoke years ago about his experience traveling to Kabul as part of the first delegation to Afghanistan after the 9/11/2001 events. He said while the cabinet members were sitting around talking, somebody brought up a Rumi poem and another member, the secretary of Agriculture maybe, told him he thought he was misquoting a line. It turned into a long discussion of the poem in which everyone (all ministers knew the poem and could recite it) weighed in on their interpretation. It was like a dream to contemplate living in a society in which the leaders of your government ALL read and appreciate the poetry of your people. Still gives me a great feeling to know this is possible.

[nolabear]

4. I took a workshop with him once. He's such a good teacher.

I’m a poet myself, and regularly attend a particular festival where we wallow in poetry with some great poets for two days. Barks is one of those unabashed characters who comes at teaching from all angles.he said at one point that in classes he sometimes takes a tennis ball that he just tosses back and forth to students without expectation or rhyme during the class. They combine the experience of the here and now in the poem with the same in the room, the need to be real and present rather than heady and academic.

Rumi...what a soul.

[Geechie]

5. Barks rules

That sounds like a peak experience!