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Roger Ebert, Peter O’Toole and W.B. Yeats … the stuff of dreams …

IMG_20140525_111008782I was totally exhausted last night after several days devoted to work on The BeZine for Monday. There’s a lot of reading, a lot of detail work, that goes into it … a lot of juggling too.  All of it done staring relentlessly at my computer screen. It makes me long for the days of paper and blue pencil and art departments.  Time for a break …

Bleary-eyed and evil-tempered, I picked up something on paper to read and ease my eyes: an old issue of Poetry, the wonderful magazine published by The Poetry Foundation.The issue happens to include an article by Roger Ebert.  In closing, Ebert told about sharing a stage with Peter O’Toole.

“One night at the Telluride Film Festival, I was pressed into service to do an onstage interview with Peter O’Toole.  We covered many of his films and adventures, and then I said: ‘I understand you have always wanted to play Jack Yeats.’ [Referring to W.B.’s brother, Jack, a painter and olympic athlete.]

“This was true, and he responded to it with a line or two by W.B. Yeats.  They jarred something within me, and I answered with a few more lines of Yeats.  Our eyes met, and something clicked.  He quoted some more Yeats, and then I did, and we went on for 10 minutes or so, and he laughed and said, ‘Well, I think we’ve done our job.'” Roger Ebert, All My Heart for Speech, July/August 2013 issue of Poetry.

What fun. How I envy the people who heard them. It’s the stuff of dreams  …

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams…”

(Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven)
W.B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds 

© 2015, photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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We are celebrating diversity … and inclusion …

AT THE BeZINE OUR THEME FOR JUNE IS DIVERSITY and we are celebrating – we are celebrating diversity in all its manifestations: sexual/gender orientation, race, religion, culture, national origin … even nature. What we are truly celebrating is respect – as inclusion – as a big step toward peace, understanding, justice … even environmental stewardship. The June issue of The BeZine is in process and will publish on June 15th. Please join us then. It’s an exciting issue. You won’t be disappointed. Meanwhile, we bring you this feature from the U.S. Library of Congress. 

Warmly,
Jamie

Originally published on The Bardo Group/Beguine Again blog, June 13, 2015.

This flag celebrates LGBT pride. Photo courtesy of Ludovic Bertron under CC BY 2.0 license.
This flag celebrates LGBT pride. Photo courtesy of Ludovic Bertron under CC BY 2.0 license.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month (LGBT Pride Month) is currently celebrated each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. The Stonewall riots were a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States. In the United States the last Sunday in June was initially celebrated as “Gay Pride Day,” but the actual day was flexible. In major cities across the nation the “day” soon grew to encompass a month-long series of events. Today, celebrations include pride parades, picnics, parties, workshops, symposia and concerts, and LGBT Pride Month events attract millions of participants around the world. Memorials are held during this month for those members of the community who have been lost to hate crimes or HIV/AIDS. The purpose of the commemorative month is to recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.

In 1994, a coalition of education-based organizations in the United States designated October as LGBT History Month. In 1995, a resolution passed by the General Assembly of the National Education Association included LGBT History Month within a list of commemorative months.

LGBT History Month  is also celebrated with annual month-long observances of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history, along with the history of the gay rights and related civil rights movements. National Coming Out Day (October 11), as well as the first “March on Washington” in 1979, are commemorated in the LGBT community during LGBT History Month.

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Executive and Legislative Documents
The Law Library of Congress has compiled guides to commemorative observations, including a comprehensive inventory of the Public Laws, Presidential Proclamations and congressional resolutions related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month Pride.

– The United States Library of Congress

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between the hill and the river

IMG_0088“I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.” Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), Chilean poet, diplomate, politician

Born between the hill of our creative aspirations and the river of our spiritual life, some links to resources …

Inspiration and Information for Poets, Writers, Artists

Arts/Humanities Facebook Page

Spiritual Inspiration/Sustenance and event/post updates from the team that brings you The BeZine

The Bardo Group/Beguine Again Facebook Page

Tips and Encouragement for Responsible Consumption and for the support of causes benefiting humans/animals/earth

Keep It Simple/Keep It Kind Facebook Page

and

For women poets in their third act

Second Light Network

© 2014, photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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Poet and Literary Critic, Stephen Burt, on “Why people need poetry …”

Stephen_Burt_NBCC_2011_Shankbone

“… John Keats … in his most mysterious, perhaps, poem. It’s mysterious because it’s probably unfinished, he probably left it unfinished, and because it might be meant for a character in a play, but it might just be Keats’ thinking about what his own writing, his handwriting, could do, and in it I hear … mortality, and I hear the power of older poetic techniques, and I have the feeling, you might have the feeling, of meeting even for an instant, almost becoming, someone else from long ago, someone quite memorable.

“‘This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d — see here it is —
I hold it towards you.'”

Excerpt from the transcript of Stephen Burt’s TED Talk (video below) on “Why People Need Poetry.”

Stephen Burt, named by the New York Times “… one of the most influential poetry critics of his time,” is a professor of English at Harvard University. Among his more recent books  is The Art of the Sonnet (Harvard University Press, 2010). He also wrote Something Understood: Essays and Poetry for Helen Vandler (University of Virginia, 2009). Vandler, an American literary critic, is also a professor of English at Harvard.

Burt’s most recent collection of poetry is Belmont (Graywolf Press, 2009).  Here is a link to one of his poems, Butterfly with Parachute. It’s from the Belmont collection, which was a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Poetry Book of Spring 2013. It was named by NPR as one of the best books of 2013.

Photograph: Burt at the 2010 National Book Critics Awards by David Shankbone under CC-BY 3.0 license.