Body Writing

Yoga Inversion | Image by Brittany Ann Lewis

Our meditations this month will be lead by Brenda McCaffrey, PhD, focusing on Alexander Technique, Somatics, and other mind-body awareness practices to help us awaken vision (literally and metaphorically) -- to find ways into the body to change the mind -- to be light and nimble in thought.  Join us throughout September to move your writing practice to a different level.

First Mentor Poem

What the Body Knows
LANCE LARSEN

Poem Writing Prompt #1

Relax into feeling your body.  Make a list of all the things your body knows from its child moments to youth to mid life to now. All the private moments, all the public, all the others.  Write this poem for 10 min.
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Second Mentor Poem

Today, God
STARR DAVIS
​(Hear Davis read her poem here.)

Source: poets.org
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Poem Writing Prompt #2

Make a list of defiant gestures, expressions, body movements.  Write a poem about your body or any body in defiance.  What are your defiant memories as a kid?  When have you used your body defiantly? Used it as a message?  What message did your body send?  What message do you wish it to send? When is your body a political message? Have you ever felt threatened in body and mind?
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For Discussion

As If the Body
​ANNE MARIE MACARI

Source: The American Poetry Review

"As If the Body" is so exquisitely crafted -- gorgeous and primordial at the same time.  Something of spirit and agency is leaving the host's body. The word use of alleys, drain, city, and cistern lead readers to one interpretation of termination.  Then the use of blood gathering, and overflowing, the reference to stream and opening, implies another kind of loss that rushes or is flushed from the body.  But what is certain is that the "crouching thing" has claws and perhaps spirit, the likes of which we see "inside trees and rocks," and the wording implies a resistance to leaving the host body.  Finally, domesticated, perhaps civilized, the leaving, the "flushing," is referred to as a teacup that has spilled over despite the repeated tugs, aching and arching.  And its over. The journey of words -- the way Macari is able to make the visceral felt in the reader's body -- is so carefully crafted here, it hurts.