The optimists among us
taking heart because it is spring
skip along
attending their meetings
signing their e-mail petitions
marching with their satiric signs
singing their we shall overcome songs
posting their pungent twitters and blogs
believing in a better world
for no good reason
I envy them
said the old woman

On the way to campus, 5pm

The seasons go round they
go round and around
said the tulip
dancing among her friends
in their brown bed in the sun
in the April breeze
under a maple canopy
that was also dancing
only with greater motions
casting greater shadows
and the grass
hardly stirring

What a concerto
of good stinks said the dog
trotting along Riverside Drive
in the early spring afternoon
sniffing this way and that
how gratifying the cellos of the river
the tubas of the traffic
the trombones
of the leafing elms with the legato
of my rivals’ piss at their feet
and the leftover meat and grease
singing along in all the wastebaskets

–Alicia Ostriker (c)

Dr. Geri Chavis, keynote speaker, NAPT Conference 2013, Chicago

Another amazing day at the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT) conference in Chicago. Today’s keynote speaker was Dr. Geri Chavis, who is both a psychologist and poetry therapist, and a professor of English and Literature at St. Catherine’s University in Minneapolis. Geri is another pioneer in the field who studied under and worked and taught with Sr. Arleen Hynes, who, with her daughter Mary Hynes-Berry (now there’s a juxtaposition!) wrote the seminal text in the field, Biblio/Poetry Therapy: The Interactive Process. Geri’s keynote was on “the alchemy of juxtapositions.” First we found a “juxtaposition of opposites” for our own lives–mine was structured spontaneity. Then she offered this delicious poem by Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers and Artists, which provides some cool  ways of juxtaposing new recognitions of everyday objects.

The Patience of Ordinary Things

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
how the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
how the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
or toes. How soles of feet know
where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
of ordinary things, how clothes
wait respectfully in closets
and soap dries quietly in the dish,
and towels drink the wet
from the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

–Pat Schneider (c)

from Another River: New and Selected Poems, c) 2005 Amherst Writers and Artists Press

Your Turn

• Think of a creative juxtaposition that contrasts two paradoxical or opposite things. Start with a life issue, feeling, or quality of your own. Then find an adjective that describes it that is contrary to the meaning of the word you’ve chosen: easy hardship, passionate indifference. Write about the pairing.
• Reflect on the “ordinary things” in your life. Find a new way of regarding them — “the lovely repetition of stairs,” the quietness of the soap. Choose something you take for granted every day, and regard it with fresh eyes and an awakened heart. Write about it. Repeat the process for someone you take for granted every day.