Wendy Liscow, Program Officer
Imagine we are in a classroom together. I am the teacher and I ask you to please raise your hand if you can explain what I mean by the following statement: “The notes were sour because the seams were split.”
Silence reigns. No hands wave in the air. Not even a timid hand halfway in the air. You start to feel sweat on your brow. (more…)
Ross Danis, Program Director, Education
You may hear the mention of a number of “gaps” when people are talking about education: the achievement gap between various income groups and races; the gap in funding between school districts; and the gap between athletics and, say, the arts. Perhaps the most serious gap is between the skills of even the most successful, best educated students and the skills required to be successful in a complex, rapidly changing, and very challenging world – the creativity gap.
View the situation this way: our children are just as literate as they were 20 years ago, but the standards for being literate have changed. The stakes are higher. Today, children will enter, as adults, a world where the “creative class” will rule. In fact, creativity is right up there with the basics of mathematics and reading. UNESCO reports that almost 60% of all the jobs in the 21st century will depend on the capacity to be creative. (more…)
Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate
You can find this spectacular mural, Life as a Delicate Fabric Stretched Between Two Eternities, in our office, thanks to its artist Newton Meyers. Feeling a connection between the painting, which he completed in 1993, and Dodge’s commitment to green design, Mr. Meyers graciously allowed us to host his work.
The mural, explains Mr. Meyers, “Depicts the birth of the earth in a gigantic galactic explosion morphing into C-shaped tides which radiate out of this chaos, bringing warmth and lush green life. Most of this is shown on a huge curtain that sweeps across the mural, dipping into the waters below, where life began. This evolving fabric stretches on past melting icebergs and the death of species to the other eternity, represented by the planets, that life will eventually inhabit.”
Michelle Knapik, Program Director, Environment
I had the privilege of joining the New Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJCF) board and staff for part of a weekend retreat that included a tour of conserved lands and targeted preservation parcels. We boarded vans with our cameras, binoculars, and high-powered scopes in tote – all for our tour of Camden – yes, Camden. While NJCF may be best know for protecting New Jersey’s wilderness areas and agricultural lands, it has been working on the land conservation puzzle in Camden since the mid 1980’s.
As the vans headed for New Camden Park, NJCF’s Manager of Science & Stewardship Dr. Emile DeVito said, “We can’t save the Pine Barrens if we don’t save our cities.” (more…)
Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry
Billy Collins has said that a poem should be like a carnival ride: as soon as it is done, you want to get right back on and ride it again. So, click on the link below, and go for a ride.
Now listen again, and watch for what occurs between the first two poems. There is a rather astonishing moment when Collins physically reacts to the Juan Ramón Jiménez passage he quotes as the epigraph to “The First Night.” He is clearly still bowled over by that line, despite having read it many times.
Collins’ ”The First Night” is a response to Jiménez. Many poets speak of having written specific poems out of the impulse to enter into a dialogue with their favorite poets. Poetry itself is sometimes seen as an ongoing dialogue.
As we listen to Collins’ response to Jiménez, we can understand why he compares a poem to a carnival ride. A great poem or a great line continues to thrill us, regardless of how often we return to it. Part of that thrill can be in coming face-to-face with a potentially terrifying thought the poet has articulated with power and clarity. A good poem draws us back to relive that experience.
Collins has large numbers of readers eager to return to their favorites of his poems. Yet, he taught and wrote for decades before finding those readers. He has joked that after college he wrote like “a third-rate Wallace Stevens.” Only later, he has said, did he develop the confidence to risk writing with clarity. “Clarity,” he explained, “is the real risk in poetry, because you are exposed.”
A Billy Collins’ poem typically starts out gently enough, his self-deprecating humor leading us forward. But a poet willing to expose his feelings about facing mortality and death also exposes ours. Like a carnival ride, once his poem has brought us safely back to earth, we can laugh at how easily frightened we were.
“Greek and Roman Statuary,” “The First Night,” and “High” appear in Billy Collins’ most recent collection, Ballistics. A generous sampling of poems from his earlier books can be found in Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. For a biography of Billy Collins, visit our 2008 Festival Poet Pages.
Be sure to revisit us on upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead, including Martín Espada, Joy Harjo, Jane Hirshfield, Charles Simic, C. D. Wright and others.
