Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

In his 1991 essay, “Slow Down for Poetry,” former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand wrote that poetry invites us to step out of the pace of our everyday lives and slow down.  It requires we change the speed at which we usually absorb information.  We can’t skim over a poem the way we do newspaper or website pages.  With poetry, we pause to meditate over a line, phrase or image, rereading passages, stanzas, whole poems many times.  We don’t so much slow down for poetry as allow poetry to slow us down.

Speaking to students at the 2006 Dodge Festival, current U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine said that everyone needs to find their poetry.  Poetry, for him, was the one thing that engaged all the many aspects of himself, that made him feel most fulfilled, most true to his truest self.  He said that everyone needs to find something like this in their lives.  For some people, like Levine, it’s poetry, but it could be any art, or work, or hobby.

We’ve all had the experience of being so deeply absorbed in something—creative work, meditation, conversation—that we lose all sense of time.  We look at the clock and are shocked by how much later it is than we’d thought, or, we complete a challenging task and discover with focused attention it took a fraction of the time anticipated.

Perhaps we don’t need to slow down for poetry so much as to allow ourselves to make the time to forget time.  There is no better way to do this than to make time for our poetry, whatever that is: gardening, wood working, playing or listening to music, dancing, yoga, reading or writing.  It is particularly important to do this when we are certain we have no time.  During periods of my life when adding anything extra to my schedule seemed impossible if not downright insane, I would set the alarm a little earlier to create time for silent reading in the early morning.  I’m certain that’s how I got through those stressful times.

And let us not make “resolutions” to do this, as if to do what brings us joy requires resolve.  Instead, let’s make gifts, little gifts to ourselves of an evening here or there, or even fifteen minutes in the morning, to do something we find fulfilling.  You might discover it is poetry.  But whatever it is, allowing ourselves time for it is not a selfish act.  Doing what brings us fulfillment makes us less impatient, less frustrated, calmer and more centered.  It makes us easier to be around, which makes us better friends, partners, citizens, parents and co-workers.  Of course, we already know this.  Perhaps the first gift is to allow ourselves to act on what we know about ourselves.

***

For more information about the Dodge Poetry Festival and programs, visit www.dodgepoetry.org
Be our friend on Facebook,  and
Follow us on Twitter @DodgePoetryFest

We know you’re used to seeing us on Fridays, but we’ve got big news for you on Monday, we promise. You won’t want to miss it, so make sure to check back in with us here on the Dodge blog, or by becoming our friend on Facebook or following us on Twitter, @DodgePoetryFest!

See you next week…

***

For more information on the Dodge Poetry Festival and Program, visit www.dodgepoetry.org

Support the Dodge Poetry Festival, Program and Archive.
Click here to become a Friend.

In our blog today,  Cat Doty reflects on “Beginner’s Mind” one of the Core Principles of Clearing the Spring, Tending the Fountain–“Both listening/reading and speaking/writing are likely to be more creative and more alive if we approach them with what, in Zen practice, is called Beginner’s Mind.”  Cat Doty is a leader in Clearing the Spring, Tending the Fountain–our poetry discussion groups for teachers.  Cat also visits High Schools in our Poetry in the Schools Program. When she’s not working with us, Cat teaches middle school English in Millburn, NJ, teaches at aTi (link to their website www.artshorizons.org) every summer, raises her two kids, and (somehow) finds time to write.

Five days in, nine to go.

This is my first stay at an artist’s colony. I have a key to the house I am sharing, a key to my studio, and, because I am working to help defray the cost of my stay, a key to the kitchen where, I will prepare, by myself, with no more help than a cheat sheet of where stuff is and when it should come out, breakfast for the 80-or-so visual artists and writers. The main dish on Friday is oatmeal: two gallons of water, a whole silo of oats, and, when it gets over-thick on the steam table, another shot of water and a quick stir. There’s little difficult about it. I’ve had two days of training, and have thus far sustained only one injury: a hubris burn on my right bicep. (There are two ways to get boiling oatmeal from a cauldron to a serving vat: bail it like a loser a with a scoop the size of a baseball cap, or dump it all at once in one deft, butch move, a trick best attempted by someone tall and athletic).  Then it’s off to my 24-hour-access studio, where I have no one but myself to impress, and (see above) nine days in which to do it.

Each writer’s studio includes a serious-looking desk, a huge window framing a moving river, and plenty of quiet. Most residents work with their doors shut. The only person using an actual typewriter has a note on her door apologizing for it. “If the noise bothers you,” she writes, “just knock on the door and I’ll stop.” Before word processors, the writers building, at capacity, must have been noisier than the welding barn down the street. Now it is impossible to gauge my neighbor’s progress (and compare it to my own) by the waxing and waning of happy bursts of tappage. I can always think myself alone if that’s what works, or revel in silent industry all about me. What I can’t always do, not as quickly as I’d like to, is get started.

I’ve been trying to just do it. I’ve been trying to not try to just do it, too, but, instead, to receive it, it being a crappy draft with a discernable heartbeat, a certain quickening buzz that says, if I go all-out on this homely fledgling, it will be worth (in experience or product) every hour and impulse I invest trying (and sometimes failing) to make it better than anything I ever wrote. Bring it! This is not meant as advice to you (I said Bring it! to the oatmeal, too), but as a reminder to myself to calm down and recognize the strength of not knowing. What I don’t know, in the process of exploration, may (please) lead me to discoveries that take a piece of writing to fresh places.  Such a state doesn’t feel, in its itchiness and self-doubt, like Beginner’s Mind, but that’s what it is. A beginner at almost anything is not feeling comfy or secure, but there are thrills only beginners know. (Yes, good ones. I’ll tell you when I see you.)

***
Support the Dodge Poetry Archive and Poetry Program. Click here.

Did you know that the Dodge Poetry Program has a YouTube channel?Take a look – view video clips from past biennial Festivals! You can also join the conversation on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @dodgepoetryfest. See you there!

Rebecca Gambale, Program Associate, Poetry

In honor of the newly appointed United States Poet Laureate Philip Levine, we thought we’d feature an important part of every Dodge Poetry Festival – Poets Laureate both past and present.

Did you know that a total of 17 U.S. Poets Laureate have participated in the Dodge Poetry Festival, many of them multiple times? This includes Philip Levine, who has read at the 1990, 1994 and 2004 Festivals.

Poets Laureate Maxine Kumin, Robert Hass, Billy Collins and Ted Kooser
at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival

About 10 years ago the Poet Laureate panel became a part of the Festival programming. At the time poets like Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky and Robert Hass were making the position more visible by trying to use it to increase poetry awareness and improve poetry education nationally. The panels were an attempt to put a human face on what otherwise might seem a lofty post, and give the laureates a chance to talk about both the challenges and the opportunities presented by the position.

We would like to share with you, in alphabetical order, the list of all of the Poets Laureate who have graced our stage and participated in the U.S. Poets Laureate panel, a highlight of every Festival:

Gwendolyn Brooks
Billy Collins
Rita Dove
Donald Hall
Robert Hass
Ted Kooser
Maxine Kumin
Stanley Kunitz
Philip Levine
W.S. Merwin
Howard Nemerov
Robert Pinsky
Kay Ryan
Charles Simic
William Stafford
Mark Strand
Richard Wilbur

For more information on which poets participated in each Festival year, please check the Festival Background section of our website and click on “Past Festivals” to choose a year.

For a full listing of all U.S. Poets Laureate, check out the Library of Congress timeline.

***
Support the Dodge Poetry Archive and Poetry Program. Click here.

Did you know that the Dodge Poetry Program has a YouTube channel? Take a look – view video clips from past biennial Festivals! You can also join the conversation on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @dodgepoetryfest. See you there!

Martin, Michele & Rebecca

This week’s blog announces our ambitious Friends of the Festival fundraising campaign.  You may wonder why the Dodge Poetry Program—part of the Dodge Foundation, a major arts funder in New Jersey—needs to fundraise.  We hope you’ll take a few moments to read this blog in order to understand how fundraising is essential to sustaining the Dodge Poetry Program.

Remember when you first “Came alive in the presence of poetry”

“Students come alive in the presence of live poetry… I find them taking notes, writing down the advice (on writing and life) that the poets share, then turning around and sharing that wisdom in their classes. It provides them with a bit of confidence and validation for their own work.  The Festival is life changing—once they experience Dodge, they are forever changed for the better!”
Nicole Marionni, Highland Park High School. 2010 Festival

Since 1986, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program has been one of the leaders of a national poetry renaissance that is changing the way poetry is encountered, experienced and perceived.

• An international audience of 150,000 has attended the 13 biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festivals.
• Over 45,000 students and 18,000 teachers have attended the Festival at no charge.
• More than 600 poets have read at the Festival or at a New Jersey High School as part of our Poetry in the Schools Program.
• Thousands of teachers have discussed poetry during our Clearing the Spring, Tending the Fountain sessions.
• Nearly 75,000 high school students encountered living poets at one of our events.

Preserve the Past

In addition to the ongoing work of producing the Festival and the Poets in the Schools Program, we have begun planning the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Archive project.   Consisting of over 2,500 hours of audio and video recordings, the Archive is one of the most extraordinary records of contemporary poetry and poets in the world.  Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, U. S. Poets Laureate, and poets of international stature are captured in readings, interviews, and once-in-a-lifetime conversations.  Our long-term goal is to create a Dodge Poetry Archive website to create an experience of poetry that is shaped by curiosity, pleasure and personal interest, furthering our mission to nurture the connection between poetry lovers and poetry.

Sustain the Future

Developing the Archive, while continuing the Festival and our work in the schools, is more than the Poetry Program budget can sustain.  Begun as an initiative of the Dodge Foundation in 1986, the Poetry Program is only one of hundreds of initiatives and grantees in the arts, education and the environment funded by the Foundation.  The current economic landscape is challenging–both for the Foundation and for the non-profit sector which it steadily supports.

At this critical time, we ask you to consider what the Dodge Poetry Program has meant to you, and how you envision it being a part of your future.  We ask you to support the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program as a Friend of the Festival. Friends of the Festival contributions are tax deductible and help us continue this extraordinary work. Click here to see all the ways your support makes a difference.

***

Did you know that the Dodge Poetry Program has a YouTube channel? Take a look – view video clips from past biennial Festivals! You can also join the conversation on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @dodgepoetryfest. See you there!