CHANUKAH, ON BEING, ETC.
Chanukah The Second Day, Or How Did Our Poems Get to be On Being (it wasn’t easy) http://www.onbeing.org/blog
One day my husband who has tinnitus always ringing in his ears always no one knows how to stop ear ringing he sleeps with headphones and listens because listening often overcomes ringing one day my husband heard Naomi Rachel Remen writer and doctor tell a completely wonderful story with one of those VOICES and when I woke up he played it for me. The story was about what life is what matters, and then, who she was. Who she was took precedence. I listened to her story Over and Over. I even wrote her a letter. Maybe On Being where she belonged was where I belonged too. Not that I want to Belong Anywhere. Not really. I wanted my poems to belong. My poems are happiest with Matthew Septimus’s pictures. He shows what I can’t and what he shows is often linked to my words. I am not a collaborative type. Neither is Matthew. So we worked well together for years. Trying to show what holiness looks like photographing holiness in a record store under the subway with my poet friend Pedro Pietri he called himself El Reverendo people who are for ordinary reasons extraordinary. He photographed mailboxes and old men and all the miraculous odd beauty that he sees over and over and I wrote poems and poems. A few years ago I thought we should be on On Being. I wrote a letter a pitch even though pitch is a word like blog and tweet that is intrinsically problematic. Like everything else, it took years and then some months and then today Peter was googling On Being Just to See and there was Matthew’s picture, and my poem.