The forest is long and songless. All the animal calls have been cut down. They lie in stacks along the path: songbird bindle, parcel of fox throats, packet of bobcat hollers. I try to recall them but they won't come. My own calls are hollow and numb in my neck, and what would come to that kind of call?
The forest is tall and all the trees hum with some new hum I can't name. It pins me through the lungs. The air ambers around my arms as I swing them.
I am trying to imagine the bird will re-spool, the fox re-fur and return, panting, to my hands. But I am already a specimen. Cotton puffs from my ears like pinfeathers. In my chest, a tingling like my lungs are falling asleep. Whatever was deep in me is rising to the surface, pressing its face against my unblinking eyes.
Scholar Scott Newstok suggests in his new book that contemporary readers will understand Shakespeare more deeply through immersion in an Elizabethan education. "'Shakespeare earned his place in our pantheon of minds by staging thought in action,' writes Newstok."
Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community
Towards a More Conscious Leader: "This guide by Ama Codjoe, published in the National Guild for Community Arts Education’s Guild Notes, provides arts leaders with a framework for assessing their own privilege and adopting ways of 'seeing, listening, and being that can deeply transform not only your leadership practice but your life.'"
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"As visitors approach the sculpture, the vibration of their feet on the gallery floor, their movements, even their breathing, lead to the slow crumbling and collapse of the work itself. The figure takes on a sense of the sublime and of the divine not so much from its scale, but from its impermanence. Its object-hood, its this-ness, is at every moment in the process of disintegration."
