Heather Thomas & Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at Free Library

Monday Poets Reading Series
Heather Thomas and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko Monday, April 6, 6:30 p.m.
Free Library of Philadelphia - Parkway Central Library
Presented by Free Library of Philadelphia
FREE!

Heather Thomas is the author of seven books of poetry, including Blue Ruby and Resurrection Papers. She has awards from the Academy of American Poets and the PA Council on the Arts.

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a poet and interdisciplinary artist. His work has appeared in The Interlochen Review and Silo Literary and Visual Arts Magazine, among others. His most recent chapbook is Ninth Sign of Zodiac.

COLE SWENSEN AT TEMPLE

Lecture
“Busy Poetry: Recent Documentary and Research-based Poetics.”
Who is poetry speaking to, and who is poetry speaking for?---two questions that condition poetry's relationship to the world at large. Recent work in both documentary and research-based poetries have complicated and enriched that relationship in ways that make us reconsider the boundaries of poetry itself.
Wednesday, April 8, 3:00, Weigley Room, 9th floor Gladfelter Hall on Main campus.

Reading
Thursday April 9 at 8:00 p.m. at Temple's Center City campus (1515 Market St., room 222).

Cole Swensen’s most recent book is Ours (University of California, 2008). She is the co-editor with David St. John of the anthology American Hybrid (W. W. Norton, 2009). She teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Joe Brainard Link

Joe Brainard

This site shows the life and work of Joe Brainard.
The website contains a bio, his art, his writings,
writings about Joe, related links and events.

Poetic 3 Walk Poem

For this poem, i walked around an antique shop that I had found one day while walking in Center City. I had a very interesting experience there, and felt the need to write my poem about it. The shop had a mysterious feeling and it seemed as if it were separate from the rest of the world. The shop was kind of small but because of the great amount of things that were in it, there was so much to look at. This caused a bit of a problem when it came to writing the poem. I took notes on my walk, and wrote the poem immediately afterwards; however, my notes filled two pages of my notebook and were crazy and somewhat  incoherent because of everything that I wrote about. I then had to choose what was more significant to add to the poem. I picked a few things that were very prominent in the adventure through the store such as the chair and the crucifixes, especially the ones that were covered in rhinestones (sanctity is disturbed/by rhinestones). My emotions throughout the stores changed with every room I walked through. I found this to be interesting because I'm never really that emotional in stores. I tried to convey that in the poem. When my mother called me I was pulled out of this trance that I felt the store had put me in, almost as if I was welcomed back to reality. It bothered me, though, because I got very distracted, and needed to stop and get back to where I was prior to that moment.

It was interesting to see the objects of the store come alive as I walked past. As I was telling my friends about it I had said that it was like a fun house for old people because its an antique shop and I guess old people like antique shops. I just kind of said it, but then I was like that is what I will call it. Then I changed it to "The Fun House For Old Souls" because there was so much energy in the store, almost like everything was alive, or had a "soul." The title then can be for "old souls" like old people, or "old souls" like energy given off by the antiques. I went back to the store afterward and it was completely different. The lights were brighter than I remembered, things were still there but the energy was gone. I did get to see more things in greater detail, but it didn't have the same affect. It was a very strange, dream like experience. 

Poetic 3 for Walk Poem--Rayhan Blankinship

As I walked, I paid attention to the way the action of walking depended on rhythm, and was guided by rhythm. Footsteps carry with them a mood and musicality. They create a beat, as each step effectively beats or pounds the ground. Although an inner music controlled my pace, I did find that my way of walking was affected by external factors. I became infatuated by the intersection of movement and memory, especially in how they relate dance. Although there is this association with club dance or social dance, I was thinking more about the daily dance of living.

Walking outside, I feel as though I am in the world, and that I am meeting it. It gives me different faces on different days. For me, walking has always been a means of escape, from both myself and from other people. In this way it is therapeutic, and my mind has the freedom to meander, even if I am traveling to a predetermined destination. In fact, there is a certain thrill that I associate with walking, because I am moving myself from one place to another, and where I end up depends on where I choose to go. In someone else’s car, you are their captive. Even if you are driving, you must obey certain laws, or else end up in a dangerous situation. Also, you are still confined from the world by a physical barrier. I have always also used walking as a way to clear my head. Indoors, I begin to feel confined. Once I have turned off my cell phone, and am out walking by myself, I feel truly free. I enjoy the feeling of knowing that no one I know really knows where I am, and that I could get on a bus to Mexico if I so decided. In this state, where I know that I am alone, even if I am on a subway surrounded by people, my body rejoices in being itself.

Walking past certain physical markers triggers specific memories, and so I wrote this poem with two things in mind: first, the aforementioned physicality and rhythm of walking, and second, the notion of meandering through my own memory—the memory associated with walking. Sometimes these memories involved walking companions. In transcribing these memories into a poem, I chose to pay more attention to how the memories became word imagery, separate from the image of the actual memory. Instead of trying to convey the specific sequences and details of the memory, I wrote them into transformation. I also associate observation with walking. As I walk, I observe the weather and the world as some sort of art gallery. An open space, it still feels totally contained and enclosed, expecting to be traversed, and yet waiting around for no one.

Poetic 3

For my Walk Poem, I attempted to capture everything that the action of walking means to me. Walking has been a constant theme in my life, and so many of my best memories are of long walks through this city. Every walk recalls another walk as I’ve passed every street so many times before. I wanted to capture two atmospheres and two attitudes: that of a past walk and that of the present walk. Walking traditionally has connotations both of forward motion and of nostalgic exploration, and these themes are present in my poem as well. I did take an actual walk, but it wasn’t something I did for this assignment, as I honestly walk miles every weekend it’s nice out. As I walked, it became evident that it was impossible for me to write about walking without recalling all of my past experiences. I couldn’t only write about that single walk because I would have to exclude a lifetime.
Additionally, I wanted to explore two concepts that I feel linked to my concept of walking: that of life being a cyclical motion and the physicality of walking. I’ve learned that when a human being walks, they don’t actually move their leg up and then place their foot on the ground, but that the human body has been adapted to use the force of gravity to do half of the work for us. We lift our leg and let gravity push us down, catching ourselves at the last second. This is incredibly complex and to this day scientists find it difficult to build a robot that can successfully walk like a human does. I also envisioned life as if it were a globe, and instead of parallel universes or a linear timeline, I imagined my past and future selves walking along this sphere. And just how the Earth revolves constantly, our present selves will eventually revolve and reach these other planes of time, reaching forward and remembering simultaneously and always.

Poetic 3

Ghazel Sultan

For my walk poem, I took a walk around Temple campus. I observed many things around me, including my own thoughts and I realized how some minute details that I overlook as I am walking, such as a leaf falling of a tree, to the ground and how that can have a particular rhythm to it. Even when it is windy out, the leaves still maintain its smooth pace as they flew in mid air. I also noticed how as I walked, the silhouette of the trees would cover the floor at night and how one can combine themselves with the scenery around them through the shadows. I incorporated this certain aspect in my poem because I found it very fascinating how a shadow of something can be used in a way to combine two different aspects; in this case, it was me and the tree branches. The way the shadows moved as I walked was interesting as well because I observed that the silhouettes changed shapes but they all maintained the same form of being dead and weary. This added to the emotions which are felt at night as you walk underneath dead trees.

Overall, I paid close attention to nature around me and I learned how certain forms that we ignore can explain a lot about normal things in our own lives, such as a tree in the winter can explain death where as in the summer, it can be seen as rebirth. The walk poem was a great assignment, because poetry is more about observation and by this poem, I was able to create a poem from a single aspect that regularly took for granted. Even now when I walk to my destination, I pay more attention to my surroundings rather than walking straight with my iPod on, more concerned with what I need to do for the rest of the day.