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Apple Farm Winter Blog  2017

2/12/2017

1 Comment

 
Last winter,  a dozen or so people responded to an invitation to offer some thoughts in response to the question; what do we have to say from Apple Farm in the face of fear?   That question emerged from the world-wide impact of the shootings in Paris. This years theme/question; what might we have to say from Apple Farm in these times?
Thanks to Amy Carpenter Leugs who offers the poem below which begins the winter blog.

Pro-test (n)
          in favor of testifying
 my right hand
on the holy book
of my markered sign
 
colors
brown
like the eyes of children I teach
 
green
leaves on trees climbed
by Anishinaabe for centuries
 
words
spoken in sweat session
with the elder Odawa
all my ancestors
 
vision
tall thin ancients
dark as a spider’s web
walking from the African continent
​into this moment

 
- Amy Carpenter Leugs 

​Note: I am developing a new series of poems that explores a language (tongue) of resistance (to stand again).   Joan Miller helped me by pointing out the root of the word “protest” (in favor of testifying, or testimony).  I decided that when I protest in this xenophobic time, I am testifying to our shared roots, to our African and indigenous ancestors.

I am learning that poets of resistance need to develop a lexicon that is grounded and transforming, because the populist leader over-inflates and over-simplifies their rhetoric. 


​Poets reclaimed the German language after Hitler by creating poems that were lists … of pancake ingredients, of things they took to the concentration camps.  Concrete language helps us find common ground and build again from the bottom up.  Exploring etymology helps us reclaim the history of our words and to rethink their meanings.  Maybe this is the necessary foundation to exploring symbols and stories as white supremacy comes out of hiding again.
1 Comment
Mey Hasbrook link
3/30/2017 07:54:49 pm

Excellent! This theme is one inspiring a national "happening" in May. The Art of Fearlessness project is open to all and organized by members of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts. Here's the site - https://www.facebook.com/groups/558513164298259/?ref=ts&fref=ts&__nodl .

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    ...it is in part by our response to the great stories of the world  that we too can begin to find, each of us this individual story expressing the symbolic meaning behind the facts of our fate and behind the motives that determine the day-to-day choices of our lives.  -Helen Luke, The Inner Story

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