One Page Poetry Circle Archive

Welcome to the Virtual One Page Poetry Circle!

Date: Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Theme: Poetry and Healing

Find a poem! Send a poem by email!

We're back for the thirteenth spring season of the One Page Poetry Circle where people examine the works of established poets. While there is no instructor and this is not a workshop for personal writing, once a month OPPC gives everyone a place to become teachers and learners to explore the form, content, language and meaning of poetry. Since the circle began, participants have selected and discussed 1272 poems and have read countless others in pursuit of poetry that speaks to them.

This spring we will gather virtually, by email. We ask you to send us the poems you have selected on the subject of Poetry and Healing, with a comment on why you chose them. We'll share the poems with you through our blog and by email.

Our theme for February is Healing. After this election and the arrival of the vaccine for coronavirus, it is time to think of healing. Amanda Gorman captured the essence of healing perfectly at Biden's Inauguration with her poem, "The Hill We Climb."

Jackie Childress describes the process of healing in six words:

• Loved. Lost.
• Cried. Raged.
• Chocolate.
• Next.

Alan Michael Parker's "Text" shows us the difficulty in finding words for healing: It opens with hopelessness:

• It has taken me forty years to admit
• emotions have no words.
• I express and repress, scrawl
• vowels on a placemat,

then finds the imperfect beginnings of healing:

• On my walk back from town this morning,
• I met a woman in her driveway,
• One hand on a snowblower. Weeping.
• The enormous trumpet of the red machine

• blew the powder into the air,
• noise going nowhere as she wept.
• They seemed to me as one,
• She and her machine, and what could I do—

• the placemat folded in my pocket
• sang itself a pretty lie.
• What could I say? Sorry.
• Then she realized I had stopped:

• She smiled badly, wiped her nose,
• And went back to tidying.
• And I went back to trudging through
• Words, head down, humming out of tune.

Whether a poem does the work of healing, speaks about healing, or shows the difficulty in finding words for healing, choose a poem that has meaning to you. Then email it to one of us by February 9th, with a brief comment of why you chose it. Can't locate a poem you want to send? Check out Poetry Foundation or poets.org.

In the meantime, please blog with us at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com.

Spring 2021 Schedule
February 9: Healing
March 9: Dirt
April 13: Seeds
May 10: Freedom

Abigail Burnham Bloom, abigailburnhambloom@gmail.com
AnnaLee Wilson, annalee@kaeserwilson.com