Big Read Master Class with Bob Jones and Fran Claggett

24 people in total gathered together on the evening of March 21st to hear and participate in a classroom discussion of Emily Dickinson, nineteenth-century poet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Aauu-Z928

Here is a video clip or two showing what sort of event this was.  It was held in Monte Rio along the Russian River at the Monte Rio Community Center.  It was sponsored by The Friends of Monte Rio as a part of this month's focus on the NEA's Big Read project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-udgg5gPuM

Small Poems, Big Read by Bob Jones

KEEPING THE FAITH                      by Bob Jones              Sonoma West 3-14-13

 

Small Poems, Big Read

 

Once again, the gods of literacy and libraries have called us to the Big Read.  All praise and thanksgiving be given!  No matter how advanced the format, we still must read, ponder, and inwardly digest the writings of others.  It’s how we learn to use our iPads, and it’s how our souls tap into the wisdom of the ages. 

Lo and behold, the gods have directed us to read a poet.  We might ask, Are the gods crazy?  And such a poet!  They want us to read Emily Dickinson, whose work is vast, often difficult, and inexhaustible.

I know some few things about Dickinson from studies down at Berkeley those good old years ago.  To my mind, much that has recently appeared in the press about her is superficial and misleading.  She is much more than the poet of "'Hope' is the thing with feathers - " or "I'm Nobody!  Who are you?", wonderful as those poems are.  

But how about "Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?", "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - ", "The Black Berry - wears a Thorn in his side - ," or "Split the Lark - and you'll find the Music - "?  Some of these are all but unfathomable, and yet they are worth the effort of trying to fathom them.  That's what makes Dickinson a great poet.  Time spent with her poems rewards us the way time spent with all great art does.

To get at Dickinson we need to go beyond thinking that the whole meaning of a poem can be captured in a paraphrase.  With great poems like Dickinson gives us, we have to enter the world of the poem and live there a while.  We have to come back to it again and again as we would come back to a favorite place in the woods or a cliff by the sea.  Each time we realize a bit more of what is there for us.  If the "Big Read" helps us appreciate this way of reading, it has done an even greater service than calling us to include books and reading in our lives. It has given us a way to perceive what is important, and that's worth a lot.

If you participate in the Big Read, be sure to get an edition of Dickinson’s poems that hasn’t edited out her multitude of dashes, her strange spellings, terse diction, and inexact rhymes.  It’s not Dickinson without these oddities.  The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson includes 1775 poems that can keep you delving for the rest of your life.  The book is one of the biggest reads you’ll ever find. 

Short of all that, a really good choice is the Shambhala Pocket Classics edition of around a hundred and forty poems selected and introduced by Berkeley poet Brenda Hillman.  She sets us on just the right path, pointing out that Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are the “spiritual mother and father of American Poetry.”  Hillman says Dickinson’s poems help us live more purely and more powerfully, and she’s right about that too.  This little book has been available free at some local libraries, and you can Google Shambhala and get if for eight dollars.

You do well to attend some of the Dickinson events being held here abouts as well. We all benefit from discussion when it comes to matters of the heart, head, mortality, and eternity, especially the way Dickinson goes at them.  Fran Claggett, Professor in the Lifelong Learning Program at Sonoma State University, and yours truly will host such a discussion at the Monte Rio Community Center starting at 6:30 on March 21.  It would be great to see you there.

In the meantime, enjoy this:

“Faith” is a fine invention

When Gentlemen can see –

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency.

And ponder this:

                                                But when all Space has been beheld

                                                And all Dominion shown

The smallest Human Heart’s extent

Reduces it to none.

Reader's Theater 2020 - Feb & March

February and March, 2020, promise some interesting one-act plays at the Guerneville Library.
The River Friends of the Library are presenting three plays each month.
February starts with "Designer What?" by local writer Christmas Leubrie, memories of halcyon days in S.F.; "Success Story" showcases the good, bad, and ugly, when you are a striving actor; and "The Lottery" is a famous, dystopian view of four leaf clovers, gone amok.

March opens with "Hipster Hobos" possibly set at Coffee Bazaar; "The Christmas Truce" is a reminder that most common people are innately good, even though their leaders may not be; we then have a special feature reading from local poet, Sashana Kane Proctor; and we close with, "Three Skeleton Key", which is pure suspense.

Reader's Theater Feb 2013

Three plays, all by local authors were presented:

Neighbors by Chris Riebli

Read by: Denise Owen and Lynn Woolley

-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9RYzzxR7ys

 

follewed by

Ghost Dance of the Animal People by Lawrence Maykel

Read by: Peter Andrews, Christmas Leubrie, Laurie Lippin and Denise Owen

-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQPKSFL6spo

 

 

and finally

The Junior Ambassador by Daniel Coshnear

Read by: Peter Andrews, Laurie Lippin, Damien Olsen, Bruce Robinson and

Diz Struffles

-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd3jf_kXrYc

Readers Theater January 2013

 

 

This last Wednesday of the month was Reader's Theater at the Guerneville Library where the River Friends of the Library presented four one-act plays.
There will be an encore presentation Saturday afternoon, Feb 2nd at the Library

 

 

The First Play took place on a Golf Course

The second play was about a Philandering Actress

The third play was about trusting your Post Office

 

 

The last play was about a Russian Princess