Fade to Quiet

                                           The Wild Swans at Coole as Yeats saw them, too. I woke up this morning to a clouded over moon and news of a new war, this after a week of earthquake and following fifty nuclear energy workers as they strive to save the world. The vegetables are already contaminated, and the people will get sick from this, even if Ann Coulter continues to insist that radiation is good for us. It is the first day of Spring, and it is cold and gray out. It's a hard day to wake to. I read that it was mostly children who were harmed by the bombs over Libya, and Ghadafi simply replies, "Prepare for a long war." I slept so heavily last night. Today, I want to sleep some more. I feel the earth is tired, the people of the world are tired. I feel we all need to sleep. But we don't sleep. We will keep acting, keep trying, keep searching for the words that will balance out the silence of the dead and dying. I feel all of this invites me to move throu

EPICENTER, for Japan Japanese sailors rescue Hiromitsu Shinkawa Sunday, two days after the 60-year-old was washed to sea on the roof of his Minamisoma home by a tsunami caused by a powerful earthquake. Thousands are feared dead.                                 Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2011 When the home is shaken, then taken by the sea, when all they can compare it to are two atomic bombs, there is no such thing as waiting as when in this: the water wants. There is no such thing as meaning as when in this: the earth does break open. Sometimes it helps to lift one’s head in prayer and look around the world for what is missing, to count the waves and all the waves have taken and see how everything can be taken. The shoulder of the globe is always soft to cry on. The distance love will travel, salt to salt. I look to the man on his roof floating on the ocean and know he is a story unto himself, having made it safely out of the doomed city, then ha

The Full Dreaming of Asheville Wordfest, a press release for a paper that might not exist yet. by Laura Hope-Gill on Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 3:48pm ASHEVILLE WORDFEST 2011 May 2-8, 2011 All poetry events are free. Films $10.00 donation. It’s time for Asheville Wordfest, Asheville’s poetry festival. Between Tuesday May 2 and Sunday May 8, Asheville residences and guests can enjoy poetry events and readings around the city. Asheville Wordfest is the product of a conversation among poets Laura Hope-Gill, Glenis Redmond, Jeff Davis and James Nave in 2007. In 2008, Wordfest launched at UNCA. Director Hope-Gill expected “maybe forty people, but by the end of the weekend, more than ten times that many had come to the events.” Wordfest is a local festival created to bring the Asheville community together while also connecting it with global voices. Each year, Wordfest explores a theme, using poetry as a form of citizen journalism and not just as a Fine Art. This year’s t