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Poet-a-Day: Run into Janet Aalfs

Janet Aalfs and her writing are all almost connection, compassion, and the "hard work of
magic." I've enjoyed getting to acquire more than about her and her fascinating background
through the process of procuring her lovely poem, "Ode to a Lost Sweater," for How to
Write a Form Poem.

Many odes are quite long, just Aalfs's, at simply nineteen lines, packs an emotional punch in a
small sensory space. Here are the starting time few lines. Want to read the rest? You tin can catch
information technology in the main ode chapter in How to Write a Form Poem.

Ode to a Lost Sweater (excerpt)

I meet it now
like a unproblematic word
spoken into the air current.
Bright button
in our mother's palm …

—Janet Aalfs

Here's what Aalfs has to say most a poem that started with just one crimson button.

Tania Runyan (TR): Tell me a little about the origin story of "Ode to a Lost Sweater":

Janet Aalfs (JA): Later my mother almost died in 2015, she was transferred to a nursing facility for rehab where she then became a resident. While preparing her firm for sale, I constitute a red button that I recognized. Though the sweater it had fallen off of never appeared, the vivid retention of my female parent's mother Cecelia'southward handknit souvenir emerged from that one small item.

I felt moved to bring this childhood sweater to life in an ode. I didn't know before I began writing the verse form that information technology would lead me to feeling fifty-fifty more continued through my family of origin to the whole universe. This is the adventure of verse in any form that keeps me learning, growing, yearning, and transforming.

TR: Accept you written odes to any other items, people, or events? What makes
something particularly "ode-worthy"? Do yous write poems in other forms?

JA: I've been particularly inspired by Pablo Neruda's odes to everyday items such as socks, scissors, common salt, and onions. Though odes can vary in fashion, some more formal than others, all types take in mutual an outpouring of praise. Other odes I've written include "Ode to My Comb," "Ode to an Eagle'due south Aura," "Ode to Patience," and "Ode to Atheism."

When I was the poet laureate of Northampton, MA, I was invited to write an event poem for the city'southward 350th anniversary celebration. That project turned into i of my longer poems, "Ode to the Many Voices of Northampton." Other class poems I've equanimous include the sonnet, sestina, villanelle, haiku, tanka, litany, elegy, dejection, and ekphrastic.

Though form and content can be identified separately in diverse craft-informed means, they cannot be experienced as separate for a form poem to work. I am also a motility creative person, and have been studying, practicing, and pedagogy various international movement languages for decades – Okinawan Karate, Filipino stick arts, Taiji and Qigong. As Layli Long Soldier has said, "A 'real' poem doesn't 'really' require words." Poetry arises from the torso, an extension of the earth, all elements of the weaving we call the Universe. A poem begins in silence, and our bodies are the instruments—from jiff to gesture to give-and-take—with which we express our existence in the music of language.

TR: What do y'all hope poets tin acquire from a volume like How to Write a Form Verse form?

JA: Creating course poems has the potential to give usa a deeper more layered view into ourselves and others, and into perceptions we may non recognize until we polish the light of poetry more than compassionately and skillfully within. All poems accept grade, both internal and external, whether named or non, and can trans-grade who we are and how nosotros view life, decease, liberation, racial/social justice, compassion, dearest—everything that is most important in promoting positive connections.

A class poem can shape the poetic moment in a particular fashion due to the specific patterns of lines, rhyming sounds, rhythms, and catamenia. As my Filipino martial arts instructor, Professor Remy Presas, has said, "What is magic? Repetition. Hard work." And I would add, joyful difficult work, even and especially in our grieving.

Virtually Janet Aalfs

Janet E. Aalfs, second poet laureate of Northampton, MA (2003-2005), is fluent in 3 international movement languages. A 7th caste black belt in both Okinawan Karate and Filipino Modern Arnis, and master Jian Mei Taiji/Qigong instructor, she has been sharing her poetic movement weavings locally, nationally, and internationally for more than than four decades. Founding member of Valley Women'due south Martial Arts, and founder and managing director of Lotus Peace Arts at Heron's Span, a non-profit school since 1977, Janet is dedicated to helping create intergenerational, cross cultural "sites for revelation."

Recipient of the 2013 Leadership and Advocacy in the Arts Award (UMass/CWC), and prizes for her poesy and motion arts, Janet practices everyday peace-building through integrative arts activism. She has been a Dodge Festival Poet, a teaching artist in Cape Town, South Africa, and presenter/performer at numerous events and conferences. Her poems and essays are widely published in journals, anthologies, and online. Her total-length poesy collections are Bird of a Yard Eyes (Levellers Printing) and Reach (Perugia Press); chapbooks include Total Open (Orogeny Press), Of Angels and Survivors (Ii Herons Press), Lubec Tides (Thousand Easily Press) and several others.

Hear Janet Read "Ode to a Lost Sweater"

(go to 11:46 to hear Janet read)

Photo past Judy Dean, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Mail past Tania Runyan.

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Tania Runyan lives in Lindenhurst, Illinois, a sort-of suburb, sort-of small town, where the deer and the minivans play. She'due south a 2011 NEA beau and mama to iv poesy books—A One thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, Delicious Air, and What Will Soon Accept Identify—and 3 (much cuter and noisier) human children. Tania is also the author of iv non-fiction books—How To Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, How to Write a Form Poem, and How to Write a College Application Essay. Visit her at TaniaRunyan.com

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Source: https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2021/04/27/poet-a-day-meet-janet-aalfs/

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