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    Home»Sedona»Sedona Lit: Poems of the Sedona Light, Part Three
    Sedona

    Sedona Lit: Poems of the Sedona Light, Part Three

    September 5, 20164 Comments
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    Sedona Lit is a series by Dr. Elizabeth Oakes, an award winning poet and former Shakespeare professor. A Sedonian of three years, she will highlight the literature, written or performed, of Sedona, past and present.

    photo_elizabethoakes_216By Elizabeth Oakes
    (September 5, 2016)

    Poets need community. Few want to hide their poems away in a drawer, no matter how painful it is to stand before an audience. Even the reclusive Emily Dickinson, who didn’t leave her home after age thirty, published several poems in her lifetime and sent others to a leading scholar. In one of her nearly 1800 poems, she said that sharing is essential:

    A word is dead
    When it is said,
    Some say.

    I say it just
    Begins to live
    That day.

    Poetry is instinctive. As a child, we loved the fun of rhyme, and still do. That’s why songs rhyme. As adults we use simile and metaphor, two stocks in trade of the poet, for instance, in cliches, which might be called folk poetry. For instance, if we say, “I’m as hungry as a bear,” that’s a simile. If someone says, “He/She’s my rock,” that’s a metaphor. Both describe the world through the imagination.

    20160905_lit1Poets have been around as long as language. Sanskrit, the oldest of the Indo-European languages, from which English is derived, has a word for poet: “kāvi,” meaning “maker.” Poetry and stories were oral (like slam poetry today) for millenia, so who knows what was lost.

    The roots of words themselves may come from the very core of the universe. Sanskrit is thought to “be the language of nature herself, composed of the primordial sounds that promote order in the evolving universe,” according to Alistair Shearer, an expert on the Upanishads. It’s an apt coincidence that in English, there is only one letter between word and world.

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    Below are four Sedonians who qualify as “makers,” sharing their view of the universe as it materializes in Sedona with words:

    Light pierces darkness and the world awakens
    True colors are revealed by light’s illumination
    Inner growth reaches outward for light’s connection
    Shadows, simply illusion, are relative to light’s orientation
    Contrast is light’s domain, the magic touch of creation
    Christine Marie, Life Coach, Writer

    20160905_lit2

    The rocks
    aglow with gold,
    holding my eyes like moths to a flame
    left by the ancestors of our lands
    bringing joy to all who walk this way.
    Jan Justice Oswald, Arts Supporter

    20160905_lit3Morning glory . . . Why does
    diffused light bring depth of blue star color
    in morning hues
    of peach and salmon? My eyes dance.
    Kenyon Taylor, Craniosacral Therapist, Designer

    How to Enjoy a Sedona Sunset
    Listen to the embering rocks
    whisper your true name
    like a gift from the sun.
    Bill Ward, Writer

    Thanks to the above and all the poets and photographers who shared their light: Annie Berardini Rivers, Beverly Kievman Copen, Martha Entin, Gary Every, Randy Fridley, Kate Hawkes, Nicholas Kirsten Honshin, Barbara Litrell, Kimberly Crowe, and Ron Chilston.

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    4 Comments

    1. Kenyon on September 5, 2016 11:43 am

      What an honor to be included in this panoply of talent. Thank you!!

      • Elizabeth Oakes on September 6, 2016 2:28 pm

        Thank you, Kenyon! There will be others, and I hope you’ll contribute to them too!

    2. Randall Reynolds on September 8, 2016 8:33 am

      Always a treat! Such a wonderful venue for Sedona!

      • Elizabeth Oakes on September 8, 2016 1:36 pm

        Randall, Hope you’ll contribute to the next poetry party. Although you don’t live here now, once a Sedonian, always a Sedonian!

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