April Galaxy Dispatch: The Soma of Poetry
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
-Rita Dove
It’s April, Galaxy friends.
The tumultuous early warmth of February and March
Has slowed and re-frozen.
Snow has re-fallen,
Maybe to remind us of who is in charge
(nature, never humans).
April is National Poetry Month,.
And thus is poetry is our monthly theme at the studio.
I’m trying to distill my mile-a-minute mind
Into words and lines that have more heft, and richer flavor.
Because that’s what I think poetry does:
Forces us to savor each word.
Opens to us the ritual
outside of a disposable read,
and mere consumption.
We are given the luxury of endlessly revisiting
a poem,
or a single line,
or just one word
(a world).
Poems dare us to let those words, lines, poems,
burst out of the gates of
our lips.
Poems dare us to speak them aloud
Poems beg us to share them with a friend
(or a lover,
or an enemy.
Why not?
Sometimes poems
cut mercilessly deep).
Poems know the secret password
That allow them to slip beyond
The reasonable, linear paths of our brains
To directly attach to the heart chambers,
Or drop like a lead anchor into our bellies
Or thread us like a bead,
Arraying us and others similarly strung
On some sort of poetry rosary.
We get strung up (strung out?)
0ver a poem,
We repeat a line over and over
We let it thunder through our ears like a relentless drum beat
We say a wordless “ugh”
Or our voice wavers like water
Because those words make our throat overflow with
Sadness
Or fullness
Or
I don’t know.
Much-ness.
Last week, I was wandering Pittsburgh’s hills
With my family.
I woke up in the dark morning with the birds,
and walked down the huge hill my neighborhood
was perched upon,
to an unknown yoga class
with an unknown teacher.
In that class,
we did everything
and nothing.
We moved slowly
with deep meaning.
I felt unexpectedly
full (as in, complete),
and empty (as in, expansive as space).
As I rested in Savasana and sat in meditation, a single word came to me:
Soma
The nectar of life, in many eastern traditions,
sometimes it’s translated as
“Distilled”
and that practice had Soma:
Potent
Undiluted
Powerful.
May the practices of yoga
Distill us
Create in us
Depth
Bravery
Deep connection
Comfort with stillness
Power in silence
And beauty and meaning and connection
In the words we choose to share with one another.
Let’s unroll our mats together this April
and let it mean something.
Let’s accept the standing invitation
to return to our mats,
again and again, so that we may
uncover deeper meanings,
hidden connections,
and the poetry already written
on our bodies
in our hearts
across our minds
and strung between us like beads on a thread.
Let’s be a poem, Galaxy
A Body Poem.
A Soma Poem.
A Soul Poem.
Let’s be a poem.
xo,
Anna
What I’m Reading…
I’ve got a re-recommendation from last year, and a new one that I’ll be reading for the first time, along with you! Last year, I recommended “A Book of Luminous Things,” a poetry anthology edited by Czeslaw Milos and arranged by subject matter that is a personal favorite (I gave it as a birthday gift to our resident real-life studio fairy and fellow poetry-lover, Rose this year).
In that same vein, I’m diving into this anthology called “Poems of Gratitude and Hope,” edited by James Crews. And it’s got a forward by Ross Gay, which really sealed the deal for me! I’ll be reading and sharing from this book throughout the month, I’m guessing.
And both books will be for sale in our cute little studio boutique, naturally. Happy Reading, Galaxy!
