We Have to Talk About it and Act on it Constantly

vine-smothered concrete

                                            release cycles

                                            and conversation

                                            from their combined project

whose life is governed
the urgency, but also

abandoned buildings, factories
                                valuable to me as an artist

make things by hand
a dram of optimism
the creative flexibility at work

life, nonetheless, where life wasn't
          weeds reclaiming scarred ground
                       that was a hopeful thing
***

Thanks to Chris, Wendy, Tony, and Jennie for allowing me to take pieces of their responses to "Oh Earth Wait for Me": Conversations about Art and Ecology and "compost" them into a composite poem. All words in this piece are directly lifted from their responses to the series (click on their names above for their full responses) and re-framed in juxtaposition. The idea is one of energy-transfer~~~engaging a poetics alternately framed as a detritus-cycle metaphor (Gary Snyder) or as a green plant metaphor (William Rueckert) and indebted to Jed Rasula's This Compost, all cycled through Kyhl Lyndgaard's interview with Gary Snyder in Jonathan's Skinner's ecopoetics 6/7. As Tony says, other examples abound.

by Eric Magrane

The form of the permaculture flower embodies the principles of non-linear and interconnecting systems-level thinking, from the local to the global. In reflecting on the Poetry Center's series this fall, it struck me that playing with this form might mirror the cross-pollinations of the series. This is a loose & experimental translation of the permaculture flower to our context. The entries surrounding the petals of the flower reflect intersecting and overlapping comments/ideas that re-occurred throughout the series.

Some of the ideas/phrases are from individual readers/speakers, either through the lens of their presentation or through their bodies of work (Sandra Alcosser’s distinction of learning from vs. learning about animals, Simmons Buntin’s built & natural, Jonathan Skinner’s ecopoetics as house-making & mockingbird translation, Alison Deming’s & Lucinda Bliss’s discussion of intuition in collaboration, David Dunn’s bark beetles, Juliana Spahr’s ethics, Rosa Alcalá’s hanging laundry out to dry, Bonnie Jean Michalski’s scisensual & sensuatific reading of Lila Zemborain . . . —but the list could go on and on.) Some are also from our Ecopoetics class. The flower is indebted to everyone who was involved in "Oh Earth Wait for Me": Conversations about Art and Ecology.

The Food Water Shelter Poetry flower draws on the form of David Holmgren’s Permaculture Ethical & Design Principles flower.