A few days after we announced our July Mosaics project, someone left us a tiny confession in the comment box. “When this idea was first posted, wrote Rosanne Osborne, “I admit I was dubious, but it’s been amazing to me how generative the experience has been.”
Generative. That got me thinking.
When artist Jim Bowen discovered the craft of mosaics for the first time, he quickly realized he had found something powerful. “I liked the messiness of it. Here you are, breaking up china and making something beautiful again, ” he says. “It’s like a broken person who becomes healed.”
At times, we might be prone to sit upon life’s wreckage, wallowing in the the detritus of our shared experiences. Bowen sees Art as our best employment opportunity. Our job is to sift through the rubble and debris and create repurposed beauty.
Bowen takes this message to elementary school classrooms. He begins each lesson in mosaics by first speaking to them about community. He says,
When all of the individuals come together as a whole to share their differences, a community is formed. It’s the same with mosaics.
After he got going, another colleague inspired him to continue building on the idea. Laurel True had traveled to Haiti in response to 2010’s devastating earthquake. While there, he invited victims to pick up the shattered pieces of their belongings and create mosaics.
Now Bowen plans to visit Zimbabwe to provide a similar experience, empowering locals to become co-artisans in the craft of healing.
Yes, Rosanne. Art is generative. We form a richer, more reflective community as we piece together our many colors with our fellow co-artisans.
Let’s Build July Mosaics!
All month long we’re arranging poems at Tweetspeak. We call it July Mosaics. We write found poems and share them on Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs, though we always link back to here. Last week we chose words from the poem “BiLingual” by L.L. Barkat.
Glynn Young was one of our first responders. He wrote,
Translation
It is mutual, of course.
I come walking
with my light news
(the San Antonio Light?)
except you see a mist
I mean to be a fog, like
all news is, all
the fog that’s print to fit.
I offer spirit but
you want flesh.
Some things, like wind,
and ghosts, are
beyond translation.
Laurie heard something in the “news”, too. She wrote,
Sorting Shards
I like to think
of you
capable of feeling
the wind again,
walking,
your hand translated
into flesh,
that kind light
found you,
brought you back,
of mist and spirit –
a bilingual whiteness
laying over the
ghost-like news.
And remember Rosanne Osborne‘s “generative” comment? Here’s one way she chose to put the pieces together.
Regeneration
Mist of our likeness,
ghost of our thoughts,
translate us into wind
that feels the flesh
the new spirit brings.
How Do I Build July Mosaics?
If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to Every Day Poems.
1. On Mondays, the Every Day Poem in your inbox becomes a pile of raw material. Sort through the words and find a few gems. Rearrange as many as you want into a new found poem. You’re free to mix in your own words.
2. Tweet your poems to us. Add a #tsmosaics hashtag so we can find it and maybe share it with the world.
3. Or leave your found poem here in the comment box.
We’ll read your tweets and share some of your weekly play each week. At the end of the month, we’ll choose a winning poem and ask the playful poet to record his or her poem to be featured in one of our upcoming Weekly Top 10 Poetic Picks.
Here’s today’s Every Day Poem. Now go generate some community.
Photo by Gogoloopie. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Matthew Kreider.
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $5.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’re exploring the theme The Cento.
- Casting a Line for Surrealist Poetry - November 12, 2012
- The History of the World in Beer - October 22, 2012
- Journey into Poetry: Matthew Kreider - July 23, 2012
Laurie Flanigan says
Thank you for sharing my poem here.I’m honored.
Matthew Kreider says
We’re honored to have you with us, Laurie! 🙂
Maureen Doallas says
Todd Davis is a wonderful poet.
————————–
The Awful Avoiding
This is about more
than the motion
of the hand itself,
the way it comes
winging at everything,
gathering the storm
in our direction. One
of us changes
the other. The way
the light tips and shifts
would have no meaning
without the awful avoiding.
path of treasure says
Here’s my mosaic:
Realization
Five hundred hands wave, and
winter clouds part. We fling
thoughts, left and right; they hit
the windshield. We witness hundreds
of meaningless deaths, and we wonder
at the power of a simple shift of a wing—
we realize we can’t avoid the tip of a beak,
and we can’t account for the flock.
***
Thanks for the fun of playing along. 🙂 I’ve also posted the poem here:
http://waysidewordgarden.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/realization/
donna says
“we realize we can’t avoid the tip of a beak,
and we can’t account for the flock” love this! a word painting of groundlessness.
path of treasure says
Thank you, Donna!
Glynn says
I’ve posted mine at http://faithfictionfriends.blogspot.com/2012/07/i-am-junco.html
I am a junco
I am a junco,
with my gray cowl
overlaying my white
surplice.
I am a junco:
I mate in pairs but
I forage in flocks,
in safety.
I am a junco,
but my flock is
not democracy
but theocracy.
We are priests,
our gray cowls
overlaying our white
surplices.
Donna says
My growing July cento is on my blog including shards from every july poem up to Democracy…. and what is so surprising to me is that I never know where the cento is going until I get there – I never know how it will feel… happy? sad? silly? dark? bright? It’s like a breeze – it can turn in the stroke of a key.
the dance: http://unmixingcolors.typepad.com/along_the_way/2012/07/the-dance.html
donna says
tossing and turning
a single shadow twirling in the night
i translated you back
into some kind of flesh
where love and need are one
staring guiltily at the
the safe-kept memory
of a lovely thing
so tender it
could
make you cry
mournfully waking
to the awful
realization
without
each other
the ball
would
have
no
meaning
Rosanne Osborne says
Unknowing
Wings dip, beaks peck
the crumbs of other birds
dropped to the grass
below sunflower cylinders.
The ragtag flock
of bottom feeders
storm the ground
gathering beak-flings,
off-wing decisions
of claw-clinging avians
swinging in the wind-shielded
plastic motion of an urban yard.
What do they realize of the manna
that appears and disappears
in their caste-unconscious lives?
The pecking order they take
for granted, the avifauna
that binds them to terra firma
their wings could escape,
gathers them in time and space
within the sallow light
of human thought and meaning.
Rosanne Osborne says
Bond
Even five hundred juncos
cannot change our certain end,
give meaning to soaring death.
Our feathers are numbered
and we tip our wings
to the wind beyond all winds.
We gather ourselves
before the winter storm,
beaks open to receive wafers
of community, the awful
realization that in molting,
we share blood feathers.
Divya says
Its 8 o clock
and i am still on
wet fragrant road
my cab rushes
splashing water all over
chopping off the shadows
of tall buildings
capable of being ghosts from hell
raindrops lash out on window panes
but the restless wipers move back and forth
take a breath….
and then again
back and forth
back and forth
haaa..
they disturb ,moan with pleasure
trying to wash off all drops
yet some mist walks over the naked window
and to my hand
this uneven lump of water sits over me
watching me like a child
the light too beams through (refracts through it)
it ensconces over my flesh
with shiny infant eyes
but suddenly with a roar
wind gushes forth
dropping the news for ‘it’ to leave
so it crawls over the hump of air
ride up to blue dessert
where a cloud waits to conceive
it.
Divya says
My cento comes from last week’s Bilingual
Rosanne Osborne says
Serendipity
I peer through the windshield
in the sallow light of evening.
Yards are immaculate, the street
is as clean as my mother’s kitchen
floor. A small mouse hurries
to cross my path, incongruous
in the upscale neighborhood,
stretching its sense of democracy.
He’s claimed his right to upward
mobility among the correct
flower beds, wicker rockers
on sprawling porches, tasteful
door decorations. Where he’s headed
I can only wonder, but his claim
to domestic cooperation causes
me to break and give him time
to negotiate zoned living. Death
on a public street would be an awful
end to his decision, his small motion.
Monica Sharman says
When we in the gathering parted
on account of more
than five hundred thoughts winging
themselves to death…
(How’s that for my contribution this week? Both late AND unfinished!)
Rosanne Osborne says
Interconnection
Flocks of juncos in flight
like synchronized swimmers
account for space, wing tips
and beaks in perfect symmetry.
Connected but not connected,
invisible threads bring meaning
to motion, avoidance without thought.
Cooperation beyond decision,
decision beyond wonder,
the awful reality that certainty
hangs on meaning that heads
cannot comprehend. When
Robert Penn Warren’s Jack Burden
bit into a persimmon, on a hot day
in Louisiana, a Tibetan tinker’s teeth
were set on edge a world away.
Donna says
On writing my July Cento Collection “…it reminds me of the process of my first Fused Glass experience. I dug through boxes filled with glass pieces, sorted by color and varied in shapes and shades. Some pieces I used ‘as is’ and others had to be completely transformed. Others were simply tweaked a bit to help them slide into place, and all of the shards were held in place by…..”
http://unmixingcolors.typepad.com/along_the_way/
“a lovely thing”
Marie Conklin says
I love that I see half of you, because I am the other half. I see the missing part, and you are the fulfillment of my beauty, my lonliness, my unfinishidness. I love that I can say to myself, in the darkness, of my pain, “I love and totally accept you as you are”. Only my creator can say that, and if I can echo his thoughts on my behalf, then I can get full, and complete the picture on the otherr side, then I have done a good thing, by His grace. I look like you. I can love my neighbor as myself, because I see me in you, and He has taught me to love myself, right where I am. Maybe we will meet again. Oh, I hope so!
Donna says
Namaste.
Love this…. 🙂