“It’s not that we use our talent to tell people what to do. It’s that we use our vulnerability to share the love in our hearts.” -Nikki Giovanni
On the eve of a full moon, WholeHeart launched its newest program series, Poetry As Portal, featuring Julie Cadwallader Staub, a poet from South Burlington, Vt.
More than 40 participants gathered on Zoom, March 25th, to participate in the event, part-poetry reading, part-conversation with the poet, and part-listening exercise for attendees to reflect upon their own lives.
Julie opened the 90-minute session with a reading of Turning from her most recent book of poetry, Wing Over Wing (2019, Paraclete Press).
The piece, read slowly and multiple times, painted a rich image of a flock of blackbirds inhabiting a tree in the fall season, and the way in which the tree was “changed” when the red wings and starlings took off together in choreographed flight.
Julie observed this beauty one day, jotted down a couple of stanzas, and returned to the words frequently with the intention, “what is this poem asking of me?”
“I’ve always been entranced by starling murmurations in the air,” she said, “it’s incredible, it’s out of this world, except that it’s real and in the world.”
The Minneapolis-born poet with five sisters said she focused on the image of the tree “chosen” and “changed” by the “dynamic dance” of the birds as providing an apt metaphor for her own life.
“For me, I think about my children,” Julie said, “that they came into my life, that they completely transformed me, and then they left. And what a beautiful thing that is. This poem has continued to teach me.”
“TURNING
By Julie Cadwallader Staub
There comes a time in every fall
before the leaves begin to turn
when blackbirds group and flock and gather
choosing a tree, a branch, together
to click and call and chorus and clamor
announcing the season has come for travel.
Then comes a time when all those birds
without a sound or backward glance
pour from every branch and limb
into the air, as if on a whim
but it’s a dynamic, choreographed mass
a swoop, a swerve, a mystery, a dance
and now the tree stands breathless, amazed
at how it was chosen, how it was changed.
”
In conversation with WholeHeart facilitator Natanya Vanderlaan, Julie shared that part of her own listening practice as well as following her muse, is reading the works of several “poet-companions” whom she admires, including Ross Gay, Mary Oliver, Camille Dungy, and Emily Dickinson. Delving into their words helps her attune to how other poets see the world.
“Emily Dickinson is the champion of taking the smallest things and seeing the biggest things within them, Julie said. “That’s part of what I look for in an experience. I just follow my heart as best I can, and sometimes that leads to a poem, and a lot of times not.”
During the evening, she shared new material not yet published about an interaction between three people at a checkout register at a local Walgreens pharmacy last August. As a disabled man struggled to pay for his items, Julie witnessed what she called a moment of deep and “blossoming tenderness” between the man and a customer.
“I got back in my car after checking out,” Julie said, “and did a voice recording of what I could remember of it. We have to treasure these moments; it gives us a little more faith in humanity.”
Julie offered her poem Soul from her book Face to Face (Cascadia Publishing House, 2010) as a “portal” for participants to listen into their own lives and discover some new insights (see poem and prompts below). Quiet reflection time was followed by small-group sharing and the chance to cross-pollinate reflections among new acquaintances.
When asked about how she cultivates sensitivity to seemingly mundane moments and transforms them into magical connection and humanity, Julie offered this concluding insight:
“I do think for me there is this balance between being out in the world, being part of the world in whatever way I can be, but also protecting my solitude and silence and the kind of curating that you are talking about,” she said. “I can’t be in the world all the time or I can get overwhelmed.”
“SOUL
By Julie Cadwallader Staub
One thing Darwin can’t explain
is the sound of the wind in the trees.
The trees gain no advantage
when their leaves rustle and moan.
But when we listen to the wind in the trees,
suddenly we are four-dimensional beings
slipping from our too tight skins
shedding time, priorities, need.
Oh to embrace what we love, who we are, who we are becoming
Oh to lose fear, to forget its name entirely–
the future is in the tug of our hearts, the wind in the trees:
always upward, outward, bracing and embracing
we rise to the sound.
”
3 Writing Prompts for SOUL:
What does this poem open in you?
What do you love listening to?
What future is tugging on your heart?
To order Julie’s books: please contact her through her website