Join us for the November 5 WAG meeting and celebration of Bacopa Literary Review 2017, with readings from prize-winners and by local contributors.
The intersection of arts and political activism are two fields defined by a shared focus of creating engagement that shifts boundaries, changes relationships and creates new paradigms . . . a space where valuable insight can be found through reflection and sharing.*
—Annette Blum
We live in an age of environmental concerns, political dissent, divisiveness, war, discrimination, and suffering made personal by instant internet access. No wonder poets, writers, and artists seek meaning and provide inspiration through their creative efforts. Certainly Bacopa’s 2017 contributors have rendered art that will bring readers inside life’s deepest truths.
Delving first into the deeper blues, whether reading of the unknown lost, the well-known, or those known only to our writers—fathers, mothers, siblings, children, friends—you’ll wonder if your heart’s response is more joy or sorrow or a mix of both.
Omit the sparrow and the thought / of bird remains . . . . So it is with loss, writes Sally Zakariya.
Exploring life’s unexpected bits of sweetness, we admire the wild bite of stars, hug a baby close against fears of an unknown future, heal addiction in our dreams, recall as children how we were good help even though we also peed in the family pool, remember vividly such characters as Stephanie Dickinson‘s Velma, whose voice was a laughing gull’s.
We still believe in love, that feeling every time you dazzle in the shine of someone new, being touched as if our scars are beautiful, even when love is like a blade, when we fear we might drown, when we pay a fine, when we ponder ways to lose a guy/girl. And we hope, with Tamara Adelman, that being alone with a lover in nature will provide some reassurances.
Our contributors, at liberty to sink caution, bemoan news that’s about what sells and lying to ourselves while others wake up to violent explosions, grieve coming-out children who hear echoes of “abomination,” challenge the message for young girls to be patient and pretty and sending boys to war who would rather be foraging for berries. Then a reprieve in “The Soloist” by Andrew Brown: What would divide us meets in her radiant throat.
These writers and poets are concerned about earth’s well-being, the only home you ever knew. In a world that’s . . . ending, just once more, as though any generation could avoid its end by consuming the next, mothers carry their children through waist-high water, streets full of soda cans and road signs, trees uprooted like a jumble of giant pick-up sticks. Still, some believe this is only a test, we are lulled by the blue rush of the surf and nail old shoes to trees for homeless birds to live in. If anyone felt desire, Clif Mason assures us, the wind would blow again.
The final section features work where buzzing of bumblebees is the soundtrack, their honey a sovereign remedy, a muffle-hush falling when mountains breathe mist, and, while driving in boiling traffic on a turnpike, Suddenly – sheep! We feel with each bloom its thin green legs, see hummingbirds careen in plein air, watch the powdery glitter of snow. We believe, with Jim Johnston, that the seeds of courage are planted in darkness, and from there they must grow . . . if we do not want to call the darkness home.
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* The Blog, 3/31/2016, “Art and Politics, The Power of Creativity and Activism Across the Globe,” Huffington Post.
Joan H Carter
Mary, you’ve captured the whole book here! An amazing accomplishment, both the post and the beautiful new Bacopa. Thank you.