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***************************************EXCERPTS: ENJOY!
Ruffled Feathers
Perched upon an attitude
of “I know-and-you-don’t,”
my lark will hear her song as best—
until, one day, she won’t.
Then sorry tears give way to bits
of plumage on the ground,
and mute even my mockingbird;
my peacock makes no sound.
And now a certain stillness
that rustles in the leaves
can thread a silken tendril
from heart to heart with ease
And bring translucent skies of blue
which may not long remain—
though many more reminding tears
may light the way again.
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Guru on Ice
The slippery mirror of a frozen lake
reflects a jet pursuing sunset,
trailing signatures and faces,
flying me into a blaze
Of white. What now—Whose wings?—
A gull comes eyeing, tunes to my seeking,
tips a wing in greeting:
That is the teaching.
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From Chapter 3. THIS TASTE
After a week on the mountain, sitting on a bench by the lake. I watch sailboats—everything—easily gliding by. Ducklings skirting the shore. Lilac fronds curving along the wall. Stone swans filled with red dahlias. The world in bloom. Like music—just let it come in.
The least minute when I’m quiet, looking out at the water, this taste again: I’m with my breathing, contained, at rest.
Here, a looking, a listening. My mind, a sensitive space. Interested in all my surroundings, including what’s nearest: my body. From the top of my head to my seat on the chair to the soles of my feet—and subtle events—pulse, heartbeat. It’s not what I see but what sees me.
A sensation wells up in my abdomen, heralding the first line of a poem. If something real comes, it orients me each time I read it.
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How to Quiet the Mind
Go wide,
says the ocean
says the sky
Alive,
say the trees
say the tides
Align,
say the stars
say the wise
And fly,
says the light
winging by.
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Fran Shaw’s new book Writing My Yoga: Poems for Presence
(ISBN 0-9639100-2-7), a memoir in poems and journal entries of eight summers on retreat in Chandolin, Switzerland, also explores writing as a way to wake up. An excellent companion to take on retreat. "You can't stop reading," but soon you'll be writing your own yoga poems.
Also available at barnesandnoble.com
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FREE! JOIN US... AT A "WRITING YOUR YOGA" WORKSHOP
Saturday, April 9, 2005 at Barnes & Noble,
1076 Post Road East, WESTPORT, CT
And thank you, all workshop participants who attended
"Writing Your Yoga: Poems for Presence," 90-minute workshop with Fran Shaw, International Conference on Arts & Humanities, Honolulu, HI, January 14, 2005
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Winner of two national awards for poetry, Fran Shaw, Ph.D. is the author of "50 Ways to Help You Write." A Danforth Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, she is Associate Professor of English teaching writing at the University of Connecticut at Stamford. She has guided writing workshops across the country for the past twenty years.
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NOMINATED FOR A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
AND THE PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY
"...A gull comes eyeing, tunes to my seeking,
tips a wing in greeting:
That is the teaching."
(From "Guru on Ice," award winner, Poetic Journeys 2005)
"With these poems, Fran Shaw opens a new era of poetry--an era of genuine hope... [She] is here able again and again to fulfill William Blake's prophecy, 'If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite...' I have kept various watchwords before me in poetry writing groups, but Shaw has brought me, shiningly realized, what I was groping toward. I am profoundly grateful for these poems. For a while after I finished reading them, I saw with those eyes. When I looked up, outside my window the lilac bush stirring in the wind was the teaching."
--Martha Heyneman, author of "The Breathing Cathedral"
"Few writers can capture the essence of a moment as spot-on as Shaw. In Writing My Yoga, her spiritual journey leads to a realization that the best way to live and write it to be reborn--not once a lifetime, but once a second."
--Allia Zobel-Nolan, Senior Editor, Reader's Digest Books
"The astonishing passion of Fran Shaw's collection leaves an indelible trace of a world behind the mundane, a world empty of all claims except to taste it deeply."
--David Appelbaum, Editor of Parabola
"As poet and teacher of the writing craft, Fran Shaw shares with us the intimate process that leads to self-knowledge and self-expression: the distillation of moments of being into a poem as delicately as dew forming on a single leaf."
--Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt, Ph.D., author of "Rene Daumal: The Life and Work of A Mystic Guide"
For information, email: indicationspress@aol.com
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