A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Paris, Le Canal Saint-Martin Dark and silver clouds rule the sky over the dark winter city. The black bare trees reach for nothing and the murky water under the rusty iron bridge has no inhabitants. The streets have no wanderers and through the dark windows letting in the so-little sun into the dark rooms like […]
By Erin Langner, WITS Program Associate & Sonder Editor When Linda Pastan and I approached a classroom of The Center School, where she was about to speak, we were three minutes early. A teacher inside, in the gentlest, quietest whisper, asked if we wouldn’t mind waiting outside, for just two of those minutes. The students inside […]
By Emily Bedard, WITS Writer-in-Residence On a recent day when the trees flashed a hundred hues against a cloudy Seattle sky, I entered a fourth grade WITS class, planning to play with color. We began by reading Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman and Pamela Zagarenski, with its saturated, leaping language and its intricate, dreamlike […]
On November 10, Linda Pastan brought her quiet but powerful literary presence to McCaw Hall for SAL’s 2015/16 Poetry Series. SAL Associate Director Rebecca Hoogs introduced her and moderated their conversation that night. It is an honor and delight to introduce Linda Pastan, who is here to celebrate and read from poetry across her long career, including […]
The Sea I kept deep-sea secrets in a little black bag. I carried boats through the toughest storms. I asked the fish where the shark lived. I was rough but calm. I was tired. I knew when the storm would come. I tried to keep the boats away with waterspouts. I tried to keep the […]
The Hymnal I am the hymnal and I have heard prayers. You call them prayers, I call them hopes Of a mother who drank away her youth. I call them music of a man with smoke in his lungs And magic in his hands I catch the tears of the desperate, I hear the skepticism […]
I Used To I used to worry about my life: what will make me finally draw that smile, what makes me chase the dreams. But as soon as I hit high school, things weren’t as they seem. I sit and I kick rocks, try to do what my bible tells me to do, but I […]
Light My mind is like a light bulb getting switched on and off. When I get turned on my mind explodes with ideas, all filling my brain with different things to do, write, play. It is a magical thing, a feeling that can’t be compared with any other, my thoughts lighting up as if there […]
Silent The buzz of cyan, teal, turquoise against my eyelids so different, yet so alike Whoosh, I’m gone A shadow of a man needing redevelopment The A-frame taking a spot in my shell of a self then falling away as a spirit the walls close, inward but I am not claustrophobic I am one with […]
On September 29 at McCaw Hall, SAL Associate Director Rebecca Hoogs introduced and moderated a conversation between Mary Syzbist and Robert Wrigley to open SAL’s 2015/16 Poetry Series. It is an honor to shine tonight’s spotlight on two of the best poets writing today: Mary Szybist and Robert Wrigley. Portland poet Mary Szybist is the […]