“So called lifeless rocksâ€â€”Star Power–the Life in Stones: Who Knew?—a rocking show on new science and old poetry—We will rock you from Homer to Shakespeare to John Muir—to T.S. Eliot–to D.H. Lawrence—to Ruth Padel –and even yours truly, You Are My Sunshine: Haven’t We Always Said (Sung) So? Poets, You Rock!
Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say, ‘It is in me, and shall out.’ Stand there, baulked and dumb,stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw out ofthee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own. (Emerson, 1844)
DREAM POWER: PRELUDE TO A NATIONAL HOLIDAY OCCASIONED BY POETRY: WHAT IS NEEDED FOR LEADERSHIP OF A GREATER SOCIETY AND RESILIENT WORLD? Today we’ll hear the likes of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, and the poets that made his day and nights, Edgar Allen Poe, Bobby Burns, and those Thoreau inspired, Gandhi, Tolstoy, Havel, and King’s Lincolnesque Biblical cadences of “I have a dream.â€
I shall grow old but never lose life’s zest, Because the road’s last turn will be the best.—Henry Van Dyke
“The difference made me boldâ€â€”celebrating Emily Dickinson’s life of service, in honor of her 185th birthday; the meaning sharing one’s life can make to the spirit with which we each go forth boldly where no one has been before, with May Sarton, Ruth Stone, Tillie Olsen, Wendy Barker, Sandra Gilbert, Linda Gregg, Lucille Clifton, Deb Casey, and moi, and not only feisty ladies including Sphinx but the guys, Dante, Eliot, Gerard Stern, Stanley Kunitz, Donald Hall, W.S. Merwin, Charles Gibilterra, and Charles Tripi, with special tributes to Jack Gilbert and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
The music says it all:
Roberta Flack, Killing me softly with his song
Wizard of Oz, Courage (Lion’s Song)
Pinocchio—Jiminy Cricket “When You Wish Upon a Starâ€
Footloose, “Almost Paradiseâ€
Elvis, “It’s Now or Neverâ€
Sound of Music, Climb Every Mountain
CYRANO (opening his eyes, recognizing her, and smiling as he speaks: the actor must try to convey the multiple meanings of the word panache, a feather, the plume in his hat, display, swagger, attack, or just spirit.):
My panache.
