2020 Vision (Danny Schmidt)

It's April 30, the last day of National Poetry Month, and I've enjoyed discovering and sharing so many new poems, many of which were written recently about the coronavirus and its short-term as well as far-reaching effects, both positive and negative.

I am actually quite proud of my discipline in putting together a blog post every day but, at this point, I will be scaling back to three times a week:  Mindful Monday, Wholehearted Wednesday, Feel Good Friday.  CheeZy, right?  I'm okay with that...  :-)

Reminder.  Tonight!  Shelter in Poems: A Virtual Reading, Thursday, April 30, 7:30 p.m. EDT:  The evening will include poems presented by:  Elizabeth Alexander, Sam Beam, Richard Blanco, Julia Bullock, Marilyn Chin, Rita Dove, Patrick Gaspard, Amanda Gorman, Joy Harjo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Edward Hirsch, Stephin Merritt, Maulik Pancholy, Alison Pill, Dan Rather, Alberto Ríos, Mustafa Shakir, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lorna Simpson, Amber Tamblyn. and other special guests.  The event will raise funds to support our free publications and programs, including our K-12 education program. As National Poetry Month comes to a close, many of us will have weathered a month of solitude in an act of solidarity to protect each other. During these weeks, poetry has brought us all closer together, even as we remain physically apart.


About today's song, from Danny Schmidt:

2020 has been a most extraordinary and challenging year. It’s been surreal to live through, in real time, what will almost certainly be the most significant defining event of our generation . . . without the hindsight which always makes historic outcomes appear inevitable. Because while hindsight might, indeed, be 20/20 . . . the year 2020 in real time has felt incredibly blurry, distorted, twisted, and astigmatic.

But even amidst the mayhem, fear, and anxiety of the Great Uncertainty, there’s been something beautiful in witnessing eight billion people regaining their balance and reconstructing their lives all at the same time, and all on the fly. And somehow, sharing the ordeal together has created a remarkable display of resilience, creativity of human spirit, relentlessness of human connection, and given rise to an emergent new culture, self-organized from out of the chaos.

And then there's the loss. The loss of our sense of invincibility, the loss of work, of purpose, of rhythm, of independence. And of course, the actual loss of life. With a little luck and some indefinite wait, we will hopefully regain most of what we've lost when this is all over . . . as most of those things were loaned away willingly in service to protecting the one thing that sadly can never be recovered.

“2020 Vision” is a song of my reflections and impressions on what we’ve lost, what we’ve learned, and what we’ve become collectively, at this point in time, somewhere in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.



SONG:  2020 Vision by Danny Schmidt (lyrics included in the link)

BOOK:  Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus: The Anthology by Poets of The World, G.A. Cuddy (Editor), Charlotte Knauth (Illustrator)

POEM: National Poetry Month by Elaine Equi

When a poem

speaks by itself,
it has a spark

and can be considered

part of a divine
conversation.

Sometimes the poem weaves
like a basket around
two loaves of yellow bread.

"Break off a piece
of this April with its
raisin nipples," it says.

"And chew them slowly

under your pillow.
You belong in bed with me."

On the other hand,

when a poem speaks
in the voice of a celebrity

it is called television

or a movie.
"There is nothing to see,"

says Robert De Niro,

though his poem bleeds
all along the edges

like a puddle
crudely outlined
with yellow tape

at the crime scene
of spring.
"It is an old poem," he adds.

"And besides,
I was very young
when I made it."

QUOTE:  "A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness." ~ Robert Frost