News from the Muse

The Muse of Lament and Dissent V

Weeping Madonna Credit to 
Sara Spaulding Phillips

When your country strips you of rights and protections, 

it tells you that it no longer 

recognizes you. 

Other times, you realize that you no longer recognize your country…

[The] President…is remaking the country in his image: crude, harsh, gratuitously mean.

—M. Gessen

Opinion Piece in the Sunday NYTimes, Sept. 21, 2025

Introduction: Our Good News and Bad News September

This is the fifth and last News from the Muse featuring political poems from the Deep River Writing Circle. That’s because Deep River will reconvene in October after a four-month break for the summer. That’s because the Muse insists we focus on this coming year’s readings and writings. She is elated to return to her roots in the works of H.D., Robert Duncan, and Diane di Prima—her lineage of poetic ancestors. All of them lived in difficult times, which marked their writings. All of them wrote directly out of mythic consciousness.

In our own times we’ve suffered a good news/bad news September. The good news on Labor Day was demonstrations in every state protesting government “by the rich for the rich.” Their slogan: “Workers over Billionaires.” More good news is that in many communities activists have learned how to intervene when ICE agents kidnap immigrants at court houses and outside Home Depots without due process. The activists observe and document what happens.

The good news in Chicago, where my late parents lived for many years—a city they loved—was that thousands of people came out to protest the Berserker’s plans to invade with Federal troops. So far it hasn’t happened though there are frequent threats.

The bad news is that Federal Troops have invaded Memphis instead, despite the protests of the mayor and the City Council. The bad news, internationally, is that the Berserker has declared war on Venezuela, sending seven warships and a nuclear submarine into the Caribbean Sea. He has ordered military strikes against three speedboats. He has accused them of smuggling drugs, without any proof or due process. Seventeen people were murdered. The bad news is also that my dear friend who lives with her family in Caracas, has written me that people in her country are preparing for war, gathering provisions, alert for dangers from their own Berserk leadership and ours. They pray their power and WIFI keeps working. What is becoming of our world?

The bad news is the horrific assassination of a charismatic young Maga leader, Charlie Kirk, while speaking to students at a University in Utah. This dreadful event stunned the nation. Threatens to tear us apart, even more. It roused the Berserker to threaten all liberal organizations and all free speech. The bad news is that the beloved comedian Jimmy Kimmel was cancelled. The good news is Jimmy Kimmel is back! 

The best news is that Indivisible is working hard to organize “No Kings” demonstrations across the country for Saturday, October 18th. They want millions of protestors to come out and demonstrate. The good/bad news was when Dan and I tried to join their call, it was overwhelmed. The good news, we were able to move to You Tube to see their presentation. It was inspiring to listen to their leaders speak of their aim to build a mass resistance movement, to fight a president who breaks the law and trashes the constitution. It was exciting to plan to join them and assert our right to peaceful protest. We heard: “You are not alone”

“I did not come to you without fear. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s being able to move through it.”

“We are not here to be for justice. We are here to be it. We’re going to have over 5 million people in the streets this October. 

“Invite everyone you know to join us in the streets on Saturday October 18th!” 

Here's the link to No Kings: https://www.nokings.org/

Commentary on

“Poem In Which I Reflect on Presidents and Death”

This marvelous poem by Connie Hills is full of compelling imagery, dry humor, and deep insights. It reveals many aspects of a rich life as though the storyteller is looking at her past in a reflecting pool. In an arc about America’s politics our storyteller begins with the “B-movie actor” president from the ‘80s and arrives at “Cheeto man” who dominates our present tense. In scenes of landscape and people, the storyteller places herself near the Salish Sea, where she describes visiting her Norwegian friends, Carl Johan and his wife Mabel. The food and the flowers are luminous, as is the ritual scene “of the evening news, where Carl/ranted at the president on the tv screen—his merciless neglect of the most vulnerable among us.” In parenthesis, our storyteller names some of the issues of those days: “(Dear Reader, think AIDS, crack, psychosis, food stamps.)” She then makes an unexpected descent into her gut where the moral compass of the “wise owl” is “good medicine.” 

The storyteller reveals herself as a “beleaguered baby therapist” learning how to listen “to the cries of the canaries among us.” What a moving description of the practice of therapy. Thus, the country’s cultural complexes flow into her personal suffering and her difficult initiation as a healer. The poem tells a story of political awakening, as well as professional and spiritual development. The storyteller’s dear friend Carl’s death, the dangerous politics we are currently “seeped in like some mesothelioma” and her Buddhist practice of meditating on her own death, flow into each other. In the sinister shadow of Cheeto man, the storyteller turns off the news “like some trembling cowardly lion.”

This raises the difficult question about the choices we make in these times, dominated by hate and a “malignant tyrant.” Do we shout at the news like Carl did? Do we take to the streets?

Or do we sit in the woods like Buddha—emptying ourselves of the chaos and the rage—facing our own mortality? The storyteller strains to hear Carl’s voice and gets an answer straight from the natural world. We hear Carl’s spirit calling us to leave the world to “owlets,” who will grow into magical, dangerous night hunters—wise creatures who know how to survive in the dark—something we all need to learn in these chaotic and perilous times. 

Salish Sea Credit to Brandon Olafsson

POEM IN WHICH I REFLECT ON PRESIDENTS AND DEATH
Connie Hills

When the B-movie actor was president
I lived on a houseboat near the Salish Sea.
At the end of the long lake lived Carl Johan—
my grandmother’s friend from Norway,
land of the midnight sun.
His wife, Mabel set daffodils, lilacs,
cactus blossoms on their kitchen table
where we ate dollops of egg salad
nestled in lettuce cups

Photo by Connie Hills (Chair and Flowers)

followed by streusel and hot coffee
in front of the evening news where Carl
ranted at the president on the tv screen—
his merciless neglect of the most vulnerable among us.
(Dear Reader, think AIDS, crack, psychosis, food stamps.)
Mabel tried to shush her husband but I carried
the wise owl’s medicine in the smooth muscles of my gut
as I—a beleaguered baby therapist—sat in a chair
listening to the cries of the canaries among us.

Photo by Connie Hills (Bianca 2)

One gusty night, a lanky Texan they called
Poppy—our next President—appeared on tv
blowing warm thermals under the cool right wing.
Carl lowered his fjord-blue eyes.
I’m leaving this country to you, he ceded.
His tanks of resistance, empty
handing his long fight over to me.
Carl’s sense of his impending death
shook my DNA loose.
I was one third his age with a pink rosy future and
three great horned owl (democrat) presidents before me.

Photo by Connie Hills
(Young Woman with Great Horned Owl)

But since Carl’s purple light faded
and Cheeto man seeped in like some mesothelioma—
kicking down doors, spilling hate,
fracturing families, decimating freedom,
becoming a malignant tyrant who haunts us—

Photo by Connie Hills (Mural of Dragon)

I turn off the news like some trembling cowardly lion,
recite Buddhist meditations on my own death,
favor the cherry sweet songs of robins
outside my north window
and strain to hear Carl’s voice:
It’s okay to leave this world to the owlets.
First, feed them some white mice.

Photo by Connie Hills (Buddha in the Woods)

Bio, Connie Hills

Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.
—W.B. Yeats

I slid into Naomi Lowinsky’s Deep River poetry group over a decade ago. Naomi’s unbridled praise for each poem she hears has a settling effect—which allows us to step outside our comfort zone. Naomi is an influencer when it comes to political poetry. 

I wear a tattoo of apathy when it comes to politics. Growing up, my mother and brother argued politics late into the night while my father—a WW-II veteran—and I retreated to our bedrooms. We needed peace. The radical feminists of the 1980’s motto the personal is political rang true when I couldn’t attest to uphold the policies of the president of the United States on a Peace Corps application. In 1984, I met a family friend, Carl Johan—an outspoken ninety-year-old—and was comforted by the thought that socialism could lie in my DNA. But apathy runs deep. I didn’t vote in the presidential election of 2000- thought to be one if the closest presidential races in history. After that, things got so bad I vowed to vote in every election going forward, and even watched the nightly news in 2024—praying that Kamala would win. Then, the worst happened, and I haven’t watched the news since. This is my first political poem. But more importantly—it’s me finding a way out of apathy.

News from the Muse

The Muse of Lament and Dissent IV

Weeping Madonna
(with credit to Sara Spaulding Phillips)

Introduction

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck…

—Shelley

Haunted August, 2025

August was the month in which, in 1933, my mother, her sisters and parents, fled Germany by train on mother’s 13thbirthday. It was also the month, five years later, that my parents were married, in Holland, in 1938, just before Hitler invaded, just before my grandparents, aunts, and parents fled Europe by ship. Since Jews were not welcome in America, the family disembarked in Cuba and waited in Havana for 18 months, until by some unknown sleight of hand, my grandfather procured Haitian passports, which somehow allowed the family to enter America, in 1940. I’m still mystified by how all this happened. 

85 years later, my ancestors haunt me, in turmoil and agony, as America, their Promised Land, dives down into its darkest shadow, on its way to becoming the “colossal Wreck” Shelley describes in his famous sonnet—a shattered statue, found in the desert —of the once powerful King of Kings, Ozymandias, better known as Ramses II. \ “Empires rise and empires fall,” my ancestors chant. They insist I face the unbearable truth, that the country that saved our family, is going the way of the country they fled. They recognize the symptoms, as the Berserker turns into the Gaslighter-in-Chief, telling Big Lies, disappearing ethnic minorities, appropriating the “Jewish Problem” for his own ends. 

August began with the news that UCLA’s scientific research funds were to be frozen by the National Science Foundation to punish the University for Antisemitism! Say what? Chancellor Julio Frenk, whose Jewish family fled Nazi Germany just like mine did, was the recipient of a letter with this news! Is this some sort of cosmic joke? My ancestors are not amused. Neither was Governor Newsom who said, on August 1:

Freezing critical research funding for UCLA dollars that were going to study invasive diseases, cure cancer, and build new defense technologies makes our country less safe. It is a cruel manipulation to use Jewish students’ real concerns about Antisemitism on campus as an excuse to cut millions of dollars in grants that were being used to make all Americans safe and healthy.

The voices of my ancestors grew louder and more agitated, when, on August 11, the Berserker revealed his Gaslighter-in-Chief persona, declaring a “crime emergency” in Washington D. C., even though crime is down in that city, as well as in big cities across the country. He has deployed the National Guard and armed them with guns. They are not trained to work with civilian populations. They stand around in tourist locations available for selfies. But they are not available to neighborhoods who might genuinely need their help. We remember them standing around, not knowing what their role was, in Los Angeles in June. We saw the fear and anger in the eyes of Angelinos, especially Latinos. Now the Gaslighter is threatening other blue cities: Chicago, Oakland, New York, Baltimore. What do they have in common? Black mayors! Large, vibrant Black communities. “Woke” politics. The Gaslighter wants to put us all to sleep, into a state of denial about the huge black hole his ship of state is headed toward. Having rid the country of so many immigrants whose labor feeds, clothes and cares for us, is there going to be more racist ethnic cleansing in our great cities? What will happen to our economy? Our schools? Our businesses? Our friends and neighbors? Is he going to come after the Jews? Will the National Guard with its guns be deployed to liberal areas just before an election? Or will it be deployed to deny our rights to free speech and to gather in protest? The spirit of my mother remembers that Hitler came to her town when she was twelve. She and a group of her Jewish classmates agreed they would not make the Hitler salute, though they knew their refusal was dangerous. “In times like these” I hear her say, “courage is essential.”

A remarkable show of courage came to inspire me and my ancestors. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been stolen from his family and his life by the Berserker’s ICE agents, who accused him, falsely, of gang membership, was sent, despite protests from judges who noted the lack of evidence and due process, to a hell hole prison in El Salvador, where he was tortured. Then he was brought back to the U.S. with another false accusation—human smuggling. The Berserker says he will be deported to Uganda, a country with which Garcia has no ties. A judge has ruled that he cannot be deported until he’s had due process. Garcia spoke to a group of his supporters in Spanish, asking that they promise to pray, with love, not just for him but for everybody, and to continue to demand our freedom. His courage, and the generosity of his prayer, help calm me and my ancestors. If, given all he has suffered, he can reach into our hearts and souls and help us stay awake to the terrible danger he and we are in, perhaps we can face what haunts us.

Commentary on the poem “What We Build:” 

“Dawn saunters over the horizon” sets the meandering tone with which Sheila deShields opens her haunting narrative poem, suggesting ease at the beginning of a new day. But by the next line this mood is undermined as dawn reveals “her chipped teeth and gray pearls.” Where are we? Our scene–shifting storyteller says we are on a ridge— “a migration path for golden eagles/red–shouldered hawks and peregrine falcons.” Then suddenly we find ourselves aloft in “the evergreen holly oak next to the curb” where “two Anna’s hummingbirds nestle ready to fledge” at “the edge between what–is–city and the unincorporated.” A few stanzas later we stand in awe, gazing at “Mount Umunhum on the western horizon// ‘resting place for the hummingbird’/named by the Ohlone for the One Who Brought Fire.” 

It dawns on me that in these opening stanzas our storyteller has taken us deep into indigenous consciousness: We’ve looked to the east at the breaking dawn; we’ve looked up at the trees to see birds in their homes; we’ve looked north to the city, looked south to the suburbs; we’ve looked west to Mount Umunhum; we’ve looked down to the ground where the silver–gray fox trots, and down down to the Realm of the Ancestors, who tell the story of “the One Who Brought Fire.” I recognize this as the opening ritual—“Calling the Directions”—practiced by tribal peoples. We name where we are—on sacred ancestral ground—with gratitude for the new day and for the ancient gift of fire. 

Like her indigenous ancestors, the storyteller observes the movements of animals. Silver fox, with whatever she’s hiding in her mouth, must navigate “the new retaining wall,” and rabbit must navigate the deck, in the realm the poem’s title names: “What We Build.” Our storyteller watches all this drama from “inside/next to the glass patio door…sitting in her “new armchair-writing-spot.” 

She shifts from the animal realm to tell the human story of “three weeks of disruption” created by the building of a wall and haunted by the legacy of her late father. His gift to her of beautiful Hackett rock—a special flagstone with warm colors—has been transported from her family’s land in eastern Oklahoma to her California home in a major feat of planning and building “a 142-linear-foot-retaining wall.”

The poem meanders through epochs and landscapes, as the retaining wall with its gift of support to the “crumbling hill” and its promise of a vineyard “long-dreamed” by her husband meanders through rabbit’s disturbed habitat, and through the story teller’s memories of how her father’s “stone business” became hers. She imagines the three-foot-high wall as a sitting place for a garden party, and a place where “grandchildren can walk arms like windmills for balance.” What has been built is a hospitable wall, which brings her father’s presence from Oklahoma to California—a haunting that is a blessing, and a joy for his descendants.

As the tone of the first line of this poem is undermined by its second line, the reverent tone of the first section of the poem turns fearful and outraged in the second section. The ancestral and familial legacy of “What We Build,” what we hold holy, is rudely subverted by the unholy and cruel machinations of “the Destroyer”—whom “we humans have chosen” to lead us. How did this hell realm, in which immigrants and civil servants disappear, take over our land? By what sleight of hand has the inhospitable wall “the Destroyer” has built—"18 to 27 feet high patrolled bars southern neighbors out”—come to define us?

Our storyteller makes a powerful turn with the image of the “Colossal Wreck” and her prophesy that the Destroyer’s “transient creations/fall like stone pulverized into lone and level sands.” The italicized words are quoted from Shelley’s great sonnet, “Ozymandias,” which, as she explains in her note, “speaks to the fleeting nature of power and human achievement.” 

Having done away with our contemporary Pharoah, the storyteller returns to her beloved backyard, inhabited by her friend the rabbit, and advises: “run, rabbit, run.” In myth and symbol rabbit is associated with the moon, fertility, and shape-shifting Mercurious. Perhaps it takes a trickster to deal with a trickster. The storyteller invites rabbit to return, and ends with a prayer which values the natural world—a prayer we all can join:

May we value one another and the ground beneath our feet

may we be grateful for the air we share

may we help one another face

what devours.

 

“Mount Umunhum at Dawn”

what we build

Poem and Images by Sheila deShields

i.

Dawn saunters over the horizon

with her chipped teeth and gray pearls

on one spring day

in the suburbs

along a ridge     a migration path for golden eagles

red-shouldered hawks      and peregrine falcons

while in the nest of the evergreen holly oak     next to the curb

two Anna’s hummingbirds nestle     ready to fledge

“Ready to Fledge”

outskirts     mind you

the edge     between what-is-city and the unincorporated

miles from downtown

a site of no known historical impact

and yet     from the highest evergreen ash at the top of the berm

you can see Mount Umunhum on the western horizon

“resting place for the hummingbird”

named by the Ohlone     for the One Who Brought Fire

when suddenly

a silver-gray fox with rufous sides

tail bushy like a cat’s

hastens behind     and over     a new retaining wall

her dogtrot says

she’s hiding something     perhaps a hummingbird in her mouth

and then     on the deck     a young rabbit appears

and races across the compressed wood

streaks back

from who-knows-what

while i      inside

next to the glass patio door

sit in my new armchair-writing-spot

as still as my bonsai ficus

“Writing Spot”

for i relish this company

missed during three weeks of disruption –

construction using Hackett rock

stacked idle on twelve pallets for a decade

and now a 142-linear-foot retaining wall

that curves along the bottom of the berm

and though many of the hiding places for the white-tailed rabbit are gone

the stones       turned on their sides     fold into meandering grace

in a warm pattern of ochre, browns, and honey

topped by a long ledge of golden Dark Cameron capstone

from eastern oklahoma     delivered on a semi     what I would call a large surprise

the Hackett was a gift from my father

within the year he was gone

his stone business mine to manage      for a decade

at last     i can view his legacy

lifted and shaped by a master mason

“Dad’s Hat on the New Wall”

this wall     useful as a brace for a crumbling hill

a boundary for the vineyard-to-come     long dreamed by my husband

this border     at mid-point     has pillars which open onto winding steps

that lead up      up to the first tree we planted here

we are grateful

for our long-awaited wall      though only three feet high

where a garden party of friends and family may sit

where grandchildren can walk     arms like windmills for balance

where part of our Oklahoma land

sustains

and now Dawn gives way to Joy     with her weathered tan cowboy hat

a garden girl     she dances on stone

ii.

Rabbit     what did you see     what sent you back into hiding

it wasn’t the wall or me

perhaps your Scary equals the Destroyer we humans have chosen

run, rabbit, run

his wall 18 to 27 feet high     patrolled     bars southern neighbors out

he claims    Panama    Greenland    Canada

he promises     to mine in international waters

he holds workers and branches of government by the neck     “early retirement plans”

while American citizens are transported to another country’s prison –

is anyone safe?

while within our borders

he wields the highest court in his open palm

as he speaks of a third term with expanding power

“Colossal Wreck” Online Image*

and his words

changeable as a wall without mortar     transient creations

fall like stone     pulverized into lone and level sands

in our backyard     small rabbit

come back when you can

may we value one another and the ground beneath our feet

may we be grateful for the air we share

may we help one another

face what devours

“Run, Rabbit, Run”

*The online image of a “Colossal Wreck” is the visage of the powerful and prosperous ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (who ruled from 1279 to 1213 BCE) and is referenced in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias.” Shelley’s poem speaks to the fleeting nature of power and human achievement and includes the line “into lone and level sands.” The statue and its temple, forgotten, have fallen into the desert. 

Bio

When I chose Percy Bysshe Shelley as the subject of my undergraduate honor’s thesis in Oklahoma, and then later for my graduate master’s thesis in Wales, my studies culminated with access to Shelley’s originals in The Bodleian at Oxford. I was inspired by his lyricism but also by his essay on the Defence of Poetry. He conveyed why words matter, namely, why we must pursue Truth and Beauty and speak against tyranny. The early nineteenth century words of this master poet resonate within our own time.

In my current life, I balance managing the fourth-generation family ranch in Oklahoma with my work as a trustee in the Bay Area of California. Once a satellite software systems engineer, I am a founding member of Hedgebrook Sisters Writing Group, a recipient of Hedgebrook and Rotary International Fellowships, and a Deep River Poet. Every morning I wake to see our wall built with my father’s stone, and I feel grateful for my connections to the land, my ancestors, and the writers who nurture the planet and our humanity.

News from the Muse

The Muse of Lament and Dissent

Introduction

We heard it.
The racket in every corner of the world. As
the hunger for war rose up in those who would steal to be
    president
to be king or emperor, to own the trees, stones, and everything
else that moved around the earth, inside the earth
and above it. —Joy Harjo

                                            “When the World As We Knew It Ended”
                                                    Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light pp. 49-50

Sara Spaulding-Phillips

Since the “Orange Man” began his tricky and treacherous reign, the Muse of Lament and Dissent has been causing a ruckus in the poetry circle I lead--Deep River—a public program for the San Francisco Jung Institute. We read great poets and write under their influence. Thankfully, we spent our last three months of this year’s cycle with Joy Harjo, who has shown us, brilliantly, how to engage in dissent and lament, in political poems that speak out of Indigenous consciousness—out of love and concern for our Mother the Earth and all her creatures.

As poets, our mode of expression is verse. So I’ve invited the poets of Deep River to give voice to their Lament and Dissent through writing political poems. The Sister from Below has graciously agreed to publish a series of these poems.

Our first poet, Maureen Wolf, gives us “Breaking News.” This powerful poem loops and spins from the NYTimes to the colorful changes spring creates in the foothills, to the myth of Demeter and Persephone, to the horrors of a Hades in El Salvador, where hapless immigrant men are held with “Trumped up” charges and without due process. In lithe poetic leaps Wolf carries us off to Ukraine, to children’s paintings of rising waters, to her Irish grandmother as she prays for her sons at war in the war to end all wars, back to the “riot” of Nature in spring, to the song in the mouth of a Stag at Easter and the Raven’s raspy voice, which even the Orange Man can’t stop.

Breaking News

        by Maureen Wolf

“Guernica” Picasso - ARAS Online

News from the NY Times: not much has changed;

the world is still riding the roller coaster of the

Orange man’s policies

dipping, looping, spinning beyond the rule of law.

“Pink Peach Trees” Van Gogh -
ARAS Online

But then maybe everything has changed.

It is spring: pops of orange, blue and white

speckle the green grass of the foothills populated

with scrub oaks, grazing cattle and the confidence of Nature.

“Demeter and Kore” - ARAS Online

Spring won’t last long here: the gentle warmth of spring sun will change

quickly. The lupine, the paint brush, the shooting stars will shrivel

and the grass will brown and the air will become heavy and oppressive

under the summer sun. Remembering the scorched earth,

I wonder if Demeter has lost her bargain with Hades.

“Wailing Female Mourner”
Yeats - ARAS Online

Haven’t we all?
Aren’t we all waiting for the long winter days of the centuries to end,
Wondering when Persephone will push through

the hard pan clay of the human heart.

“Death in the Afternoon” Yeats - ARAS Online

This spring I can hear the echo of Abel’s scream as the cell door clangs behind

Neri Jose Alvarado, Andry Hernandez-Romero, Kilmar Agrego Garcia and

more in the Terroism Confinement Center in El Salvador. Trumped up stories,

no evidence, no trials. The Orange Man and Nayib Bukele casting lots.

Not long after, I learn of a Ukrainian woman nearing her hundredth birthday,

living alone in an apartment which is miraculously standing in Zaporizhzhia—

with no electricity, no heat, thimbles of food brought by her niece

when bombs aren’t falling--who stays three more days in hospital,

not for medical reasons, but to visit friends.

Hour Glass Drawing by child

I imagine a broken table in the hospital ward where the crones have tea

and grieve for the soldiers they once suckled at their breasts and talk

of the images their great grandchildren paint, images of a child standing

on the roof of home surrounded by rising water, of earth in an hourglass.

Scrawled in a child’s hand: No more planet.

“Weeping Madonna”
Sara Spaulding Phillips

I hear them singing Bozhe Velykyi and Mariye Maty Bozha prayers for protection,

prayers of supplication. I hear my Irish grandmother praying for thirty days

until her sons come home from the war after the war to end all wars.

Prayers to Mary. Prayers to Demeter. Prayers to Gaia.

“Stag and Moon” pixabay

The songs are carried in the mouth of a Stag to me on Easter morning. When I watch

the pinks and blues of the eastern sky gently pull back the curtain of night, I hear

the raven’s raspy voice greet the sun and see the crown headed sparrow search

for seeds and know the confidence of Nature.

“In Shoreham Garden” Palmer
ARAS Online

The Orange Man cannot pen an order stopping the riot of Spring from hearts on fire.

But as the Stag, and the raven, the sparrow and the crones have sung to me

to be consumed by fire means leaving so much of me behind. The path to the Other

winds through the path hidden in plain sight.

"My Nurse and I" - ARAS Online

Artist’s Statement

For several years I had eyed Naomi’s Deep River workshop in the CG Jung Institute of San Francisco program brochure. In 2019, I attended a conference on the Other at the Institute where Naomi was presenting. I spoke with her briefly about my interest in Deep River but also of my hesitation. I found understanding the works of most poets a mystery. Naomi said something to the effect of “Jump in.”

 

Nearly five years later, I jumped into Deep River. During this past year we wrote “under the influence” of three poets dislocated from the land of their birth. In these turbulent times in the States, I too have felt dislocated. Deep River became the place where I could explore and give voice to my exile. I am grateful to Naomi for providing a place and for her enthusiastic greeting of my fledging poems. I am grateful for the Deep River poets for their warm embrace of me and, especially, of my work. Over the years, I have collected several degrees. I am a psychotherapist and live with Ruby, a dislocated husky, in Fresno, California in the Central Valley, the doorway to the Sierra Nevada. 

—Maureen Wolf

June 14th No Kings Day of Defiance

If you are feeling a need to express your own lament and dissent about the state of our country, we urge you to join Indivisible’s demonstrations on June 14th—A Day of Defiance.

News from the Muse

The Muse of Lament and Dissent

invites you to a Poetry Reading on Zoom

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky 

will read from her 6th poetry collection

Your Face in the Fire

Blue Light at the Gallery

Friday, Jan. 10, 2025 6pm Pacific Time

7pm Mountain Time 8 pm Central Time 9 pm Eastern Time

                                                                        Though the weather’s becoming
                                        a banshee goddess     Though the “white only” nation
                                        is trolling the web     Though the emperor-elect
                                        is tweeting our downfall     My wish is     Remember
                                        The way of women     is our way     The moon swells
                                        the moon goes dark     pulling the tides     in and out
                                        The way of trees     is our way     So raise up
                                        your branches     sisters     for we are one     gathering
                                        Soon sap     will rise     apple trees flower

                                        We’ll weave us a canopy     all over this land
                                        It will be uprising time     once again
                                                                                    in America

                                                                            from “Wishing in the Woods with Hillary”
                                                                                      in Your Face in the Fire

Two Women Under the Tree in the Garden - Edvard Munch 

Request your Zoom link at bluelightpress@aol.com

For a signed copy of Your Face in the Fire

Send request, name and address to danielsafran@yahoo.com

($25.00 via PayPal--nlowsky@hotmail.com--includes shipping and handling)  

The Sister from Below is Delighted to Invite You

 Naomi Ruth Lowinsky and the Deep River Poets

invite you to a reading of

Soul-Making in the Valley of the Shadow

with 

Kent Butzine, Virginia Chen, Sheila deShields, Dossie Easton, Connie Hills, Raluca Ioanid, Daniela Kantorová, Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, Clare Marcus, and Anita Sánchez

Sat. Oct. 22, 2022 

3-5PM/PT

On Zoom

Cover Image: Kent Butzine

General Admission: $25

Esse in anima (Live in the soul)–C. G. Jung

How does one live in the soul during dangerous times? The ancient mode of mythopoesis is an imaginal practice which can confront shadow and give voice to soul. Since 2006 the Deep River Poetry Circle has provided a temenos for this process. After the trauma of the 2016 election, followed by the pandemic and the climate catastrophes that have followed, we in Deep River have engaged the Spirit of the Times as well as the Spirit of the Depths. It has become a sacred river we wash ourselves in, as the Hindus do in Ganga Ma—Mother Ganges—to cleanse our souls and heal our broken hearts. We gather at the river to follow the flow of our poems; they take us to surprising places, show us the unexpected—the Tree of Life around a bend in the river, its roots deep in the earth.

We gathered to create our anthology, Soul Making in the Valley of the Shadow, as a gift to the community.  We offer this reading to the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, in celebration of its passage from a beloved old home to a transformative new home, in memory of our Jungian ancestors, and as an expression of deep gratitude to the Extended Education Committee, who have given us support, visibility, and a way to gather for so many years, through so many changes.  

Please join us. The $25.00 admission fee will get you a copy of Soul Making. All proceeds will go to the Extended Education Program.

- No Continuing Education Credits are available for this event.

The Muse of the Psalms

Mainz Book of Hours 

Save me O God; 
For the waters are come in even unto the soul. 
I am sunk in deep mire, where there is no standing; 
I am come into deep waters, and the flood overwhelmeth me. 
(The Holy Scriptures, Jewish Publication Society, 1917)

In the Valley of the Shadow

 

you are the last living generation 

of the six that went before you 

passing that invisible medicine basket 

from one generation to the next… 

Anita Cadena Sánchez 

from her poem “Medicine Basket” 

in Soul Making in the Valley of the Shadow p. 6 

Medicine Basket

On June 12th of last year, the Sister from Below celebrated the publication of Soul Making in the Valley of the Shadow with a blog called: The Muse of Deep River. We of Deep River—the poetry circle I lead at the Jung Institute—had begun to feel the shadow of the pandemic lifting and the political scene brightening as the Biden administration vaccinated the willing and passed the American Rescue Plan which stimulated the economy, sent money to families with children and helped out state and local governments. That upbeat mood did not last long. New variants of Covid 19 attacked us, and the political will continue to support families with children, to protect voting rights, to protect our Mother Earth, seems to have ebbed away.

We’ve recently passed the one-year anniversary of the day Lady Liberty was roughed up so badly at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The question, now hanging in the air is: “Are we losing our democracy?” On the first anniversary of that infamous day, President Biden accused the former president of “holding a dagger to the throat of democracy.” The New York Times Editorial Board warned us that we face “an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends.” Republican lawmakers are passing bills that “would make it easier for lawmakers to reject the votes of their citizens if they don’t like the outcome.” (The New York Times Sunday Review Jan. 2nd, 2022) At this writing, the news is unbelievable: the Republican National Committee has decided that what happened on January 6th 2021 is “legitimate political discourse!” Excuse me? Have you watched the horrifying videos of that coup attempt on YouTube? Where are we? In Germany, 1933? In Mandelstam’s Soviet Union? In Milosz’ Poland? It’s not just the virus that hangs heavy in the air, but a terror that our elections are about to be undermined, and that the hopes for real change kindled by the victory of Biden and Harris, by the Black Lives Matter Movement, by the Green New Deal, by the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill, by the Build Back Better bill, are in deep trouble. “What is poetry which does not save/Nations or people?” asks Czeslaw Milosz in his famous poem “Dedication.” He answers this impossible question in another poem, “In Warsaw:” 

My pen is lighter 

Than a hummingbird’s feather. This burden 

Is too much for it to bear. 

And yet, poems have been written about this unbearable burden since the psalmist took up his lyre and sang: 

Why, O God, has Thou cast us off forever?
Why doth Thine anger smoke against the flock of Thy pasture?
(Psalm 74:1 The Holy Scriptures, Jewish Publication Society, 1917.) 

In troubled times many of us turn to the Psalms, as we did in Deep River when, after the 2016 election and the assaults of climate change and the pandemic, we found ourselves writing poems about a world turned upside down and inside out. Like the psalmist, Deep River poet Daniela Kantorová pleads for help from the divine in her poem “The Ship:” 

Dear God, please turn the ship
that floats in the rain above Foothill Blvd.
It lands in an apple orchard
The back merges with the land
(p. 65)

Soul Making in the Valley of the Shadow became the name we gave our process of reading and writing. Eventually, it became the name of the book of poems we gathered as a bulwark against the looming catastrophes of our times. The origin of the name is in these famous lines from Psalm 23: 

He restoreth my soul; 

He guideth me in straight paths for his name’s sake. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death 

I will fear no evil, 

For thou art with me 

Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 

(Psalm 23: 3-6 The Holy Scriptures, Jewish Publication Society, 1917) 

In his book, Keeping Faith with the Psalms, Daniel F. Polish refers to the profound idea that the “I” in this psalm is the soul on its life journey (p.171). In this way, making a poem is “making soul.” As I wrote in the Introduction to Soul Making: “The Muse is the voice of the soul, speaking in language that blends reason and mystery, She makes meaning of the incomprehensible.” (p. vii) 

Many of the poems in our collection are about this process. Kent Ward Butzine opens his poem “Pandémie Hypnagogique” with a description of soul loss: 

Everything is receding    darkening 

there is sadness    as the trees go 

the river    birds and birdsong    the sky 

all beloved 

Psalms are both poems and prayers. Many poems meander into prayer. They mix the stuff of everyday life with invocations to the divine. In Sheila de Shields’ poem “Flight of the Mind,” she prays for herself in old age: 

in my last days 

may I sit by the black basalt fountain  wild blue 

      irises 

and hooded orioles among my redwood trees 

let me recall the names of my children… 

In my poem “Birth Day Poem 2017” I pray: 

Carry me back   through the laboring dark 

into first light   first cry   first touch 

of mother’s hands 

Later in the poem I refer to political events as “those evil spirits” and as “the furies” who “rave/ and mutter,” who “spooked// my cradle” as my parents began to learn of “the trains the chimneys” in the Europe they had recently fled. What spooked me all over again was the anti-Semitic chants we heard from the right wing in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 12, 2017, when a "Unite the Right" rally turned deadly and the hate was palpable. 

There are those who argue that it’s not kosher to mix poetry with the political—they are different spheres—just as the Jews separate the everyday from the Sabbath, just as Jung made a distinction between the Spirit of the Depths and the Spirit of the Times. But in Deep River we found we needed to mix the political with the profound themes that are poetry’s usual domain for the sake of our very souls. Poetry was our way of walking through the Valley of the Shadow. Despite the title of our book, it hadn’t fully come to me how much our path is influenced by the Psalms. As Robert Alter points out in The Art of Biblical Poetry: 

The God of biblical faith…is not a God of the cosmos alone, but also a God of history. A good many psalms…are responses to the most urgent pressures of the historical moment.
(p. 121)

It is moving to realize that this poetic tradition—which speaks to the Divine from the overwhelm and panic we feel when in the grip of history’s violent fist—is as ancient as the Hebrew Bible. There is a lovely Jewish myth about King David, the Psalmist, which tells us that he wrote the psalms with “The Holy Breath” (Tree of Souls p. 279). In Judaism, Ruah, meaning breath or spirit, is one of the levels of the soul. Similarly, the word inspiration, which comes from the Latin word inspirare — meaning to breathe—came to mean divine guidance in Middle English. Thus our very language speaks to the spiritual nature of making poetry. 

David and his Lyre

The Sister from Below is Delighted to Announce the Publication of “Songs from the Deep River: Selected Poems from Soul Making in the Valley of the Shadow” in the Jung Journal 

The sibyl breathes deeply 

The vapors from the fire below 

She is no longer herself 

She from a respectable family 

She who is reliably self–possessed 

Is unhinged by the smell of death 

      Virginia Lee Chen from “Sibyl” p. 27 

Deep River is honored that a selection of poems from Soul Making has been published in the latest issue of The Jung Journal (Volume 15, Number 4). Jeffrey Moulton Benevedes, the editor of The Jung Journal, doesn’t seem to worry about mixing the Spirit of the Times with the Spirit of the Depths. He writes eloquently of our crazed times in his introductory essay to this issue: “To the Reader:” 

These days the dizzying pace and sheer ferocity of changes in our world leave us little to no time to recover from one catastrophe before the next hits. A pernicious pandemic and intensifying climate change events surge like tsunamis over the globe, leaving us roiling in existential crisis and economic, political and social instability… 

How much can we take? 

What do we do? Where do we go to find refuge, solace, healing, a way forward? 

Doesn’t this sound like the psalmist’s cry? “My soul is sore afflicted;/And Thou, O Lord, how long?” (Psalm 6:4) Or like Dossie Easton’s lament in her poem “With my Pink Pussy Hat On”? 

How will we open our hearts 

                                      to each other 

in a country where half the voters are in love 

with their hating  

of people like me: like for instance: 

            women they can’t own, or men who can  

love other men, 

                       or those who belong to other cultures 

                               part of Humanity’s far flung treasure… (p. 17) 

Benevedes continues: 

Depth psychologists, spiritual leaders and healers of all kinds strive to help heal the World Soul, one psyche at a time. 

And artists make art. Out of the spirit of the depths, they engage with the spirit of the times in a way that anchors us, expressing our suffering and our light. (p. 1) 

I agree with Benevedes that it is the very mingling of the Spirit of the Depths with the Spirit of the Times which helps us locate ourselves and cast light on our emotions. It describes a number of poems in the Soul Making collection, among them Raluca Ioanid’s “Bucharest Sestina” about her “vanished grandparents”: 

In our pact never to forget 

the momentum of loss 

is greater. Have our night–vanishing grandparents 

opened the door for dreams 

and days and meals and adventures sweetened by our 

kinship to this family of ghosts? (p. 47) 

or Clare Cooper Marcus’ poem “Ann Frank’s Tree” 

In spring, chestnut flowers 

like ghostly candelabra 

lit her days, as they did mine 

not much distance west, across 

the channel… 

For her, the tree beyond her grasp 

stood achingly alive, dear daily reminder 

of leaf–birth,  

                   leaf fall… (p. 52) 

Flowering Chestnut tree

or Connie Hills’ poem “Time to Come” 

If you visit Van Gogh’s grave 

go after the gust of summer… 

The quaintness of the place 

so placid you can imagine 

standing at Vincent’s burial 

that July midi 

surrounded by lemon sunflowers 

battered dahlias 

Hallelujahs oozing 

from their thousands of 

amber throats… 

                   (pp. 41-2) 

Benevedes goes on to write of Deep River and quotes the beautiful telling of our story by Poetry Editor Frances Hatfield: 

For the past fifteen years, here at the San Francisco C.G. Jung Institute, something extraordinary has been quietly unfolding. Poetry editor Frances Hatfield provides the origin story of the poems you will read: “At the instigation of Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’s “Sister from Below,” poets, nascent poets, and poetry lovers have gathered in the library of the Gough Street building…each month, immersed in the ghosts and spirits and deep soul of that holy place, and cooking together in the power of mythopoesis to express grief, beauty and love. Out of that profound communitas, a group of poets emerged who call themselves, aptly, the ‘Deep River Poets.’ This issue’s poetry section features a selection from a new book they have published as an offering to the institute and to the Extended Education program under which they have met. One can sense how these nine poets nourished each other as their voices of witness, grief, praise, awe and exuberance emerged in the presence of great poets, considered in the light of our extraordinary times. (p.3) 

We are deeply grateful to Jeffrey Moulton Benevedes and Frances Hatfield for their generous response to Soul Making and to Managing Editor LeeAnn Pickrell for the beautiful layout of the poems. 

 Slave Ship: Wood Engraving by Smyth

“A Light So Terrible” 

In the Psalms, as in many of the poems we turn to in terrible times, we seek access to a higher power, a deeper wisdom, a more expansive way of understanding, when the world as we know it cracks open, spilling out our firm beliefs and our grasp of what we think of as truth. When things we never thought could happen in America, or things we ignore or deny, are flung at us in a light as terrible as nightmare, what is our responsibility as poets? When we learn that the former president had draft executive orders drawn up involving the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense—in a plot to seize voting machines after the 2020 election—what can we do or say? (My father, a refugee from the Nazis and a passionate believer in American democracy, is turning in his grave.) What scares me more than anything is how little outrage and furor I hear in the collective. Psalm 94: 3-6 comes to mind: 

Lord, how long shall the wicked, 

How long shall the wicked exult? 

They gush out, they speak arrogancy; 

All the workers of iniquity bear themselves loftily. 

They crush Thy people, O Lord, 

And afflict Thy heritage. 

They slay the widow and the stranger, 

And murder the fatherless… 

We who have put our faith in the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, feel fatherless. We who have fought for Women’s Liberation, Racial Justice, Equality and the well-being of our Mother Earth find ourselves still in the thrall of the Patriarchy—bereft of Mother Power. Orphaned. Terribly afraid. 

Amanda Gorman at Inauguration

But there is help and wisdom among the young and among poets. Amanda Gorman, who gave us her beautiful Inaugural Poem, “The Hill We Climb,” continues to inspire us. In an opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday Review, (January 20, 2022)—“If You’re Alive, You’re Afraid”—she reframes the meaning of fear. She had almost decided against being the Inaugural poet because of her fear—amplified by friends and family— that she might lose her life on that very visible platform. She suffered with insomnia and nightmares as she wrestled with her decision. “Was this poem worth it?” She writes: 

And then it struck me: Maybe being brave enough doesn’t mean lessening my fear but listening to it. I closed my eyes in bed and let myself utter all the leviathans that scared me, both monstrous and miniscule. What stood out most of all was the worry that I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what this poem might have achieved. There was only one way to find out. 

If Gorman was praying to a higher power in her dark night of the soul, it strikes me she includes the power to strike fear as an aspect of the deity. This resonates with the Jewish view of the Divine who is not only about goodness and kindness, but about wrath and trouble. Her breakthrough came when she could listen to what her fear taught her. 

In the year since the Inauguration, Gorman has written a new book of poems, Call Us What We Carry. I want to quote from sections of the opening poem in that collection—“Ship’s Manifest”—in which she speaks to the role of the poet in our awful times. Like the Psalmist who urges his people to “Depart from evil and do good” (Psalm 34:15), Gorman clearly sees the poet’s function as ethical as well as spiritual. It is worth noting that a ship’s manifest lists the cargo, passengers and crew of a ship. It is an accounting of what the ship carries. Ship’s manifests for slave ships are one of the few places historians of slavery can find the names and some details about the people who were stolen from Africa and brought to the New World against their will. The poem never mentions the Middle Passage, but its dark waters, its ghosts and demons flow deep below the surface. Notice she holds poets accountable, as though our work requires the tools of an accountant making lists. In fact, much of her poem is a list. Her passion is contagious. Her word play is brilliant—for example, “An ark articulated?” or “Our greatest test will be/Our testimony.” Her use of the word “testimony”—which in Black Churches means telling how the Divine has interceded in our lives—brings us deep into the realm of the psalms, as does the line “A light so terrible” which makes clear how difficult, soul wrenching and essential is the work of the poet. 

Here is a section of Gorman’s poem: 

The poet’s diagnosis is that what we have lived 

Has already warped itself into a fever dream, 

The contours of its shape stripped from the murky mind. 

To be accountable we must render an account: 

Not what was said, but what was meant. 

Not the fact, but what was felt. 

What was known, even while unnamed. 

Our greatest test will be 

Our testimony. 

This book is a message in a bottle. 

This book is a letter. 

This book does not let up. 

This book is awake. 

This book is a wake. 

For what is a record but a reckoning? 

The capsule captured? 

A repository. 

An ark articulated? 

& the poet, the preserver 

Of ghosts & gains, 

Our demons & dreams, 

Our haunts & hopes. 

Here’s to the preservation 

Of a light so terrible. 

                 from Call Us What We Carry, “Ship’s Manifest.”

Miniature from Hafiz-i Abru’s Majma al-tawarikh