Spring Speakers Series 2023: Sighs into Songs begins Tuesday, Feb 7
Our first speaker event of 2023 with Colleen Anderson is coming up this Tuesday, February 7, online via Zoom at 7:00pm EST. Colleen’s talk, Sighs and Songs, Sadness and Silliness, is inspired by our series theme this year, Sighs into Songs.
In his poem The Renewal, published in The New Yorker in 1958, Theodore Roethke writes the following:
The centaur and the sibyl romp and sing
Within the reach of my imagining:
Such affirmations are perpetual.
I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs,
Yet, like a tree endure the shift of things.
Like Roethke, it would seem that many artists know how to lengthen their sighs into song, how to take the events and experiences of their lives, their disappointments, losses, imaginings, and even joys, and with language or music, clay or paint, fabric or ink, turn them into song. Song of Myself, writes Walt Whitman. Song of the Wandering Aengus, writes Yeats. The Mad Girl’s Love Song by Plath. And just Song by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. In this series of four programs, “Sighs into Songs,” our artists will talk about how and why they have created the “songs” they have and will read and discuss examples of their work. All programs are at 7:00 pm on Tuesdays and upcoming events include: