“A house for wisdom; a field for revelation.

Speak to the stones, and the stars answer.

At first the visible obscures:

Go where light is.”

– Theodore Roethke, “Unfold! Unfold!”

The only indented stanza in a poem full of chaotic and manic images, this excerpt from Roethke’s “Unfold! Unfold!” calls for us to join the speaker in slowing down. Let’s dive into that journey line-by-line:

A house for wisdom; a field for revelation.

The house, as a closed space, can hold wisdom. But as the locus of the family, it can also nurture wisdom. The field, as an open, natural space where humanity has returned for centuries to access the divine: a place where the divine, in whatever form, can reach us with surprising lessons about the world, our communities, and ourselves. 

Speak to the stones, and the stars answer.

Speech is a distinctly human innovation, and is our primary mode of communication and connection with each other. This act of speaking to stones forges a connection, a respect between ourselves and nature that recognizes it not just as a setting, but also as a partner in the construction of our reality. Still, in this communication, nature is not direct or explicit in its response. We must look all around ourselves – down at stones, around at the world, and up toward the stars – and be open to the diverse sources of inspiration that surround us.

At first the visible obscures:

The visible world – the world of deadlines and bills and tangible things – can pull us away from our spiritual centers. It can obscure our focus and it can cloud our minds. At times, it may even distract us from those things that matter to us most. But we can learn, with practice, how to ground ourselves and be mindful in the face of all those visible, immediate distractions. We can recover ourselves from the myriad assaults on our souls by seeing not just with our eyes, but also with our hearts.

Go where light is.

At first this stanza may seem confusing. Perhaps like me you think, isn’t light visible too? However, there is light that our eyes can’t see – a whole spectrum of it. In addition, light is tangible (warmth, brightness) and intangible (a feeling of ease, a “lightness”), natural (the sun, fire) and unnatural (electricity, light bulbs). Light is a simultaneously simple and complex subject to consider, and yet, so are our lives. 

We might understand the last line of this stanza as a call to go where life is, where light can nurture us, where we can feel light. The preceding lines give us a roadmap for how to get there: seek the value in your community and the natural spaces around you, keep your mind open and ground yourself through these connections, and practice mindfulness as a defense against the intrusions of our tangible realities upon our spirits. 

There’s a lot more I could get into here about how the structure of the stanza also communicates a slowing and centering – like the syllabic compression from line to line that moves from twelve syllables, to ten syllables, to eight syllables, and then closes with four, or the artful use of punctuation that forces the reader’s internal voice to pause as they read – but these points are a clear echo of the lesson embedded in the content of the lines themselves. Make your home, inside and outside of yourself, take a deep breath, and go where your burdens lift, where joy may be nurtured, and where brightness surrounds.

As the spring season begins to break through here in Saginaw, we couldn’t ask for a better natural backdrop to the start of our Health and Wellness speaker series, moderated by Carol Barrett. Keep reading for a preview of what we’ve got in store for this week and more!

Upcoming this Week

First Health and Wellness Speaker Event: Stimulating the Satori Moment in Poems

featuring Tess Gallagher

This Tuesday, March 8, at 7pm, Tess Gallagher will be our first speaker in the Health and Wellness segment of our 2022 Virtual Speaker Series. Her talk Stimulating the Satori Moment in Poems is sure to offer many moments for reflection, introspection, and healing. Satori, Gallagher explains, “concentrates on the ‘acquiring of a new point of view in our dealings with life and the world,’” a practice that has been and continues to be crucial in a world affected by the pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine, and other ongoing crises across the world. In particular, Gallagher will focus on how satori can be explored and expressed through moments in poetry, where it can “wake us up and startle us into a new awareness.” 

Gallagher has been published as a poet, an essayist, a novelist, and a playwright, and her work has been honored with a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, two National Endowment of the Arts Awards, and the Maxine Cushing Gray Foundation Award. For a more intimate perspective on Gallagher and her work, I turn to writers Hayden Carruth and Stanley Kunitz:

"Gallagher's poems, beyond their delicacy of language, have a delicacy of perception, and the capacity to see oneself objectively as another person doing the things one really does, with clear affection and natural concern." 

– Hayden Carruth, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, and countless other literary prizes and fellowships

“[Gallagher is] outstanding among her contemporaries in the naturalness of her inflection, the fine excess of her spirit, and the energy of her dramatic imagination.” 

– Stanley Kunitz, former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner

You won’t want to miss this chance to hear and learn from famed writer Tess Gallagher! Join us this Tuesday, March 8, on Zoom for an evening that will open our minds and calm our hearts with the revitalizing power of the satori moment.

Register for the March 8 Speaker Series event »

Second Poetry Workshop Offering Another Chance to Talk, Think, and Write

with Jared Morningstar

We’ve also got another virtual poetry workshop for you this week with Jared Morningstar on Thursday, March 10, at 7pm. In this workshop, titled Art Breeds Art: How We Can Find Creative Inspiration from Other Artists and Their Works, Morningstar will talk about how art, pop culture, and more can make their way into a poem. Movies, paintings, books, and more aren’t just there to be viewed or read – they can inspire you, too! See the workshop page for more about this event and how to register. Seats in Morningstar’s first workshop sold out fast, so act quickly to secure your seat today!*

Jared Morningstar’s 2020 collection, American Fries: Poems and Short Stories, was selected for Read Poetry’s Hottest Poetry Releases of the month by writer and reviewer Thea Voutriritsas. Here’s what she had to say about American Fries:

“America comes under the microscope in this analytical collection. Jared Morningstar’s American Fries takes a look at politics, pop culture, fantasies, and dreams through various perspectives of the American experience. With a mix of poetry and short stories, readers will walk away with plenty to chew on.”

For more reasons you’ll want this chance to write and workshop your poetry with Jared Morningstar, check out his fantastic interview with Alien Buddha Press.

*Please note that we're prioritizing workshop seats for those with a Michigan address and those who haven't yet attended a workshop. If you’re out of state or have attended a workshop already, thank you for your interest! We will let you know if there are seats left after priority registrants are placed.

Register for the March 10 Poetry Workshop »

Looking Ahead

Poetry Workshop on March 15: Home, House, Neighborhood: The Places We Inhabit

with Anita Skeen

Anita Skeen will continue our virtual poetry workshop series on Tuesday, March 15, via Zoom, with a workshop titled Home, House, Neighborhood: The Places We Inhabit. Just like people, places change, and through the course of the pandemic, new situations, difficulties, and contexts have affected our relationships with those spaces that we call home. Whether we feel this effect on the micro level of the houses or apartments we occupy, the macro level of our neighborhoods and communities, or a little bit of everything, you can be sure that exploring those places with new eyes and fresh insights will be a restorative, cathartic experience with Skeen at the helm.

Well-loved by students, fellow educators and writers, and all of us here at the Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation, Anita Skeen’s workshops promise to facilitate spaces of compassion, self-exploration, and connection with others. For a more intimate perspective on Skeen’s life and work, read this Lansing City Pulse article celebrating Skeen’s legacy and involvement with the Residential College of Arts and Humanities (RCAH) at Michigan State University. See her page at Michigan State University Press to read more about and purchase some of her work.

Register for the March 15 Poetry Workshop » 

Special Thanks & Additional Info

“You Say ‘Goodbye,’ and I Say, ‘Hello’”

A Look Back on the Place and Landscape Series

Connecting to place is a practice in mindfulness. To see not just oneself, but one’s surroundings, one’s community, the intersections of that community with others, be they plant, animal, human, insect. Connecting to place can help us feel grounded, no matter the tempo and key of the world’s music. Through chaos and calm, beauty and horror, times of sacrifice and times of abundance, place is the one constant that can be guaranteed. However its face may change, the land beneath us records our energies and histories in its heart, and welcomes us to do the same.

Place asks us to slow down, to observe, to breathe in and just be; that world flying by you on the highway is full of life, beauty, and hope. In this sense, place is intrinsically linked to health and wellness. We hope that our upcoming Health and Wellness series furthers that sense of groundedness, expanding our collective imaginations about what it is to be alive today, how we might live more kindly with ourselves and those around us, and the ways that writing can connect us, heal us, and open us to the world.

From Place and Landscape we move to Health and Wellness – and we couldn’t have asked for a better transition between these two series than the powerful event last Tuesday. Thank you to Holly Hughes, Rena Priest, Jessica Gigot, Sandy Jane Polzin, Alicia Hokanson, Anita Lee Holladay, Carolyn Servid, and Claudia Castro Luna for sharing your words.

Thank you again to Richard Hoehler, Alice Derry and Kate Reavey, and Brian Gilmore for contributing your words, experiences, and voices to this virtual speaker series. You’ve all given us many moments of joy, and your work encourages us to reflect on the ways we can connect to and engage with the theme of place and landscape. Last but not least, thank you to everyone who joined us on Zoom to listen to our amazing guests! We hope you’ll continue to engage with these events.

“Thank You For Being a Friend”

Gratitude for Participants of Our First Poetry Workshop

A huge thank you to all of you intrepid creators who dove into our first poetry workshop with gusto. We hope you had a great time and produced some work you’ll be excited to share with the community. If you’re working on polishing your poems up or are looking for a good way to spend your day, you are welcome to spend some time with us at Theodore Roethke’s home in Saginaw. For more information about the schedule for time at the Roethke House, see our Museum Hours page. Thank you again, and we look forward to seeing your words in print!

For more about Tess Gallagher’s books and where to purchase them, see her listings at Graywolf Press.

Visit Jared Morningstar’s page on GoodReads for links to purchase his poetry and story collections, American Fries and American Reality, as well as his advice for aspiring writers and more.

Check out Anita Skeen’s page at Michigan State University Press for more about her books and where to purchase them.

Thanks to generous support from the Michigan Arts and Culture Council, Arts Midwest, the Ohio Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts, our events are free and open to the public through May 31, 2022.

Kellie Rankey holds a BA in Creative Writing from SVSU, where they currently remain a student. Their work has appeared inThe Normal School,Tiny Molecules, and theMichigan Sociological Review, and is forthcoming from Wrongdoing Magazine.