Shutters Shut so Open

Others have posted links to this extraordinary dance performance set to Gertrude Stein's portrait of Picasso. It was with the help of others that I watched this yesterday. I'm not entirely comfortable with linking to it here, since it feels too much like tailgating other people's opinions of what serves poetics at certain points in time. But, I'm doing it anyway.

I can't get Stein's cadence out of my head. This often happens when I read or hear her. It's transformative. Yesterday, I took advantage of my desk job and wrote on company time in Stein's voice. This morning, I woke from a sticky charcoal dream and thought of Shutters. In the shower, I imagined her oneness, her vitality, her poems experientially felt to be the act of living on the page. I feel free when I read her.

I invite you to experiment. Write in Stein's voice. Write in anyone else's voice. Lose yourself in it. Come back. Tell us.