Northwest Cultural Council
Corporate Gallery Artists’ Reception and Poetry Reading

An artists’ reception and poetry reading was held Saturday, July 17, 2010 at our beautiful gallery space at Arlington Green Executive Centre, 2101 S. Arlington Heights Road, Arlington Heights, IL.

Works by thirteen (13) artists in the Council’s Corporate Gallery Program were on display.  The exhibit reflected a wide variety of media, artistic expression and vision of the artists.  It is our belief that exposure to many kinds of art works will expand the observer’s appreciation of art and artists.

Through the years the Council has recognized and promoted poetry as one of the very important arts. We encourage all people, but especially young people, to read, understand, and learn to write poetry. An important part of NWCC’s commitment to poetry is the Second Saturday Poetry Workshops.  We have been offering these sessions every month for the past eleven years.  During the reception nine of the published poets who lead the workshops read selections from their works.

Sherrie Kirmse, the Northwest Cultural Council’s hostess at the Second Saturday Poetry Workshops, introduced each poet.		An appreciative audience listened intently as each poet read.

Deborah Nodler Rosen, poet and dedicated volunteer, invites and schedules the poets who lead the workshops each month.

ON THE ROAD TO DA NANG

A line in the water
as if some giant fisherman
had pulled his pole across an inlet
separating mud brown from shadowed blue,
salt from fresh, me from them.
Wooden slats on stilts, thatch for shade—
resting houses for the men who fish
in a place where the whole land has sunstroke,
in a place where sun burns squares of water
into green rice, in a place I find no footing.
One fisherman’s wife, a conical hat
bent close to the water, back humped,
thins a field of glistening spikes,
here where the air is too thick for words,
here where work is older than memory,
replants each slim blade of rice
in every spot of soil around a crater
deep enough to hold a plane, her son and mine
and all the fish bones from village meals.

Deborah Nodler Rosen

 

Steven Schroeder

Sing

No call to deny some Messiah
three times when the world is nothing
but denial. There is no denying
what must be done, Gautama, when
suffering bursts into flame at Jokhang's gate,
circles silent with a dog dying
on a forgotten street in Shekou. No
denying the world denying power
to turn. No denying the world denying
power to act. No denying the world
denying power to speak. No denying
the world. In the beginning, no word. No
denying the first stone cast by someone
who is not without sin. No denying Spinoza.

The stone falling would think itself free
if it could think. If it could sing, it would
sing a song of freedom, fall harmless
at the feet of an army no less
an army when a soldier, bloodied
by a stone, steps from the ranks. The stone
falls, singing. There is no denying the song.

Steven Schroeder
from a dim sum of the day before. Ink Brush Press, 2010.

 

 

 
Susanna Lang

Diagnosis

for John

Because of the unusual architecture of his heart
he has more storage room than most.

Because the doors are hung at an unaccustomed angle
the tumbler does not turn in the lock.

Because the walls do not quite meet
his rooms are edged in light.

The windows look out, where branches
etch their lines across the dusty glass;

we don’t look in.  Because
he did not replace the furnace

he still finds coal buried in the yard.
The canes of the roses stay green through the winter

and the snowdrops and crocus bloom earlier than in other gardens.
Because the long bones of his old cat still lie beneath the porch

he can remember more cat stories
than the rest of us have ever known.

Susanna Lang