Poems for a Rainy Day

I have been going through some of my old journals and finding some poetry, so I thought I would share some vintage words of Woodzick:

Rules for Dancing:

My father never danced

so in turn

My mother never danced

so in turn

I never danced

until

I found college

and college found you.

And in those four years

we have choreographed

a dance of sprawling symbiosis...

Our fathers

the soldier and the scientist

gaze on, disinterested

While our mothers

Midwestern and beaming

wish they could join

the dance.

untitled

I have a poem for you

(I have a poem for you)

It's either an obstruction

or an abstraction

you can decide which.

You said with friends

"the good ones stick around"

But I'm leaving on a jet

plane, because baby there are

some mountains high enough &

I'm not a rubber ball bouncing

back to...

The lyrics aren't working:

let's try literature.

I am Helen & my

face and mind have launched

thousands of ideas, dances,

songs, plays and characters...

these ideas will send me to

the far reaches of

this current plane of

consciousness.

I may come back to visit:

the odd play a wedding

(late night bonfires in northeast

Iowa are not to be missed...

I got the notebook that now contains these poems while in London at the Tate Modern...It has an image of John Singer Sargents' Carnation, Lily, Rose. The way my undergraduate schedule was set up, we had a semester, a 3-week J-term course, then another semester. So, my senior year, I decided to go to England for Plays, Players and Playhouses with the Theatre/Dance Department.

We started in Stratford, seeing shows at the Royal Shakespeare Company: Great Expectations and two nights of the Canterbury Tales. The great thing about the literature cirriculum in Enlgand is that the theatres tap into it, so the schools can go see adaptations of great works that the students are reading in class.

Next, we went to London, saw shows at the National Theatre: History Boys, Paul, Once in a Lifetime. There are three different theatres housed in the National, all very different venues. I saw an actor from History Boys the night after we saw the play. It was at a little deli by the theatre. I went up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and told him how much I liked his performance. He said, "Oh, you're from America?" And I suddenly became very incoherent, muttering something about being from the Midwest with cows. Sigh.

We went to the reconstructed Globe theatre and got a tour from an actor in the company. I actually got to stand on the stage and recite Shakespeare--one of my favorite memories.

One of the most stunning aspects of the reconstructed Globe, in my opinion, is the painting called "The Heavens" that rests right above Juliet's balcony (see above). I was so haunted my the image, I actually used it at the end of the production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead I directed at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts. The weather today reminds me of London a bit. Glad to have the notebook from Tate Modern to delve into memories past...