Poetry & Pushpins

~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Poetry & Pushpins

Monthly Archives: March 2014

A Very Fan-Girly and Self-Centered Review of These! Paper! Bullets!

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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books, England, Midwest, New Haven, the creative process, writing

Last Friday night, I got to once more experience my major high school obsessions—the Beatles and William Shakespeare—smashed together in one glorious rock musical. Because last Friday night, I went to see These! Paper! Bullets!, the Yale Repertory Theatre’s “modish ripoff” of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

Sitting in the balcony of Yale University Theater, I felt like I was on the set of A Hard Day’s Night as the Quartros (Ben, Claude, Pedro, and Barth) played their opening song amidst a maelstrom of screaming female voices. Then the music stopped and the dialogue began, sweeping the audience into a wonderful blend of iambic pentameter and Liverpudlian slang. My body shivered in blissful delight as the players delivered the original Shakespearean dialogue with a Liverpudlian lilt, adorning their sentences with words like “gear” and “grotty.”

Hearing the mixing and matching of meters and slang, old and new, reminded me why I succumbed to the siren’s call of Shakespeare and the Beatles as a teen. It was because of their speech patterns. The Beatles and Shakespeare were the first to teach me, a Northeastern Ohio girl, that language could dance. Both Liverpudlian and Elizabethan speech cadences have a light, sing-songy musicality to them. It’s hard to speak in light, sing-songy ways with a Northeastern Ohio accent. Our “r’s” are hard and our “a’s,” nasal. When we speak, we mostly chew our words then spit them out. But thanks to Will and the Fab Four, I got exposed to two new patterns of speaking, very different from what I grew up using. Two different patterns of speaking that helped to expand my imagination as a writer.

If you’re in the New Haven area, I urge you to go see These! Paper! Bullets!. The show is charming, madcap, and so much fun. I dare you to count all of the cheeky Beatle song / Shakespearean references and puns…the show overflows with them!

For a less fan-girly review of the show, I’d like to direct you to an excellent one done by Eva Geertz for the New Haven Review: http://www.newhavenreview.com/index.php/2014/03/a-review-of-these-paper-bullets-by-a-very-reluctant-theater-goer/

And, if you’d like to get a sense of the show’s overall aesthetic, here is a video celebrating the show’s world premiere, courtesy of the Yale Repertory Theatre YouTube channel:

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Lenten Openings

21 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), Religious Exploration

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Christian community, Lent

Ugh. Lent.

For me, this Christian season is one of the most uncomfortable. Not because I have to give something up, not because it reminds me of my mortality, but because it is a season where I must wait for God’s transformation. Not on my terms. But on the whims of the Divine.

I explore the beauty and discomfort of this sort of waiting in my latest piece for HartfordFAVS. Below is the link, if you’re curious:

http://hartfordfavs.com/2014/03/20/lenten-mornings/

Favorite Irish Folk Songs: The Minstrel Boy

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Literature, Poetry, Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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folk songs, history, Ireland, New Haven, poetry

Today is the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade here in New Haven. In a matter of hours, the Green will crowd with lawn chairs as politicians, veterans, and Irish step dancers walk the ways once inhabited by downtown traffic. Upon the breeze will dance the sour smell of beer with the gamey smell of porta-potties…

…and bands of bagpipes and fifes and drums will all play the same arrangement of “The Minstrel Boy.”

If you’re like me, you’ll start to feel a berserker-like rage, rising from the depths of your gut, after hearing the same damn version for the twentieth time. In a row. Without any breaks.

No need to give in. Instead, just listen to this lovely and very different arrangement of the song by Irish folk great Tommy Makem. I promise that it will sooth your ear fatigue and refresh your soul! And most importantly, it will give you a chance to hear the beautiful verses, written by Thomas Moore. Many believe he wrote it to honor his Trinity Dublin classmates who participated / died in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Enjoy today’s merriment! Tomorrow, we look at a quieter group of folk songs, to help sooth the inevitable hangovers you’ll get from today.

Warm Cats and Restless Laps

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

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empathy, learning patience, Midwest, New England

When I was five, my family made the acquaintance of Peppermint, a seven-pound, black-haired, green-eyed cat. One early fall day, Peppermint jumped onto my father’s knee as he worked in our backyard. The tiny cat wouldn’t get off, and so, my father brought him into the house and Peppermint became our family pet.

Peppermint and I rarely lived in harmony when I was younger. Quiet and slow, he preferred the calm, languid sunbeams that warmed the front room’s bay window to my fidgety, kindergarten self. Despite our differences and my total lack of empathy for his disposition, I wanted him to be my friend—but, I always went about it the wrong way. Trying to pet him as he dozed in the sunbeams got me far more scratches than approving purrs.

Sometimes, and this was always a rare occasion, Peppermint would jump down from the bay window and up into my lap. As he curled into a tight ball, his small body would start to feel like seven tons rather than seven pounds. Seven tons of hot, furry mass pinning me down, keeping me from doing the important things kindergarteners do:  playing in the woods, artistically arranging dolls around my bedroom, dancing to cassette tapes of the Beatles. I resented Peppermint’s presence when he sat in my lap. I resented the time he made me wait for that presence. And most importantly, I resented his inability to be my loving pet when I wanted him to be.

Trying to pet him as he dozed in the sunbeams got me far more scratches than approving purrs.

Twenty-three years have passed since Peppermint first sat in my lap. Now, I’m no longer a squirming kindergartener (though I still spend time in the woods and dance to the Beatles). As I type this post to you, two happily purring cats sit on my outstretched, blanketed legs. They are my neighbors’ cats. I often look after them when my neighbors go out of town. In the beginning, both felines were suspicious of the strange person who chose to occupy their usual humans’ couch. Yet, with the blessing of time and cold weather, the cats finally decided that my lap was an okay place to be.

This time around, I didn’t mind the process. For I know something at twenty-eight that I didn’t know at five: As long as I am patient and understanding and without presumption, even the slowest of cat hearts will eventually open up and take comfort in my lap.

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Art after Death and Chaos

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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books, grief, the creative process, writing

I had quite the Saturday last week. The day was evenly broken into two events: singing at a former classmate’s memorial service and attending the launch of a friend’s first book.

I was sure it would be an emotionally grueling day. The former event reminding me of my mother’s funeral only seven months ago, and the latter event challenging me to network and small talk with people I did not know well. And in many ways, the day was grueling. I needed to seek out the occasional quiet space, so that my brain could sort out all the emotional stimulation this social marathon of a day gave it. But, it could have been so much worse. Though I needed to make allowances for my slightly introverted wiring, I went to sleep that night inspired by a single idea: when it is most needed, human beings create Art.

With a myriad of choristers and some dear friends, the memorial service choir navigated a wonderful middle ground between Anglican Church music and jazz. Our voices filled the church space with the joy of sound, a strong reminder amidst the grief that we celebrated the life our colleague led. Then, with a myriad of writers, friends, and librarians, I sat in the New Haven Free Public Library as Adrian Bonenberger read from Afghan Post. A memoir he started writing, upon returning from active duty in Afghanistan, to help him through PTSD’s relentless aftershocks.

Art. Beauty. Creation. All three present in the wake of grief, tragedy, and intensity last Saturday. All three offering those afflicted an opportunity to take life’s confusion and brokenness and abrupt endings into their hands, and create something new, something empathetic, something worth living for.

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