Photos: at the poetry festival in Newark, there were pumpkins, musicians, youth, greenery and energy. New York's gray complexity was in the background, but never far away.
I mentioned recently that I think Frost’s line, “how leads on to way,” is more complex and profound than it appears.At The Dodge Poetry Festival, one of several poets new to me was Kwame Dawes. He’s now a prof at the University of South Carolina, by way of Ghana and Jamaica. At one point he referred to Nobel poet Derek Walcott, who, by way of the Lesser Antilles, ended up at Trinidad and Boston University (with a stop in Stockholm, I assume, as well as hundreds of readings and various teaching gigs). I’ve never connected as well as I probably should have to Derek Walcott, but thanks to the internet, I found a little poem of his that I just might like a lot—at least its central idea, about the two selves (at a minimum) we all have and the need for them to be good to each other.
Googling around still further this morning, I somehow got from Dawes and Walcott to Kristina Austin Scarcelli, who has an indirect connection to the banjo and who moved from Ohio to Michigan, like someone else you know, although her route was just a little different from mine. I offer her as a lighter touch on "how way leads on to way."
YouTube - Altar: Poem by Kwame Dawes
Love After Love by Derek Walcott
YouTube - Kristina Austin Scarcelli - "Dueling Banjos"
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