Category: Uncategorized
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Mind Game
The big Call & Response 4 show—featuring poetry readings by the authors, artists talking about their art, a gallery show, food, and books for sale—is coming up: Thursday, November 9, 7:00-10:00 p.m. at Grosse Pointe Congregational Church (unsurprisingly, in Grosse Pointe). For this event, gallery show, and book, artists and…
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Putting Down Roots
A prose poem about my back yard. Elaine Elizabeth BelzPUTTING DOWN ROOTS Someone who lived here before me had a taste for the exotic in flowers and vines; or else didn’t care for gardening at all, and simply allowed whatever flora came marauding through the neighborhood to take root. Arriving…
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Habitus
Read it here on Earth & Altar‘s website Elaine Elizabeth Belz HABITUS Crossing this threshold, I dip my hand in water,re-inscribe my birth. Stolid airushers me in, thick with dustand smoke and resin and with voices, shuffling feet,creaking floorboard and pew—all musicto uncloak my solitude.A votive wick receives my longing,…
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Kintsugi – a poem response to a photo by Danny Rebb
In 2019 I was invited to participate in the second Call & Response at Grosse Pointe Congregational Church. I brought my poem (which is at this post), and I selected this image from photographer Danny Rebb. (Seriously, go check out his work – he’s quite good.) I had written my…
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City Centre
A poem from Call and Response II Streets keep turning upwhere they shouldn’t—unlessmy map’s the wrong way ‘round.It’s useless, anyway; streets hereare unlabeled. (Well,why should they be laden with names?) Back somewhere, the canals misplaced me.Behind them, I’d lost myself in Roman ruins. I’m six time zones offfrom my internal…
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40
Welcome to the new iteration of my blog! I’ve decided the next few posts will be poems of mine that have been published in some form elsewhere (with links, where possible, to the elsewhere) along with a little discussion about the poem. Today’s poem is “40.” It’s “published” as a…
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Ruinenlust—Taking pleasure in ruins
This post is adapted from one of my comprehensive exams in my doctoral program. What does it mean to take pleasure in ruins? There’s a German name for it: ruinenlust. It turns out this is pretty much a European (and European-American) phenomenon, born out of a Romantic sensibility—that is to…
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Pentecost—It’s a beautiful day!
Here in Detroit, the gorgeous weather we’ve had this weekend is starting to gear up for the thunderstorms that are predicted over the next four days. But luckily, I’m not talking about weather. I’m talking about the feast the Western Church observes today. In my own Episcopal church, we dress…
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Why it’s been quiet here for a month…
I just wanted to briefly note here that I’m in the process of moving back to Detroit! Yay!!! Things have been quiet here as I’ve been wrapping up my life in California, finishing up my comprehensive exams (part of the PhD program I’m in), saying good-byes, sorting through and getting…
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Favorite Christmas albums
Happy New Year! We’re still in the midst of the Christmas season (those 12 days many know only from the song), so there’s still time to enjoy this wonderful music outside of the context of shopping malls and people trying to induce you to buy stuff. Having just said that,…
The Sound 