Recently, my students in SRSC 525 Place and the Problem of Healing, submitted their self-portraits, designed as woodcuts using black and white paper, most of them. They then photographed their design and shared it using Voice Thread (my class is online, so this gave us the opportunity to step off the page for awhile and listen to others’ narratives). They were all so wonderful I wish I could share them here. Two of them featured trees and roots as part of the design, and they reminded me of my own “tree forms” poems, so I told them I wanted to share one of them, the one recorded below, “When I Fall.” I haven’t read or thought of this poem for awhile, so it pleased me that other elements of my students’ self-portraits came up–stars, for instance, and mountains, and stepping stones, or in this case a path that was once the tree.

Since I haven’t posted on my blog for awhile (which makes it seem as if I don’t care about poetry anymore). . . . sad face . . . I am back, if briefly, with this: