The Poetic Imaginarium

 

Featured at the stylish Sherbino Theater in Ridgway's trendy Arts District June 1st, Wendy Videlock of Palisade presented a lively, interactive discussion on how we might cultivate the creative process, life-long learning, and the love of sensual experience into our everyday lives. 

Wendy shared a number of thought-provoking excerpts from her recent book of essays,The Poetic Imaginarium: A Worthy Difficulty.  Unfortunately, that book wasn't available thanks to supply chain issues. But her newest book of poems, Wise to the West (Able Muse Press, 2022), was available and she read several poems from there. 

Here in the West

Here in the West, whatever

one's pain

one never complains

about the rain.

What's good for the plains

is bad for the harvest.

What freezes in spring

is sugar-beet borrowed.

The river depletes.

The groves expire.

What blooms

in summer is wildfire.

Afterwards, she opened the floor to questions. That prompted Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer to craft this poem, which she sent out to her followers today:

Fill in the Blank

for Wendy

 

Tonight, the poet with the tendrilled hair

asks us to fill in the blank.

The most important relationship

you cultivate in your life is with _________.

One person says, Love. Says another, Yourself.

And long after the question is gone

from the air, long after the conversation’s

moved on, I think about ways

to fill it in. With time. Mortality.

Uncertainty. Peace. And ultimately,

with nothing. How beautiful

to let what is blank stay blank,

a space holder for pure potential.

What if our relationship with nothing

is the most important relationship we have?

I notice how she never fills in the blank herself,

leaving the space for everything.

Nothing is the most generous of doorways.

Now everything is possible.