Napa County Poet Laureate, Yountville’s own Marianne Lyon, reported a great turnout to last week’s Freedom Poems event, with over 30 people in attendance. Artists, musicians, poets, and puppeteers gathered at the Yountville Community Center last Saturday, July 11th, to share their works inspired by the expansive word—FREEDOM.
Here are some of the snippets of the artworks and poems of the event:
Alan Arnopole sang an original song using the image of nature to describe freedom:
The tumult moves off
Like some great winged Serpent
A glimmer of sun lights the ridge
Raven is making a cautious sweep
And the land is renewed
Jac Warren and Micky Grandel held the puppets on their laps as the poets voiced their verse. Myrna David read about a soldier saved from dying in a foxhole by a care package:
Foxhole for hours
Care package break
Fudge from a classmate Oh no! a grenade!
A gift from God?
Or just a gift from a friend
Right place at the right time.
Bob Gates shared
We were called
We stood up
Did We make a difference
Does it matter
John Dorenbecher said that this was the first poem he ever wrote. He was inspired by Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth in 1861:
The poem was written
In the context of a nation
Preparing to tear itself apart
In civil war that was soon to start
But I can feel the echoes of his cries
And see the worry in our eyes
As we fight against the lies
And strive to keep our Democracy alive
Poet Emma Ordonez-Enos and artist Cecily Greenberg presented their Freedom Ekphrastic duet- “Liberation:
Like filling my lungs with free air
after holding weights to my chest
at the bottom of the lake
A special thanks to Rebecca Simons from the Library for her care and setting up for the copy