Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

Inspiration From the Past

By SAMANTHA BLANCHARD

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s CIA 7091: MFA Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop. As part of a community of artists working across art perspectives, students in this course get the chance to present their work and teach each other about their art form(s), practice, lineage and influences, and are challenged to inquire into the interdisciplinary arts as well as forms new to them.

"Inspired by Isadora Duncan's approach to music, [Ruth] St. Denis developed the music visualization, which she defined as '...the scientific translation into bodily action of the rhythmic, melodic and harmonious structure of a musical composition without intention to in any way 'interpret' or reveal any hidden meaning apprehended by the dancer.' Meaning, movement was set strictly to music without reading into anything emotionally. If the music swells, the body swells: if the music grows quiet, the body comes to rest."

    -Jane Sherman, from "Denishawn: The Enduring Influence"

As a former Marion Rice Denishawn Dancer, one of the last pupils of Ruth St. Denis, I am inspired by Denishawn’s development of music visualization. During my time with Mrs. Rice, from ages 7 – 17, we never counted the music, we were asked to feel the music and interpret the choreography in harmony with the music. This was a problem when I got to college and was asked to count the music.  Feeling the music involved moving to the rhythm, melody, and harmonious structure of the composition so that their peaks and valleys matched. Miss Ruth and Mrs. Rice always choreographed to the music; the music was the inspiration and the driving force behind the dance.  The repertory, or dance choreography, was written but rarely videoed, so interpretations could vary, however, because the movements were in direct connection with the music the dance became a part of us, a complete embodiment.  If I hear the music of “Soaring” or “Red Radiance,” I can recall the choreography effortlessly.  My muscle memory takes over and the dance just flows through me because the movement is so attuned to the music.  Unfortunately, there are no video clips of these dances, so I have Ruth St. Denis’ "Brahms Waltz" (1922) performed by Cynthia Gregory at Jacob’s Pillow.

There is something about the fusion of movement and music that gives each discipline more power than it could have had otherwise. The collision of these mediums creates a whole new experience of the dance, both for the viewer and the dancer. It gives it a magical life of harmonious expression and adds textured information to the storyline. I have detoured from this idea, experimentally, but find that I always come back to the structure of music visualization, maybe because it’s familiar or organic, but mostly because it feels right. My most recent music visualization piece, Magdalene (2006), was inspired by a festival at ODC Theater, Underserved POP II, asking the artists to dance to a favorite pop song.

Energy Sources as Mythologies

By CRAIG CHALQUIST, who will be taking over as department chair of East-West Psychology in January 2013. Craig teaches mythology, depth psychology, and ecopsychology at CIIS.

When we talk about how to power our civilization we seldom look at the mythic images involved. Yet C.G. Jung, Karl Kerényi, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Edith Hamilton, and Joseph Campbell all insisted that myths are not just archaic theories for what science has now explained.

Rather, myths make visible the underside of a culture just as dreams make visible the life going on in the personal unconscious. That is why myths never die, they only get reinvented: the zombies of old not given up by the civilized mind, but shambling along looking like half-dead banks full of toxic assets; the Golem reinvented as the robot; Merlin’s wand molded into the smartphone; the figure of the giant now the world-girdling transnational corporation; the bursting cosmic egg of many mythologies referred to now as the Big Bang. As Campbell’s famous statement from The Hero with a Thousand Faces tells us, “The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.”

What mythic images confront us in the debate about clean versus dirty energy?

It took our planet billions of years to remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to allow life to take hold and grow here. By contrast, the extractive energy industries--especially coal and petroleum--reverse that great cycle of evolution. Little wonder that mythic images of the Underworld, including the Christian Hell, always follow extractive operations. Entire decapitated mountain ranges in Appalachia now resemble something out of Dante’s Inferno. The Cuyahoga River has burned thirteen times because of oil spills: our version of Phlegethon, the flaming river in ancient Greek mythology.

Oil and coal are dark, poisonous, and dangerous to mine and to manipulate. It’s breathtaking to imagine internal combustion imagistically: an entire civilization powered by inner explosions whose smothering byproducts make the atmosphere dim and feverish. Pluto may have been downgraded as a planet, but he is alive and powerful here on Earth: Pluto, deadly god of hidden wealth and root of the word “plutocracy.”

By contrast, images of abundance follow solar, wind, and water power. Enough sunlight falls on Earth in an hour to power everything for a year. Generous sunlight, unceasing wind, rippling waves bring organic images of bounty and flow, cycle and season. The installations that catch their energies without fracking up the biosphere do not explode like oil refineries do. Troops are not dispatched to foreign lands to fight for sunlight, wind, or wave, nor are financial empires built on the hydraulic despotism of monopolizing these free resources.

The gods of extraction are dark, hidden, or fiery deities, but those of alternative energy move freely across the sea and sky without regard for archaic national borders or destructive political alignments.

The question of which energy sources to rely on, then, is also a question of which mythic images we favor: the dangerous and lethal, or the abundant and natural? The confined and hidden or the bright and free? At the gas pump we pay homage to Pluto and Mars, but how might we shift our allegiance to Helios and Gaia?

CIIS’ Integrative Psychodynamic Approach and Clinical Treatment

By LELAND VAN DEN DAELE, PhD, ABPP, professor in the Clinical Psychology Department at CIIS. Leland is a Life Member of the American Psychological Association, a member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, and Research Director of Psychodiagnostics. He publishes his own blog.

Since its inception, the CIIS Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program was inspired by the philosophical and psychological writings of Alan Watts and Haridas Chadhuri. Watts was the Dean of the Institute for Asian Studies, the progenitor of CIIS, and Chadhuri was the first president of CIIS. Both Watts and Chadhuri emphasized that psychological health depended upon the whole person: body, mind, and spirit.

The interdependence of body, mind, and spirit find validation in contemporary science. Biochemistry and clinical nutrition have demonstrated numerous links among diet, neurotransmitters, mood, and behavior. Wide-ranging cognitive and behavioral effects have been established for exercise and sleep. The scientific study of practices associated with yoga, tai chi, and Buddhism have entered the main stream. As a rule, results validate traditional wisdom as a foundation for equanimity, and physical and mental health.

Cognitive neuroscience employing electroencephalograph (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies further provide a window into the inner world. If changes in the brain and the mind are interdependent, as is widely taken as axiomatic, then changes in EEG and MRI patterns reflect changes in mental activity. The use of these technologies demonstrates the pervasive influence of unconscious factors on attention, awareness, and cognition. Subtle emotion, the material and social context, abstract purpose, belief, personal history, and a host of other variables individually and collectively influence the flow of consciousness, cognition, and choice. Consciousness, cognition, and choice arise in a multidimensional field. Multiple strata from the biochemical and cellular to the energetic level participate to form conscious content.

A different approach is embodied in reductive approaches to psychology, which attempt to isolate a single factor that influences mind and behavior. The statistical method associated with reductive approaches requires the observer to “sum across” individuals. The method necessarily focuses upon one or a few variables isolated from the totality of an individual’s life. Indeed, the individual ceases to exist, replaced by numbers on a scale, which define only a “variable” on a scale and not the individual in her complexity.

As a result, symptom-oriented treatments typically employ a protocol, a kind of “one-size-fits-all” set of exercises or formulations, meant to apply to persons described by the protocol. Reductive approaches fail to address the person or provide individualized understanding how she finds herself in her current life situation. Instead, the person is given a formula.

This contrasts with CIIS’s integrative psychodynamic approach to clinical psychology. Body, mind, and spirit are viewed in dynamic relationship. Symptoms are not isolated from the whole human being and her social and emotional context. CIIS’s integrative psychodynamic approach aims at positive psychological health, not just the elimination of this or that symptom.

Integrative psychodynamic psychotherapy entails growth of experience, knowledge, and insight into the multidimensional nature of self, other, and world. The approach does not entail “quick fixes” or formula. It recognizes the complexity of individual differences, human relations, and life. The successful application of integrative psychodynamic psychotherapy eventuates in new openness to the inner and outer world. The positive psychological health that results is more than the absence of symptoms. It entails heightened empathy, sensitivity, and maturity. As integrative psychodynamic psychotherapy opens experience of the self, it opens experience to life.

Looking to Alice Walker

By MELVINA HAYES

This post was written as an assignment for professor Brynn Saito's multi-genre MFA-level writing workshop, WRC 7093. In this class, students produce new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, while reflecting on their lives, influences, and processes as artists and writers.

"Is it logical/rational that anyone would be afraid of the work that they were put here on earth to do?"

    — Elizabeth Gilbert

A beautifully polished, authentic, fragrant piece of redwood, suggestive of utter, aristocratic Art Deco’rum is where my prized possession, which I birthed, lay to rest: my debut memoir/novel. Not always living in full possession of my SELF, I fell prey to the attacks of one who took issue with my transparence, depictions of his character and ultimately, my audacity.

I was poised to receive more of the praise and encouragement that accounted for the majority of responses, when an individual—potentially the closest to me—delivered the harshest critique of a book I paid dearly for: I paid with the doldrums of solitude, sleepless nights, wrestling with my mind to distinguish thoughts to be penned from random “noise," the fear of alienation, and the intimidating publishing process. I had experienced a great deal of validation prior to his critique.  The individual, who I should not only feel safe with, but protected by, I had disappointed, embarrassed, offended and ultimately exposed/shamed. Certainly, curtly he relayed his truth despite my bleeding heart and needy, broken posture. My gifts, my passions, my truth…I bartered for his comfort and a pretentious sentiment of flawless rearing.

I paid dearly. What was a celebrated work of art, with the acclaimed potential, proven potential, to bless the lives of many was laid to rest like a dusty family photo album with faded, colorless pictures covered in desiccated, cracked plastic.

But for transformation, I remain…encouraged by the insolence of Alice Walker:

• “All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view."
• "I don't set out to upset people, but I've never been afraid to speak my truth," Alice explained.  "In my life and in my art, I've been loyal to myself. And that distresses folks. It's their task, not mine, to understand why. "

I Remain!

Exploring the Encounter between Buddhism and Western Psychotherapy at CIIS

By KAISA PUHAKKA, professor in the Clinical Psychology Department at CIIS

Recent decades have seen a fertile encounter between Buddhism and Western psychology. Unique among religious and spiritual traditions, Buddhism does not have a theology or beliefs of any kind as its foundation.  In its 2,500 year history it has taken root in many countries and possessed an amazing capacity to adapt to rather than oppose the cultural mores and beliefs of its host countries. But none of these mores or beliefs is essential to Buddhism. For example, many but not all Buddhists accept re-incarnation, karma, etc., which were prevalent beliefs in the early host countries. As much as we know of the historical Buddha, he counseled his disciples to not take any teachings on faith—not even his—but to verify their truth in direct personal experience and observation. It is this insistence on verification in direct observation, along with the concern with alleviation of suffering, that naturally aligns Buddhism with Western psychotherapy.  Cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy has indeed taken advantage of this alignment in widespread and successful adaptations of mindfulness meditation for managing stress, chronic pain, anxiety and depression.

But there is so much more to Buddhism than these simple adaptations. Buddhism has big ideas that reach through your innermost self all the way through the vast cosmos —like pratityasmutpada or the interdependence of all beings, or sunyata, the no-thingness or voidness of reality. And they are not just ideas but something to be realized in the immediacy of one's experience. I once asked a famous mathematician at a Zen monastery about the secret of his apparently inexhaustible creativity (he was 50 then). He said, “It's about being closest to my true self. You know, of course, my self is nothing at all,” he smiled and described how when sitting in the Zendo, mathematical forms spontaneously arise out of the void (sunyata). He had been sitting through sesshins for 24 years when I came to my first. Something coming from nothing—true creativity!

No Western psychology is big enough to fully contain these ideas, but we have bigger containers that could do more than symptom-focused cognitive-behavioral psychology—like psychodynamic psychotherapy, which considers the whole person and all of the psyche including the unconscious. It is indeed heartening to see the door being slowly cracked open in contemporary psychoanalytic circles not only for meditative techniques but for deeper inquiry into the self.  Like Buddhism, psychodynamic psychotherapy is concerned with alleviating suffering and also believes in disciplined self-inquiry and dispelling of illusions as key to liberation from suffering. In both, the inquiry is carried out in a formal relationship—between student and teacher in many forms of Buddhist practice and between patient and therapist in psychodynamic psychotherapy. There is enough common ground between the two traditions to meaningfully explore some of the vast differences that are there also. I believe it is in the dynamic tension of these differences that new discoveries and developments will take place, both for the grounding of Buddhist practice in Western cultural soil, and for awakening the spiritual soul of psychodynamic therapy.

Debunking the “Mysterium Tremendum” Surrounding Writing and Creativity

By MICHAEL AHO

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Brynn Saito's multi-genre MFA-level writing workshop, WRC 7093. In this class, students produce new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, while reflecting on their lives, influences, and processes as artists and writers.

Can creativity be taught? Absolutely!

We would not expect a surgeon to make the opening incision without extensive training and practice; why should the opening line of a novel be any different?

There’s a whole constellation of related “teaching” verbs—such as nurture, develop, practice, refine, etc.

I blame the “mysterium tremendum” surrounding the entire artistic process on the Greek myth of creativity as a divine gift from the Muses. If it originates outside the self, outside our consciousness, even outside the realm of humanity, how can it possibly be taught?

Like priests reading mass in Latin, creativity and writing are believed to belong to an exclusive and esoteric realm, where common people should remain silent and respectful.

This leads us to think that writing is such a rarified, transcendent or alien experience that no preparation, no environment, no mentors could possibly make a difference. Even on the websites of MFA programs in writing, I find rampant allusions to this preposterous notion that writing cannot be taught.

Having previously completed an internship as a psychotherapist, I know it is possible to teach and cultivate qualities such as vulnerability, compassion, and self-reflection. Bio-feedback training can bring previously autonomic processes under direct control. Brain plasticity research teaches us that new synapses and neural pathways can indeed be constructed.

When I studied Mandarin Chinese, it was certainly slower than learning French—about four times slower—but it didn’t require an intervention from the Muses. Teaching math may be quite different from teaching interpretive dance, but any training in dance will lead to greater flexibility, poise, and control, and so it is with writing. It’s a practice where peers, expectations, and one’s community all make a big difference...

Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, offers the magic formula of 10,000 hours of practice required to develop mastery. It's simply not realistic to expect “mastery” to be produced by any one program; 10,000 hours is more like 10 years of effort. Why then, such unrealistic goals for the cultivation of creativity?

I admire people who sit down and just write, without any drama. However, that’s just alien to me. Writing is something I resist or avoid, like arrest or an STD. Unfortunately for me, procrastination and perfectionism are like two schoolyard bullies, who I was never able to shake, even after all these years. One reason alone that justifies being in a writing class or program is deadlines.

For example, today was a day off from work. My plan was to start by writing the blog you are now reading. That didn’t exactly happen.

After sleeping in and “breakfasting” at noon, I immediately scheduled a haircut, packed my car full of dirty laundry, and headed to the laundromat via car wash. When I eventually got home, there were dishes to do, a presidential debate to watch, a video game to finish and other important non-writing tasks. At 10pm, after my self-scheduled 2-10 pm writing “shift” was over, I turned on the computer. Thankfully, this writing assignment had a deadline of midnight. For people like me, deadlines are the only things that transform inspiration into actual words.

I’ll take a hard-working-community of fellow writers, a structure of built-in deadlines, and critical feedback/support from mentors over the unteachable myth of divine inspiration any day.

En Foco/In Focus: Ricky Flores

By COLLETTE McGRUDER

This is the first entry in a series of interviews by Jessica Juliao and Collette McGruder, both emerging photographers and CIIS students. They will be interviewing artists whose works are featured in the exhibition En Foco/In Focus, selections from the first permanent photography collection in the country dedicated to U.S.- based artists of Latin American, African, Asian, and Native American heritage. The exhibition opens for the first time on the West Coast on Jan. 22, 2013, at CIIS. 

 Collette recently had the opportunity to catch up with artist Ricky Flores to discuss New York, the history of his work, and the ever-changing voice of photography in our visual culture.

 My obsession with New York began when I discovered the city on a map in my mother’s little black telephone book. New York City, geographically small compared to most states, clearly demanded exaggeration; it had its own area code (only one then) and occupied an enlarged pop-out on the map. This was my first indication that something special was happening there; it would take me 22 years to finally be a part of it.

By the time I got there the 212 prefix I coveted had given way to 917 and the still unpopular 347. Cell phones were taking over and the city’s unwritten code of conduct was changing: dancing had become illegal, smoking in bars was following not too far behind and the grittiness of the so-called mean streets had turned to dust. Where was my Looking for Mr. Goodbar/Wild Style New York? Even the porn theaters had given way to the giant ferris wheel of Toys”R”Us as the new crown jewel of Times Square.

So it is no wonder upon seeing the work of photojournalist Ricky Flores, I became nostalgic for a time in New York I had never really known. Flores knew this time; he grew up in it. His experience is real and tender and goes beyond my Midwestern-based romanticized longing for old New York. Flores photographs offer a thoughtful perspective from a young Puerto Rican man living in the South Bronx during the 1970s.

 

Ricky Flores, FDNY Dispatch: Is There a Fire Over There?, silver gelatin print, 1983

CM: The piece in the exhibition, FDNY Dispatch: Is There a Fire Over There? illustrates what you describe on your website as "planned shrinkage," a policy wherein police and fire services were withdrawn from areas in hopes of decreasing the population. In the image Carlos and Boogie, we see a beautiful and seemingly fun life moment—uniquely New York—between two men on the subway system. Looking at these images I can’t help but think of your iconic image from 9/11. These images all remind me of my years in New York and how just being there, from the everyday of shuffle between boroughs to dealing with the aftermath of September 11, continues to inform the way I see the world. Can you describe for us what your experience was like during this time and what motivated you to document the moments featured in these two images?

 

RF: There are many places in the world but not many have an iconic image like that of New York City. During the time that I was photographing my community, I did so with the knowledge that I was witnessing and participating in a profound change in the landscape of the city. What started out as a simple thing of photographing my friends and family became something more simply by the context and time that it took place.

Initially, I used photography as a way to discover who I was as a young Puerto Rican descendent living on the streets of the South Bronx. I was, like many of my friends from my community, a creation of two very distinct cultures forged by history and circumstance. Photography was the tool that helped me bridge the two cultures and allowed me to further understand the history of Puerto Ricans in the United States, and to begin to question the political and social ramifications of being of Puerto Rican descent.

Photographing my community, coupled with the turbulent and violent transformation of the landscape around us, galvanized me to document what was taking place around me. It wasn't an atypical experience to photograph a fire taking place on our block on any given day, just like it wasn't atypical to take photos of kids playing in the park or on the street or in some abandoned building.  It was a commonplace experience for us.  It always struck us as funny when people would express some horror when we would relate a tale from the block or just simply state that we were from the South Bronx. A social stigma was instantly attached to that pronouncement, one that continues to take place even today.

It was in that context that I took many of my photographs, what might look like an amazing collection of photos of the South Bronx in upheaval was simply my personal photos of my friends and my family.

 

Ricky Flores, Carlos and Boogie, silver gelatin print, 1982

 

CM: As a photographer, I have a great deal of respect for journalistic and street photography; I believe it takes a great deal of nerve and determination to pursue subjects and shoot on the spot with candor. Walk us through your process for deciding when a moment becomes one worth documenting. Has this process ever landed you in an uncomfortable situation with your subjects? Was there ever a moment you wanted to document but chose not to do so?

Taking a Chance with Alonzo King

By SAMPATH VINJAMUR RAMANUJAN

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Brynn Saito's multi-genre MFA-level writing workshop, WRC 7093. In this class, students produce new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, while reflecting on their lives, influences, and processes as artists and writers.

I hadn't heard of his name before, or who he was, or what he was doing; Cindy Shearer, program chair of CIIS' MFA department, had indeed sent an email inviting MFA students to the rehearsal of Alonzo King's latest work under production. I wasn't interested and I didn't go. In fact, Cindy's Saturday Night @ CIIS event postcard announced tonight's program well in advance, which didn't make much of a difference to me then.

And so I walked into Namaste Hall, and surveyed the refreshments MFA program coordinator, Theresa Newman, had relentlessly organized for the evening. My eyes searched for her to confirm which one was vegetarian, as I couldn't identify a dish which looked like one. Alonzo had arrived by that time and was chatting with Cindy and others while I sank into a chair and resigned myself to another session, and mercifully the last, after a long day of workshopping.

Cindy did exceedingly well moderating the event; obviously, she was having a blast, as she mentioned later. It was evident she was an admirer of Alonzo's work and has been closely following his work as the artistic director of the Lines Ballet. She asked several questions pertaining to his art, his ballet company, the collaborators and performances and his upcoming programs.

The responses from Alonzo were phenomenal. Whatever the questions were, Alonzo returned to one answer; the philosophy, or more precisely, the spirituality of art. While the audience wanted to hear more about the ladder he used to reach the artistic heights, Alonzo was actually describing what art feels like after you reach the peak. Hearing him speak about his relationship with art, the capacity for unconditional love for art, the difference between making, doing and being, and the importance of falling and getting up quickly, I could see what he was talking about: something religion and spirituality have been talking about over the centuries: a capacity to "Know Thyself."

When the event was over I felt the urge to get up and go talk to him. At the same time, I didn't want to go. He had said all that he had to say and I had heard what I wanted to hear. Meeting in person became irrelevant. The regret that I didn't go and watch his gracious movements during the rehearsal disappeared.

I just lingered on, unmindful of time, my bus to King and 4th, and the need to catch the 2015 Caltrain to go home.

Alonzo is King.

Exploring New Dimensions of Psychodynamic Theory and Practice at CIIS

By KAISA PUHAKKA, professor in the Clinical Psychology Department at CIIS

Psychodynamic practice is making a comeback thanks to a recent surge in empirical research  supporting it (see for example Jonathan Shedler's 2010 article in APA's The American Psychologist). But far-reaching developments in the field have been quietly happening long before they caught the public eye.

Psychodynamic therapy today is indeed very different from what it was in Freud's time. In a forthcoming book, "That Was Then, This is Now: An Introduction to Contemporary Psychodynamic Therapy," Shedler details recent changes in the field. To me the most fascinating developments are the active presence of the “unconscious” and the shift from authoritarian delivery of interpretations by therapist to patient to a more collaborative work between the two as practiced in contemporary relational psychodynamic approaches. These developments open a meeting ground for psychodynamic and other holistic approaches such as existential and phenomenological psychotherapies, which rejected the Freudian theory of the unconscious. They also open the door for exchanges with spiritual traditions such as Buddhism and its sophisticated meditative techniques for deepening access to the unconscious.

Now what is it that psychodynamic therapists do? Freud used to call ours an “impossible profession,” and certainly it is impossible to answer this question briefly. Just for starters, they do a lot of deep listening, which is an extraordinary skill that's being honed throughout the training of psychodynamic therapists and usually keeps developing in depth and refinement even after formal training. It takes more than the ordinary ear to listen deeply, which is why Theodore Reik long ago named it “listening with the third ear.” Deep listening tunes not just into what the person knows about themselves but also what they don't know and perhaps don't want to know about themselves. The latter especially is important because very likely nobody ever listened to it before. It may be communicated by words not intended, by gestures and body language, and by something even more subtle and difficult to name that therapists sense to the extent that they are open to sensing it.

This takes me back to the importance of training and cultivation of the extraordinary skill of listening. For this skill to deepen, the therapists in training need to turn their “third ear” toward their own interior to learn to sense in the moment what otherwise would pass unnoticed in their response to the patient. In contemporary psychodynamic therapy, the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious is permeable, and some of what happens in the process between therapist and patient is communicated directly without conscious verbal mediation.  Buddhist meditative practices, such as mindfulness-based stress-reduction, have been adapted as simple techniques for the benefit of patients in mainstream symptom reduction approaches. In psychodynamic therapy, it is first and foremost the therapists who benefit from Buddhist meditation in deepening their attunement to their own as well as the patient's interior processes.

Crazy Brave Feminist Offers Empowering Perspective on Grace

By ADA SEINE KAI, a student in the Writing and Consciousness MFA program at CIIS. She received her MA in East-West Psychology and splits her time between writing poetry and sharing poetry through movement and myth in the yoga sessions she leads. She lives in San Francisco, where she is working on her first book of poems.

This post was written as an assignment for professor Brynn Saito's multi-genre MFA-level writing workshop, WRC 7093. In this class, students produce new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, while reflecting on their lives, influences, and processes as artists and writers.

I know better than to judge a book by its cover, but I’ve met some life-changing poems after judging them on their titles. I knew I was going to like Joy Harjo’s prose-poem "Grace" the moment my eye caught that word. Grace, so soft and unassuming, is packed with the grating feeling of masculine power-over and divine withholding. I remember too many hell-talks on Sunday to be able to think of grace as meaning much besides: I am doing it all wrong. Other traditions helped me soften to the concept some, but that early imprint—as they tend to do—stuck.

The need for resolution and the promise of emotional depth drew me into the poem. It helped to know that Harjo is of both Western European and Native American descent (Cherokee and Creek). As a young feminist of similarly mixed origin (Shawnee and Irish), I resonate strongly with her indigenous voice and use of natural symbols. The first lines of Grace are bold and elegant. “I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox.” She plainly says what she wants to say; there are no contrived line breaks or mechanisms to toy with us.

The whole poem is right there. Harjo unpacks it with a bit of narrative arc, but the meaning is ours for the taking, if we like. It is an invitation, on our terms. These lines define an ambivalent relationship with grace, and they express a complexity between the invisible and visible world that is developed later in the poem. At once there is a heart-breaking depth of pain alongside the lightness of language that perfectly captures the empowered experience of grace. “We had to swallow the town with laughter, so it would go down easy, like honey.” It is a tough choice, but it is still their choice.

As a perpetual outsider, Harjo provides insight into how we see ourselves as women from culture to culture. From her poem, "Book of Myths":

There is Helen in every language; in American her name is Marilyn / but in my subversive country, / she is dark earth and round and full of names / dressed in bodies of women / who enter and leave the knife wounds of this terrifyingly / beautiful land; / we call ourselves ripe and pine tree woman.

The sensuality of earth, nature, and roundness provide images that empower women away from the violent and oppressive symbolism of patriarchal systems that might call a beautiful woman, say, a bombshell blonde with killer legs. What does it take to live in that subversive country? It definitely takes bravery to change our word choice and meaning-making systems. And it must also take a little bit of crazy to provide that unique perspective in the first place.

The poems cited here are from the collection of poems “She Rises Like the Sun,” edited by Janine Canan. Joy Harjo's memoir, “Crazy Brave” came out this summer. For more on Joy Harjo’s music, writings, and poetic adventures visit her blog.