Memory Arts Cafe at Brooklyn Museum

MEMORY ARTS CAFÉ CELEBRATION
at the Brooklyn Museum
Saturday, May 25, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Rubin Pavilion, 1st Floor
Free

Individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, their caregivers, and the general public are all invited to join this celebration of the Memory Arts Café, featuring jazz trumpeter Jesse Neuman and the Rhythm Break Cares Dance Company with Stine Moen and Hooba. Coproduced by the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, the Brooklyn Museum, and the New York Memory Center. Hosted by Gary Glazner of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. Reception to follow. Email: access@brooklynmuseum.org for more information. The Brooklyn Museum also presents Brooklyn Afternoons: Art and Conversation for Individuals with Memory Loss, a free monthly program that invites individuals with memory loss and their caregivers to explore the Museum’s collections together. Information at access@brooklynmuseum.org

The New York Memory Center is a Brooklynbased agency providing services to adults with cognitive, physical, and emotional limitations to help them enjoy life beyond diagnosis of memory loss. http://nymemorycenter.org/

The Memory Arts Café is sponsored, in part, by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, and the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council.

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

MIDNIGHT IN CENTRAL PARK: UNGA POCH KID

MIDNIGHT IN CENTRAL PARK: UNGA POCH KID

There are purple flowers, orchids and grapes.
Purple is the color of Patricia's rain coat, the priests' vestments and wine.

Soft edges float with uncertainty like rain clouds.
Fog, cotton, marshmallows, mud.
Uncertainty, uncertainty.

Green is rough.
Green is smooth.
Green is a walk in the new mowed lawn

This poem was created as part of the "Meet Me at MoMA" project. The session was led by Museum Educator, Riva Blumenfeld. She had participated in staff training I provided at MoMA last year and she used some of the APP techniques in leading the session. She asked a series of questions: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU LOOK AT THIS COLOR PURPLE?
THESE EDGES ARE SOFT LIKE...
IF I WERE TO TOUCH THIS GREEN SHAPE IT WOULD FEEL LIKE...
IF I WERE THE ARTIST I WOULD CALL THIS PAINTING...

The group's answers form the lines of the poem.

Riva and I reconnected last week at the Practice & Progress: The MoMA Alzheimer's Project Exchange and I was excited to learn from her that she had been using the APP techniques and having success.

Painting No. 3/No. 13 by Mark Rothko
Bequest of Mrs. Mark Rothko through The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc.
© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

John Fons' Writing

A while back we featured the poetry of Jon Fons. He had participated in Alzheimer's Poetry Day at the Overture Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Fons has recently launched a wonderful website featuring his writing. Click here to link to his website:

Here is another of Fons' poems:

Pressed Flowers

You are the
Bloom of
Yesterday.

Your colors
And scent
Evaporated,
Your stem
Grown brittle.

Yet every
Flower holds
The memory of
Its passion.

Every petal
Tells a beauty
Beyond fashion.

APP on the Radio

Click here to listen to the show: Alzheimers Speaks Radio, Blog Talk Radio

Performing a poem at the Memory Arts Cafe.

With Gary Glazner and project artists Zoe Bird; Fabu Carter; Rachel Moritz and Michelle Otero.

ONION

This poem was created by the poets of Barelas Share Your Care, in Albuquerque, New Mexico and poet Michelle Otero on February 6, 2012. 

The model poems Otero used were “Ode to the Onion” by Pablo Neruda and “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

As this is part of the APP Spanish language project she also used the Dicho: "Del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho." (From the word to the act, there’s quite a long path.) 

Otero writes about the session, "Participants raised and lowered their arms like waves as we read 'The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls.' They laughed when I introduced Neruda’s 'Ode to the Onion.' I shared with them the names of other Neruda Odes ('Ode to My Socks,' 'Ode to the Dictionary,' 'Ode to the Apple') and then passed around five large onions I had brought in as props. Many remembered growing onions in their gardens.

We passed an onion as a sort of talking stick when writing our onion poem. Many of the participants rubbed the skin between their fingers or smoothed their hands over the round surface. Having something to hold and respond to led to some creative lines of poetry and inspired one woman to sing a song she’d learned as a child, changing the lyrics to fit our poem ('Lonely little onion in a turnip patch…').

 

Onion

 

This onion feels like a hand.

It’s a nice onion, as big as a baseball.

We grew lots of onions in West Virginia,

lonely little onion in a turnip patch

Está bonita esta cebolla.

¿Quién sabe qué diría?

En Cuahtemoc tienen cebolla, melon.

It feels very thin, almost like from a tree.

If this onion could talk, it would say,

“I’m getting so hungry, I’m gonna eat myself.”

It’s pretty because it’s so round.

If this onion could talk, it would say,

“Don’t eat me!”

The onion feels hard, it smells real bad.

Onions have a sweet taste.

They enhance the flavor of other foods.

It’s good when it grows.

It goes to the children.

I was following my children.

I don’t what you’d call this onion, but it’s round and cold.

If this onion could talk, it would say,

“If you take my outer skin off, I’m gonna make you cry.”

This onion feels like eggplant, smooth, really smooth.

I knew the names of all the onions. I forgot.

This onion’s name is Smelling Good,

brings back memories of my mom cooking dinner,

chopping onions, a good bowl of onion soup.

It smells like vinegar. And they cut it. It makes you cry.

Onion heals a cold. Just cut it open,

chop it up, put some Caro syrup on it and eat it.

Yum!

Onions probably grow in the ground,

but that thing sticking out feels like a leaf

so maybe it’s a tree.

APP in Wisconsin

Kids Who Give

Max Wallack the teenage poet whose poem was featured in Dementia Arts on Capitol Hill has been awarded $1000 from KidsWhoGive.com. Max is giving the money to Alzheimer’s research. Please help him win an additional $10,000 by voting for him at Kids Who Give at:  
http://kidswhogive.com/vote-on-entries/

Here is his poem from Dementia Arts on Capitol Hill:

Dementia

It gallops in silently on powerful hoofs
Snatching sweet, precious, forgotten memories
Turning true-blue loyal friends into treacherous strangers
Clogging synapses with emptiness
Crumbling trust into excruciating paranoia

With bleak darkness comes the anxious wakefulness of broad daylight
And bitter terror encompasses every living fiber
"If I sleep, where will I be when I wake up?"
The compulsion to run, the paralysis of fear

Mature, child-like dependence
Retracing youthful development, but in rapid reverse
Cureless medicines, meaningless conversations
Leading up to the inevitable

This poem was first published at Mind Set Poetry. The site is hosted by the Alzheimer's Association
Massachusetts/New Hampshire Chapter. Read the poems and learn more at : http://mindsetpoetry.org/

Max is also the founder of Puzzles-To-Remember. You may reading about the project on at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Puzzles-To-Remember/106150529406566?group_id=0