Alzheimer's Poetry Project

Dear St. Dymphna

2012-01-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

an Alzheimer’s Prayer

You are not the simple country girl
doe-eyed on the prayer card

but a closet organizer, one who
takes a battered shoebox full

of memories to draw a clock face,
remembering the way fingers clasp

when they are joined in prayer.
I think of you as a carpenter

who crafts a carved gothic vault
inside the mind’s dark nave, the candle

waiting to be relit, a voice passing
in a litany of saints, a labyrinth’s thread.

I see you there always reaching out,
but how hard it is to recollect your name.

Dear St. Dymphna is dedicated to Bruce Meyer's father Homer Meyer who passed away 2006. Homer Meyer was an electrical engineer and wrote numerous codes and international standards as well as designing major hydraulic projects such as the lift system on the Canso Causeway in Nova Scotia.

Bruce Meyer has published 34 books including three last fall: Alphabestiary: A Poetry Emblem Book (with H. Masud Taj, Exile Editions), The White Collar Book: Canadian Poetry and Prose of the Professional World (with Carolyn Meyer, Black Moss Press), and A Book of Bread (Exile Editions). He was a national bestseller in 2000 with The Golden Thread: A Reader’s Journey Through the Great Books (Harper Collins). He is a professor of English at Georgian College in Barrie Ontario where he teaches in the Laurentian University BA Program. Meyer is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Barrie.

Confused the Hours by Huw Parsons

2012-01-03T07:40:00.000-08:00

It’s seldom that I see her,
Except there in the mirror.
It’s then I glimpse the mysterious face,
Of that woman who’s taking over my place.

She stole money from my purse and more deceives,
Pulled the rug from my feet and lost the keys.
Such pure pandemonium and to make me a mockery,
Piles high the sink with my best broken crockery.

She eats my food, so I hide it in the shed
And leaves out in the rain almost every book I've read.
Much mayhem, mischief and misunderstanding,
In all of which this witch has had a hand in.

Every night as I sleep she's standing by the bed,
So such vivid dreams they flicker through my head -
Whilst downstairs an army of furniture removers,
Shifts the heavy sofa through some tight manoeuvres.

She’s touched the clocks, confused the hours
And tampered with the fairest flowers.
So my roses ‘Peace’ and ‘Ena Harkness,’
Now in the garden bloom in darkness.

And like a full moon she can curdle fresh milk
And is even stranger than the shore of Acker Bilk.
To her ailments she’s a martyr, quite the little Joan of Arc,
So I search the drawers for tinder and some means to make a spark!

Proud to start the New Year with this poem and painting honoring his mother Marjorie Parsons by the Welsh artist and writer Huw Parsons. Not only is Parsons a talented poet and painter, he also embarks on delightful poetry projects like "chalking up" poems all over the town of Brecon.

For More info on the poetry and painting of Huw Parsons and to see images of his poetry projects click here.

Huw Parsons was born in 1954 and grew up in Llyswen, a village some ten miles or so west of Hay on Wye. He was educated at Brecon Boys’ Grammar School and Chelsea College of Art. He’s worked as a painter, filmmaker, lecturer, antique dealer, watch repairer and an author and photographer.

In many ways Huw is neither ‘fish nor fowl.’ As a border person he thinks of himself as being neither wholly English nor particularly Welsh and because of his life’s diversity has become a social impostor and a cultural chameleon. As for writing he believes that he’s no particular gift, except for having a dogged determination, combined with being observant, having a good ear and an ability to write in simple, descriptive English. His literary influences include the poems of John Betjeman and Phillip Larkin, the novels of Leslie Thomas and the song lyrics of Sting and Jake Thackray.

STARRY NIGHT POEM

2011-12-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

STARRY NIGHT
This poem was created as part of the Meet Me at MoMA project. New York poet Gary Glazner and Francesca Rosenberg, MoMA Director of Community and Access Programs, led the session. Van Gogh's panting "Starry Night," served as the inspiration for the poem. Questions were asked around what the participants felt while looking at the painting and what stars might, taste, smell and sound like. The participant’s answers form the lines of the poem.

Appreciative.
Very calm- and yet there’s turmoil.
A little suspect, a little sinister,
something evil about it, that plant.
Confusing.

A star tastes delicious.
A star tastes like a milky way.

If I had a thought, I would but you’re okay
so you can get away.

A star smells like peanut butter.
You’ve got to do it.

The stars sound like full heritage.
Everyone looks at a star and dreams.

A star sounds like a symphony.

The painting is soothing you could sleep happily.
I see bi-polar, I feel pity for the person
describing his feelings in the painting.

You can read a lot into Van Gogh’s painting.

I like the sun the way it moves.
Oh my goodness!
Let me think about that now.

Not to count everything that you can use.

It looks like a storm.
Blue’s my favorite color, as we can see.

Starry Nights

2011-12-09T08:23:00.000-08:00

Thrilled to lead a workshop next Tuesday with with Francesca Rosenberg as part of the Museum of Modern Arts' "Meet Me at MoMA" project. We will use the artwork to inspire people living with dementia to perform and create poems. A dream come true for me is being able to use "Starry Nights," by Vincent Van Gogh.

Meet Me at MoMA

Article on the APP in My Hometown Paper

2011-12-01T20:26:00.000-08:00

Photo Credit: Frankie Frost

Richard Halstead wrote a wonderful article on our Alzheimer's Poetry Day- Novato.
The event was sponsored by the North Bay Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association
and partially funded by the Bill Graham Foundation. Big thanks to Shelley Dombroski
of the Alzheimer's Association and Holly Rylance of LifeLong Medical Care for setting up the event.

Read the article Marin Independent Journal.

Alzheimer's Poetry Day- Albuquerque

2011-10-30T17:57:00.000-07:00

Alzheimer’s Poetry Day Comes to Albuquerque

Alzheimer’s Poetry Day will take place 11am to 1pm, on Saturday, November 5th at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 4th Street SW, Albuquerque.
Free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Alzheimer’s Poetry Day is a celebration of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project (APP). Readings will be in English and Spanish. Guest artist Jimmy Santiago Baca will give a reading of his original work. Gary Glazner, founder and Executive Director of the APP and APP Spanish Director and poet Michelle Otero will read classic, well-loved poems and poems written by those with Alzheimer’s.

They will also speak about the APP and the findings from the pilot program conducted in New Mexico, as well as provide tips on using poetry to connect with people living with dementia. A highlight of the event will be the creation of an original poem by the poets and the audience. This event is designed for everyone from activity directors to caregivers to persons living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia and their families.

Jimmy Santiago Baca collections include Selected Poems / Poemas Selectos (New Directions, 2009), C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans: Dream Boy's Story (Grove Press, 2002), Healing Earthquakes (2001), Set This Book on Fire (1999), In the Way of the Sun (1997), Black Mesa Poems (1995), Poems Taken from My Yard (1986), and What's Happening (1982). A self-styled "poet of the people," Baca conducts writing workshops with children and adults at countless elementary, junior high and high schools, colleges, universities, reservations, barrio community centers, white ghettos, housing projects, correctional facilities and prisons from coast to coast.
More info at jimmysantiagobaca.com

Michelle Otero A writer, performer, and teacher, Michelle Otero is the author of Malinche's Daughter, an essay collection based on her work with women survivors of sexual assault in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her work has appeared in Artful Dodge, Brevity, and Puerto del Sol, and her awards include an Associated Writing Programs Intro Journal Award and a Fulbright Fellowship. She is member of the Macondo Writers' Workshop.

Together with visual artist Chrissie Orr, she teaches multigenerational art and storytelling workshops through El Otro Lado: The Stories that Connect Us. She holds a B.A. in History from Harvard University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College. A tenth-generation New Mexican, she is Creative Director of Valle Encantado, an organization promoting sustainable development initiatives in the Atrisco historic core in Albuquerque, and co-founder of Connecting Community Voices, an Albuquerque-based organization building positive social change through creative community expression.

More info at michelleotero.wordpress.com

This event is partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and sponsored by the Alzheimer's Association, New Mexico Chapter and New Mexico Literary Arts.

TimeSlips ON-LINE!

2011-09-21T06:38:00.000-07:00

Many people are familiar with Anne Basting's amazing TimeSlips story telling project. She and her team have been hard at work for the last year or so building a user friendly web version of the project. Here is what Anne writes:

"The new storytelling software is playful and easy to use. I think you'll like it.

Here's how:

1) USE THE SITE!
-visit www.timeslips.org
-sign up (it's free!)
-Click Start a Story and play with the story software (you can invite friends to tell stories with you!)
-Send stories to your FB page, or email them to friends.

2) Send a personal email to friends you think might love this site.
3) Put a short blurb about the new site on your blog or into your newsletter.
4) Tell groups you're leading about the site as a resource.

I can't thank you enough. I feel like we have an amazing tool to give people - to let the joy of imagination brighten their lives."

Please give TimeSlips new tool a try!

Lonnie Sue Johnson

2011-09-20T06:30:00.000-07:00

Wonderful article in the NY Times today. This quote says so much about people living with cognitive impairment, “She is not an empty shell. There is something about your identity that’s distinct from memory.” So much more heartening than Pat Robertson's recent dust-up on divorcing one's spouse when they have Alzheimer's. Here are a couple of links to Robertson:

Slate

New York Times

Below is another of John Fons' poems in tribute to his mother.
In Memory

I love you.
I have always
Loved you.

You are not
With me
Now, but
I know
Your love
Is with
Me always.

We have
Never stopped
Loving one
Another. The
Time of
Our love
Is not
Counted
In days
Or weeks
Or years.

Eternity
Means eternity.
That is love
And love
Weds you
And I
Together.

Venita Fons

2011-08-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

One of the highlights of the Alzheimer's Poetry Day held at the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, Wisconsin on August 2nd, 2011 was having local poet John Fons participate. He has been writing poetry on his experience with his mother living with dementia.

John Fons is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife Jane. He worked with his father, the late Lloyd C. Fons, in oil and gas exploration before graduating from Dallas Theological Seminary. John’s mother Venita and his father celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary in Chicago where once they recognized each other at the intersection of State and Randolph after a childhood friendship and subsequent separation for many years. They raised four children. Venita is now diagnosed late Alzheimer’s and resides at a memory care unit in California. She remains as she has always been, a kind and loving soul intent on finding the best within herself and others.

Here are two of John's poems:

Visitors

Who are
These people
Who come
To say
Hello?

They never
Leave.
Where do
They think
They go?

My son,
My daughter,
My niece,
My nephew
Always within
My heart.

My sister,
My brother,
My closest
Friends have
Lived within
Since love
First made
Us one.

I keep
Them here.
They cannot
Leave.

Where do
They think
They go?

Letters

These are
Written to me.

I love these
Letters written
From loved
Ones.

See them
Where I
Keep them.

Here is
One from
My son.

Another from
My daughter.

I have a
Few from
My friends
At church.

Here’s another.

Alzheimer's Poetry Day- Madison was partially funded by the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission, the Helen Bader Foundation and the Madison Arts Commission.

Alzheimer's Poetry Day- Baraboo and Madison

2011-07-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

Here is Karin Barreau reading her poem "Time is Here," written for her neurologist on his retirement. She will be featured at Alzheimer's Poetry Day, 11am to 1pm, on Tuesday, August 2nd, at Overture Center for the Arts, 201 State Street, Madison, WI.

Free and open to the public, the Alzheimer's Poetry Day- Madison is a celebration of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project. Fabu Carter Brisco, Madison Poet Laureate Gary Glazner, founder and Executive Director of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project and Wisconsin APP Director, Lisa Auter will read classic, well-loved poems and poems written by those with Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer’s Poetry Day- Baraboo will take place 11am to 12:30pm, on Saturday, July 30th, in the cafeteria at UW-Baraboo/Sauk County, 1006 Connie Road, Baraboo, WI as part of the Summerset Festival of the Arts. Featuring members of the Sauk County Writer’s Group, “The Purple Cow Poets,” and APP founder Gary Glazner

Alzheimer's Poetry Day is funded in part by the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission, the Helen Bader Foundation, the Madison Arts Commission and the Poetry Foundation. Sponsored by the Alzheimer's & Dementia Alliance of Wisconsin.

Michele Brody

2011-06-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of meeting New York artist Michele Brody at Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Here is an image of her Tea House Quilt.

She has people write on over-sized tea bags, poems, stories, musings. Yesterday Brody attended the poetry workshop at Park Slope Geriatric with the idea that in the fall we will collaborate having people living with dementia participate in creating a quilt. We experimented with passing around tins of tea and letting the group describe the scent. We created a poem on our favorite beverages and on sharing meals and drinks with family and friends.

We used one of Issa's haiku as inspiration

drinking tea alone--
every day the butterfly
stops by

The group liked the idea that one could visit with a butterfly.

You may read more about Brody's Tea House Project at:
Tea House

Like many artists Brody has a multitude of ideas and has a wide range of interesting projects up and running. One of her most fascinating projects is her Nature Preserve. Also, like most artists she is seeking funding you may read about the project and find out how to help out here:

Nature Preserve

To raise funds for her work she is using United States Artist. This type of social media funding site like Kickstarter is becoming more popular and is worth checking into is you are not already familiar with them. I encourage you to check out and support the project.

You may read more about Brody's work at:

Michele Brody

Alzheimer A Visual Poem

2011-06-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

Petra Anders sent me a link to this poem by the Dutch Artist, Peter Meijboom

You may see more of his visual poems at: VISUELE+POEZIE

Arts! by the People

2011-06-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

Paul Rabinowitz, Director of Arts! by the People is a truly inspiring person. I had the great pleasure last year of of working with him and his artists. The group he has put together reflects his passion and drive. It was a treat to get an email today detailing the work he has been doing with the Lester House Poets in New Jersey. Here is Paul's program lesson, the artwork that they used and the poem the artwork inspired. Paul writes:

"At our Friday poetry session our senior citizens of Lester Housing experimented with ekphrastic writing. Ekphrasis is the graphic, often dramatic description of a visual work of art. We read ekphrastic poems inspired by Edward Hopper's, Nighthawks and Pablo Picasso's, Man with a Blue Guitar. It turned out to be a fascinating session because of the abstract nature of our dialogue.

They decided to title the poem [untitled]. An abstract idea in itself! They wanted to add their own free form lines to introduce the work.

At the end of the class I revealed to them that the artist is their fine arts instructor, Willie Baez.

A big thanks to Willie for introducing me to this unique form of expression and for lending us the artwork. Also a big thanks to Stacy Osei-Kuffour for helping out and transcribing."

[Untitled]

Reflections,

life,

dreams,

a man for all seasons,

tightly interconnected random thoughts.

When I look at this painting

I see above me and below me and side to side slowly

I see nature and food and plants and good things to smell and eat

I see a dreamer; I see things he might like to do

I see life, food, flowers, dreams; what makes the world

I see balance in one's life

I see reflections things past and present

Created by the seniors at Lester Housing in our Talking Poetry Class, June 03, 2011
More about Arts! by the People at:

Recognition

2011-05-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

I had the good fortune to speak on the Alzheimer's Poetry Project at the 9th annual National Latino Writers Conference held May 18th to 21st in Albuquerque at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. We are working with Carlos Vasquez, the History and Literary Arts Program Director and holding an APP event there in November. He was kind enough to ask me to give a welcoming talk. I met a number of writers including Elena Díaz Bjorkquist who generously shared some of her poetry on her response to her father's dementia.

Recognition

Elena Díaz Bjorkquist

I ask, “Who am I?”
Daddy lowers his gaze
As if the answer
Will appear
on the floor

Minutes drag by,
I hold my breath –
Has he forgotten me?

Suddenly, he looks up,
Smiles,
Says,
“Elena . . .
you’re Elena.”

Satisfied, he nods.
I exhale,
Return his smile,
Pat his shoulder.

He’s forgotten much
But not me.

Elena taught at Santa Rosa Junior College in California for a year before running the CETA Program for the County of Sonoma. When she moved north to Mendocino County she started a bilingual program for Mexican children and taught ESL and Spanish. Later she taught U.S. History and Spanish at Mendocino High School. In 1990, she retired from teaching and began writing Suffer Smoke. In the fall of 1996 she returned to teaching with a position at Sonoma State University where she taught Chicano/Latino Studies classes. More about her at elenadiazbjorkquist.net

New Poetry by Octavia McBride

2011-05-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

What Remains
For Mom

her memory
a soup of evaporating dissonance
has survivors
gentlemen with brogues, mouthing all kinds of blues
Yeats & lots of Langston

Octavia McBride and her daughter Sojourner have worked with the APP in Philadelphia. Her new poetry collection, "Where My Birthmark Dances," will be published by Finishing Line Press this July. For more information go to:

http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm

We will post more of her poetry when the collection comes out. It was delightful to work with her and her daughter. Congratulations on the new book!

The image above is from Sojourner's blog and shows Octavia hanging a poetry butterfly! Read more at:
http://trumpetworld.blogspot.com/2011/04/shout-out-to-my-mom-where-my-birthmark.html

Octavia McBride-Ahebee is a writer of poetry, short stories and plays. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States, McBride-Ahebee lived for nine years in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa. A former reporter for The Philadelphia Tribune, her literary work has appeared in the following books and journals: It Is Time For Change; Speeches of William R. Tolbert, The Beloit Poetry Journal, International Quarterly, The Eagle Spirit, and Poet Lore (2nd place winner in the John Williams Andrews Narrative Poetry Competition).

Educated at Williams College and Cheyney University, McBride-Ahebee's debut collection of poetry, Assuming Voices, has recently been published by Lit Pot Press. McBride-Ahebee's poetry gives voice to women who historically have not been heard; African women, women in refugee camps, women who are victims of civil war, women who are new immigrants and village women battling such diseases as breast cancer and obstetric fistula.

BROOKLYN

2011-04-15T05:43:00.000-07:00

BROOKLYN
(On Thursday, April 14th, 2011 in honor of “Poem in your Pocket Day,” the Park Slope Geriatric Day Center Poets, Brooklyn Poet Laureate, Tina Chang and Alzheimer’s Poetry Project founder, Gary Glazner created the poem “Brooklyn.”)

What Brooklyn sounds like depends on what you’re listening for.
Brooklyn has all kinds of sounds: children playing, birds, traffic.

You ought to know what Brooklyn smells like!
Brooklyn does not smell like chocolate.
It smells like fresh air.
It’s odorless.
It depends on where you live.

Brooklyn tastes like a slice of cold watermelon.
Brooklyn tastes like a slice of hot pizza.
Brooklyn tastes like a slice of Junior’s cheesecake,
with strawberries and whipped cream on top!

Brooklyn feels like home.
I feel good! (Sing it like James Brown.)

Baby Juliet says, “Brooklyn feels like an open window or goo, goo, goo!”

What would I say to the Brooklyn Bridge?
It depends on if you’re coming or going.
I would say, “Brooklyn Bridge you’re grand.”

Brooklyn is a great place!
Ride the Cyclone.
Eat a hotdog.
You can walk on the boardwalk,
or go “under the boardwalk, boardwalk.” (Sing it like the Drifters.)

First time I saw Brooklyn we were driving up from the South.
I was asleep in my family’s car.
I woke up and saw all the lights.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Does heaven look like Brooklyn, with Marty at the gates?
We will rejoice when we get to heaven!
We will rejoice when we get to Brooklyn!

Brooklyn is like a botanical garden with all these different people.
I feel good when I am in Brooklyn.

For more information on
Park Slope Geriatric Day Center
For more information on
Tina Chang

Poem in Your Pocket Day

2011-03-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

The Alzheimer's Poetry Project is proud to be asked to participate in the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs' Poem in Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 14th. We will perform and create poems about the life in New York with the people at Park Slope Geriatric and CV Star adult day care programs.

Poem in Your Pocket Day

We will be posting more information about the events soon. You may see videos of people living with dementia responding to poetry on the

APP YouTube Channel

10am, Poetry Session
Park Slope Geriatric
199 14th Street NY 11215

1pm, Poetry Session
CV Star Adult Day Care
445 E. 85th Street, New York

Contact Gary at
gary@alzpoetry.com for more information.

Info from the DCA
In honor of April as National Poetry Month, the City of New York sponsors the annual Poem in Your Pocket day. During the month and on PIYP day, schools and cultural organizations across the five boroughs host poetry readings and writing workshops focusing on poetry.

History
The Office of the Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education, initiated the annual citywide Poem in Your Pocket day (PIYP) celebration in 2002. The goals of PIYP day are to showcase the talented faculty and student poets in higher education and the K-12 system, and encourage New Yorkers to embrace literacy and poetry.

In 2009, the Academy of American Poets took Poem in Your Pocket day national, allowing individuals around the country to join in and channel their inner bard. The Academy also published Poem In Your Pocket, a book that enables you to select a poem you love, tear it out, and then carry it with you all day to read, be inspired by, and share with coworkers, family, and friends.

Poem in Harper's

2011-02-26T06:45:00.001-08:00

Very excited to have this APP poem published by Harper's this month. Here is the link, hope you enjoy it!

Harper's Magazine

From “Sun,” a poem written by early-stage dementia patients during a workshop hosted by the Purchase, New York, chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. Gary Glazner, a New York–based poet and founder of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, led the group in creating a poem about the sun, using Hone Tuwhare’s poem “Rain” as a model. The lines of the poem are comments by the participants in the original order.

Poetry opens Friday

2011-02-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

Great review by MANOHLA DARGIS in the New York Times today for Lee Chang-Dong's film "Poetry." Here is a clip from the review, "The film which won For Mija, a 66-year-old raising her only grandson, Wook (Lee David), in a cramped, cluttered apartment in an unnamed city, the pursuit of poetry becomes a pastime and then a passion and finally a means of transcendence. At first, though, it’s a pleasant distraction from an otherwise mundane existence, if also a way to exercise a mind that, as a doctor tells Mija early on, has begun to slip slowly away from her. Out of fear or confusion, she keeps the diagnosis to herself and almost from herself, telling neither Wook nor his mother, who lives in another city. Instead she dons the poet’s cap. “I do have a poet’s vein,” she says, chattering into her cellphone. 'I do like flowers and say odd things.'"

New York Times Review

Lee Chang-dong has done an excellent job and the film is beautifully shot. The screen play is powerful and weaves poetry into the plot of a woman using art to navigate her decent into dementia. With the aging of the baby boomer generation we are at the start of a real challenge. This film will help to bring public awareness to the issues around how best serve and help people living with dementia. To see real life examples of people living with dementia responding to poetry go to:

AlzPoetry YouTube Channel

We have had much success in performing and creating new poetry with people living with dementia. You may see programming in English, Cantonese, and Spanish, as well as a recent program where people were inspired by and wrote on bananas.

Glazner performs at High Mayhem

2011-01-26T07:25:00.000-08:00

Poet and Founder of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, Gary Glazner performs “These Are Real Brains,” with musicians, Carlos Santistevan, bass, Milton Villarrubia, III, percussion, Dino J.A. Deane, Sampler/Live Sampling, Molly Sturges, vocals, and Chris Jonas, saxophone at High Mayhem Emerging Arts Studio, 2811 Siler Lane, Santa Fe NM, Sunday, Feb. 20th, Noon. In addition the program will feature Tommy Archuleta, Valerie Martinez, the past Santa Fe Poet Laureate and John Flax.

Performing and creating poetry with people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia inspire Glazner’s poem “These Are Real Brains.” Working in the tradition of Dada, and Surrealist poets and drawing inspiration and methodology from cut-up and found poetry techniques, collage, and counterpoint, the poem looks at consciousness, attention span and the effects of the cut and paste computer technology. The poem mixes Glazner’s original work with well-loved classic poems. In speaking the lines of Shakespeare the reader uses the same vocal cord, larynx, lungs and lips as he did 400 plus years ago and brings that breath into the world. It looks at cultural touch points of Presidential dementia and explores what it means to love someone who no longer remembers that you are married. It speaks in the voice of people living with memory loss. The poem acts as score and text for improvisational performance and draws on the long history of poetry as oral art.

Here is a video of Glazner performing his poem, "Maps and Wings."

Norman McNamara

2011-01-16T08:20:00.000-08:00

Norman McNamara has been writing poetry and prose about his experience living with Alzheimer's disease. Find his poem "Silent Voices," below. He wrote it for World Alzheimers Day last year and it was read at an event held at Gloucester Cathedral.

He blogs at: norrms.web.officelive.com/

The blog has a wonderful video, info on his books, links to interviews
and other information. One of the honors of doing this work is meeting people like
Norrms, if in this case only on-line and getting a sense of his bravery and creativity in dealing with dementia head-on.

You may find more of his writing at
More than Words, Poems written and spoken by an Alzheimers sufferer

SILENT VOICES

Silent voices shouting everywhere
Silent, yet still rising through the air,
Eyes that look but do not see,
Beating heart inside of me,
Forever wanting their life back,
No more wandering this lonely track,
To talk, to laugh, be understood,
To live their lives as they should,
One year there, next year gone,
Like the setting of the sun,
The Dementia Demon comes along,
Takes away your favourite song,
I have all this yet to come,
Vacant stare, body numb,
But to the end and from the start,
Place your hand around my heart,
Feel it beat inside of me,
Look in my eyes and you will see,
Happy scenes without a tear,
And my silent voice you will hear.

IV

2011-01-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

Our father died peaceful at home, with my brother Lon holding his hand, as dad took his last breath. On Christmas Eve we brought him to Kaiser hospital in Terra Linda and we spend the next three days at his bedside before they allowed us to take him home to die. The poem, “IV,” takes place during those days.

In going through our father’s papers I found a note he had written about growing up in Oklahoma.

“My earliest memories are of our farm in Blair. We lived in a two-room house. The ‘bathroom’ consisted of a one-hole out-house, and for Saturday nights, a large washtub. There were no kids living close by so I mostly played alone. My game of choice was pretending the tumbleweeds were cattle and I would chase them on a stick horse and rope them with a heavy cord. I would then drag them back to the barn and put them in the corral. With the Oklahoma wind always blowing this quite a job.”

IV
The morphine on your breath
Could make a grown man dizzy.

His hands on my shoulders,
he helps to lift himself up.
IV stand, maypole ribbons
of tube and power cord.
We step, step, stop,
step, step, steady,
our way to the toilet,
rolling the stand after us.
He can sit up on his own,
I give him a moment.
Snap on surgical gloves,
gently clean him.
Reverse our papa waltz,
lay him down to rest.

Trying to look busy,
listening for his death.

Cutting Sign

2011-01-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

Our father began his career in law enforcement as a Border Patrol agent in Texas in 1957. One story he tells about that time is how a Texas Ranger named Jim Nance traded his 44 Colt revolver for my toy pistol, putting it in my holster and letting me run up to my mother to show her my "new" gun.

This poem is based on the description my father told me about "cutting sign," the technique of Border Patrol agents use to track people.

Cutting Sign

You can tell a lot by how they walk.
If they’re lost, tired, scared,
the feet circle, drag, scatter.
You can tell their weight,
if they are a man, woman, or child.

Here’s a trick, sweep
a dry creek bed with a branch,
gives you fresh signs.
See how many you got.

If they have been walking in the sun,
short steps trace the heat right to them.
If they have been walking at night,
they break brush, unless there’s a moon.

Once, I saw the outline of knees
ground into the dirt
like crawling or praying.

Can you Bake a Cherry Pie Billy Boy?

2011-01-01T12:04:00.000-08:00

The Alzheimer's Poetry Project has its origins in part through my experience of using poetry in comforting my mother at the end of her life in 1997. This last week having the honor of being able to be at my father's bedside, again gave the chance to recite poetry to a dieing parent. The closing lines of Kubla Khan were especially powerful:

Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

I would sit at the head of my father's bed, softly saying the poem and connecting to him by matching his breathing with the cadence and rhythm of the words.

Below is a section from the opening essay in Sparking Memories: The Alzheimer's Poetry Project Anthology, it includes how my father and I used "Can you Bake a Cherry Pie," to comfort my mother.

Whenever I speak about the APP one question always comes up: “Do you have a family member with Alzheimer’s?” I do not, however I do have a personal connection to using these poems with a loved one. When I first began this project in 1997, my mother was in the last stages of terminal cancer. Through a combination of the drugs she was given to relieve the pain and the progression of the cancer she had grown unable to think and communicate clearly.

One day my father called to ask me to come over as my mother was having a particularly hard time. On arriving, I found her quite agitated. I had with me the poems from the Alzheimer’s program and I began to read to her and soon she was calm. Then my father Billy and I began to recite apoem that she had teased him with when they were childhood sweethearts. My mother quite gently began to say the poem along with us, even laughing as she joined in:

    Oh, where have you been Billy boy, Billy boy,
    Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?
    I have been to seek a wife, she’s the joy of my young life,
    She’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

    Can she make a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy,
    Can she make a cherry pie, charming Billy?
    She can make a cherry pie, quick’s a cat can wink her eye,
    She’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

          It was one of her last moments of real clarity and a moment of playfulness that quite powerfully brought home to me how these poems could be of use to people.

Maps and Wings

2010-12-31T10:52:00.000-08:00

Our father died yesterday at 2am. His obituary is below. On Christmas day when he was in the hospital I asked him if he wanted me to read him a poem and he asked for the one about "Okies."

I read it to him and he grinned and said "pretty good." Below is Maps and Wings written for my father. I will be writing more about him and his and my mother's connection to the Alzheimer's Poetry Project over the next few days. Gary Mex Glazner

Maps and Wings

The road looks the same

no matter where you are going.

Route 66 was my father’s road

and his father’s road.

Model A with the dust bowl

in the rear view mirror

and California in the headlights.

From being men to being Okies.

The vulgarities of newcomers.

A drowsy distant hope.

Route 66 was their plowshare.

They dug into the rank soil.

Held the miles in rusted fingers.

Maps folded like wings.

A banquet of motion.

Beckoning us now

with its broken fragments.

Let us piece the road together.

This is the way they went

and we shall follow them as we are able.

Billy Mex Glazner was born in Blair, Oklahoma on July 31^st, 1930. His childhood sweetheart and wife of 47 years, Frankie Lou Glazner preceded him in death.

As a boy he worked picking cotton and experienced the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Like the characters described in John Steinbeck’s novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” his family traveled from Oklahoma to California in search of work, where his father Mex found employment as an electrician on the Irvine Ranch. Billy’s middle name comes from the state of New Mexico where his grandfather worked on the railroad near Santa Fe. He was so enchanted by the land; he named his son after the state, who then passed it to his son and on to me as a family name.

Everyone who knew Billy Mex remarked on his sense of humor and storytelling ability. Perhaps those talents had their origins in the fact his parents not only showed creativity with their unusual choice of a middle name, but in the fact that the given name on his birth certificate is Billy, not William.

He served in the Korean War as an artillery gunner. In 1957, he joined the U.S. Border Patrol in Sierra Blanca, Texas. He was promoted and transferred to work as an investigator in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in New York City in 1960. His 23-year career in law enforcement culminated in San Francisco as the Assistant Deputy Director, Investigations, INS in 1980.

Upon his retirement in 1980 from the INS, he supported his wife in the purchase of Novato Florist and they worked together until their retirement in 1991. It takes a man secure in his masculinity to go from carrying a snub-nose, 38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster and supervising INS agents to running a flower shop.

Recently he developed a passion for bowling and belonged to the Sons in Retirement Bowling League.

His 1948, Blair Broncos high school yearbook lists his favorite food as: corn bread, molasses, and sassafras tea; his subject as Frankie; his song as “Cigarettes, Whiskey, and Wild, Wild, Women,” and his pastime as sleeping. His sister Ann reported that their mother Minnie was scandalized upon hearing these favorites
read aloud at his high school graduation and said, "He never drank sassafras tea."

He succumbed to cancer of the liver on December 30th, 2001. Billy Mex is survived by: his wife Ann; sisters, Sue and Ann; sons, Gary Mex, Kevin and Lon; their wives Margaret, Alma, and Jennifer, and grandchildren Jennifer, Emily, Frank, Beckett and Ruby. A memorial service will be held at the Presbyterian Chapel, 710 Wilson Ave. Novato, California, Sunday Jan 2^nd, 2011 at 2pm.

Marilyn

2010-12-18T21:08:00.000-08:00

The poem Marilyn was created at the culminating event at the Orlando Art Musuem. A silde of the Andy Warhol print, which is in the collection of the museum was projected on the screen behind the stage and used as inspiration for the poem.

Marilyn

Where did you go Joe DiMaggio?
She was always growing.
JFK loved her.
When she died we all died.
We all loved her.
She had a crisp beauty.
She reminded us of spring.
She was a pioneer.
She was an original.
People looked at her beauty, but not her intellect.
She had an old, well-traveled soul.
She sang, “Happy birthday, Mr. President.”
She had everything, but was never happy.
She was full of light and shadow.
She overdosed on life.


Here is the group creating the poem.			Photos by Melixa Carbonell

APP YouTube Channel

2010-12-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

Check out the video at the Alzheimer's Poetry Project's new YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/alzpoetry?feature=mhum

This video was shot at Sterling Healthcare in Media, PA. The recognition of Sterling Healthcare’s unique programming include an award for creating a science club and their pet therapy dog, a spunky little Boston Terrier named Gilligan won a Bronze Medal for his therapy work from the American Kennel Club ACE Awards. It's an amazing well-run place!

More info at:

http://www.sterlinghcr.com/index.html

Alzheimer's Foundation of America Telethon

2010-12-03T11:46:00.000-08:00

The Alzheimer's Foundation of America has been a great supporter of the APP, including helping to fund our Spanish Anthology. Tomorrow they hold their first Annual Telethon. For details about their telethon, which airs including show times, visit: www.alzfdn.org

Amanda Deutch on the Alzheimer's Poetry Project

2010-11-25T13:06:00.000-08:00

Amanda Deutch is one of the APP's New York Poets, she speaks about her work with the APP and her father's Alzheimer's. This video is from a reading for the APP at the Community Bookstore in Brooklyn on Nov. 10th, 2010

Born and raised in New York City, Amanda Deutch is a poet who traveled the world only to return to the borough in which both of her parents were born. Amanda Deutch's work has been published widely in such magazines as Barrow Street, EOAGH, 6x6, Listenlight, Upstairs at Duroc and Full Metal Poem. She was the recipient of a Footpaths to Creativity residency in the Azores, Portugal and is a member of the Dusie Kollektiv and Rewords (www.rewords.blogspot.com). Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has been invited to read in venues throughout the United States, Europe and North Africa. Deutch is the Founder and Creative Director of Parachute: The Coney Island Performance Festival in Coney Island as well as an arts organizer and educator. A former Counselor and Case Manager for at-risk youth in Portland, Oregon, she has designed and led poetry workshops for runaways, homeless teenagers, and adult cancer survivors. Whether hitting the pavement or inking the pen, Deutch dedicates herself to revealing the poetry everywhere.

Translating Edwin Honig: A Poet’s Alzheimer’s

2010-11-11T15:14:00.000-08:00

Union Docs has a wonderful piece on Alan Berliner's film "Translating Edwin Honig: A Poet’s Alzheimer’s." Great clips from the film and insight into the filmmaker and his relationship to his cousin, friend and former mentor — the poet, translator, critic, and teacher, Edwin Honig.

Check it out at http://www.uniondocs.org/translating-alan-berliner/

One of the most poignant scenes from the film is when Alan asks Edwin what the “one thing” he would say to millions of people watching him in a film, “Remember how to forget.” is Edwin's answer.

Honig was an early translator of Lorca and Pessoa.

You may read some of Honig's poems at Jacket Magazine

Here are the opening lines from "To Infinite Eternity"

Death is closer
to infinite eternity
than life is

and each life closer
to each least breath
than the blankness of
infinite eternity itself

More on Honig's work at the Poetry Foundation website.

Frances Kakugawa

2010-10-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

Great article on Frances Kakugawa's book, "Breaking the Silence: A Caregiver’s Voice," by R. K. Singh on his blog at:

http://rksinghpoet.blogspot.com/2010/09/breaking-silence-tribute-to-sufferers.html

Singh writes, "...Kakugawa and her poet-colleagues’ varied experiences with a broad human perspective, engaging both mind and heart. The caregivers seek to share their compassionate spirit with a sense of gratitude to all those who help the victims of Alzheimer’s disease negotiate their mentally vacant existence."

More on Kakugawa, the book and her work here: http://www.francesk.org/homepage.html#top

J.W. Marshall

2010-10-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

I love Esther Altshul Helfgott's blog "Witnessing Alzheimer's: A Caregiver's View. Today she has a wonderful piece on J.W. Marshall's poetry. Marshall and Christine Deavel co-own Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle. One of the best poetry bookstores in the U.S. Hosting all those readings must of worn off on him because the book is excellent.

To read Esther's blog click here http://blog.seattlepi.com/witnessingalzheimers/archives/220382.asp

More on Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Where Lightening Strikes

2010-10-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

Delighted to get this new poem from one of our summer interns, Elton Ferdinand III. Elton was wonderful to work with and came to us from our friends at Urban Word NYC. He is on scholarship at the University of Madison in Wisconsin and is studying biology as well as pursuing poetry. I love the line, "...There is a small synapse of a chance..." Here is a photo of Elton performing.

Where Lightening Strikes
By: Elton “The ‘third’ Man” Ferdinand

The body is a lightening rod
that only needs the skin. Jolts
happen when we touch too
hard. We will experience
what it means to be live wire.

Beneath us, there are storm
clouds that send thunder
across the space in our sky.
The quiet after it’s over is
not best for us. In the silence,
we lose our clouds.

The sky will clear. We will
start to remember nothing
and forget all we used to
remember. The body uses
electricity to communicate.
When the clouds are gone,
it is hard to reach the space
in the sky. As the world turns
inside us, we will not be able
to hold a memory together.

In a room full of lightening
bolts, our words rain. We try
to make them turbine enough
to spin—speak—remember.
In the rain, lightening can
travel further than it knows.

The body uses lightening
rod communication—stores
it in the ground of its bones.
The ground cannot conduct
electricity unless it’s wet.
There is a small synapse
of a chance that lightening
will convulse from the rod
back into our sky. We will
thunder storm again. Their
memories will play tag again.
If only for that moment.

Stuffing

2010-09-23T00:56:00.000-07:00

The German tour to present the findings from our pilot project, sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Berlin is going well. Giving a talk in Bonn tonight at an educational conference to leading German teachers. Here is a poem one of the participants from the Tubingen event sent to me on the subject of caring for her mother.

Stuffing
Kim Schröder

Rubbing old bread into a glass bowl
you sneak up on me, indiscernibly, as
doughy pellets rise and I glimpse your freckly face.
You feign comprehension
as I subsume your ‘Queen of the Sunday Roast’ role
as if it was normal
you can’t remember how it’s done.

Chopping velvety mushrooms, finely, so finely,
I glance again at the memory of the visit
having to direct your every move: are you going to dress now?
Would you like a shower? You’d got stuck in the bath.

Cutting red onions, releasing their tartness
you hobble-pace to the sitting room
and back, unsure of its realm and your ranking.
I smile because within your confusion the core
of a joke between us remains, un-laughed at yet.

Milling black pepper over the ingredients
I add lemon juice, the freshest sage, generous garlic,
glugs of olive oil, mix and pat into a Pyrex
presenting it to you for inspection, hoping on a resurrection:
you taught me all I know – don’t go.

The Eagle

2010-09-21T06:07:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson

This summer I have had the pleasure of meeting the folks from "Arts by the People," a New Jersey based group that provide a range of arts programs especially focused on youth and seniors, in Northern New Jersey and New York City. I have been training their President Paul Rabinowitz and their Creative Writing Specialist Ellen Papazian in using poetry with elders. Here is a poem from the Poetry Group at Lester Senior Housing, in Whippany, New Jersey from
September 3, 2010.

The Eagle

The eagle is as majestic as harmony.
I was at the top of a mountain.
I’m a world traveler.
It was in Scandinavia.
I had to look up,
and there it was,
unbelievably beautiful.

So different in size than anything else we can ever see,
looking up at the sky at the top of the mountain
and seeing that magnificent bird.

If I was an eagle,
I would fly very high,
and I would see a celebration
with red, green, orange, and white fireworks.
A display of fireworks.

If I was an eagle,
I would fly high above the universe,
so I could observe the people—the world above,
the world beyond—so I could take in the majesty of it all.

If I was an eagle,
I’d fly to the top of the mountain.
I’d see the universe: Here I am, Universe!
Bring back my sweetheart to me!

If I was an eagle—at my stage of the game,
it’s a little late—I would like to fly to the heavens,
so I can see the true beauty of our world.

If I were an eagle,
I’d fly up to the highest mountain that I can see,
so that I’d look down and see that there are really two worlds:
one down there and one up here.

I’m not a poet. I just do practical things.
I don’t know many eagles.
I take care of my practical things—
living, eating, sleeping, dreaming, clothing.

If I was an eagle,
I’d fly to the highest mountain,
look down to pick out the good and the bad.

When I was in Seattle,
I used to see eagles in the tall pine trees.
They have their little baby birds.
They fly back with the food for the baby eagles,
and they put it in the nest.

If I was an eagle,
I’d fly above the clouds
and find all my friends.

If I was an eagle,
I would look for another eagle that I could befriend,
and together we could fly and then defend.

I would fly to different parts of the world
and see how people live and help them to be happy.
When they see me with my large wings,
they would feel beautiful.

And that’s why we’re all eagle scouts!

All You Need is Love...

2010-09-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

The poem below was created by the residents from assisted living and individuals from the Day Program at Alzheimer's Resource Center of Connecticut. We held a record five training and poetry sessions there on Thursday, September 2nd. That totaled up to 6 plus hours of poetry in one day!

The staff was welcoming and motivated. The facility is one of the best run and organized among the many places I have had the honor of working at the past 6 years.

The training was organized by Erica DeFrancesco, MS, OTR/L their Director of Community Services. Here is what she wrote the following day, "I cannot tell you how much your coming meant to our organization – to our residents, staff, families, and to me. It was a joy to watch the ease with which you shared your gift and inspired others to learn."

From the moment I was greeted at 9:30 in the morning, until I left that evening a little before 8pm, I was impressed by how enthusiastic everyone was. Michael Smith their Executive Director sets the tone by empowering the staff. Do you know how when you go into a restaurant and the owner greets you and you can feel their pride? Everyone I met that day had pride of ownership and that pride transfers into how they treat the residents and how they treat each other.

We talk about patient centered care, I think the folks at the Alzheimer's Resource Center of Connecticut, have figured out that how you get there is by starting with caring about each other. The word that most comes to mind when I think of that day is- Respect. YES! Sing it now...R.E.S.P.E.C.T!

Shouts out also to Kelly Smith Papa RN, MSN their Director of Education, Research and Dementia Care Consulting, who shared a lovely story about her grandfather writing poetry. Click hear to read about the professional training and consulting they offer.

Below is one of the poems we wrote that day.

Love

Yes, I care for love, but to a point!

Love sounds like……that’s kind of hard. Is this poem going to be G or R?

Love smells like….I can’t tell you that…I’ve never smelled anything.

It smells like chocolate, but it depends upon what kind of chocolate you are buying.

Love tastes… white.

My bride....She is pure, for a little while.

Love is wonderful. It is two people turning into one, walking together, singing together, and we’re overdoing it.

Love to me is very special, and you’re blessed if you find a mate. I was married for 60 years, and I have 8 children.

Love is not something you can ridicule or something you can play with. It’s precious.

Love has never changed.

Love can feel… relaxing, or tense, or secure.

Love tastes like… bananas!

Love smells white, like a rose.

Love sounds like… happiness, cheerful and peaceful, like laughter.

Love looks light. You put your arms around your husband. It looks light, and happy, and content.

It looks FLAMING red!

"I wandered lonely as a cloud": Lyric Selfhood and Alzheimer's

2010-08-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

Susan Schultz has written a wonderful review of Sparking Memories: The Alzheimer's Poetry Project Anthology on her Tinfish Editor's Blog.

Schultz takes a paper by, Steven Sabat and Rom Harre, "The Construction and Deconstruction of Self in Alzheimer's Disease," as her starting place to look at the "I" in romantic poetry and how that relates to self of the person living with dementia.

I find Schultz' take on the poems we use in the APP fascinating and I am thankful to have this new way to look at the work we are doing through the concept of Deconstruction.

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

A Report from the Field

2010-08-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

We are thankful and proud to have had Helen Wilson as one of our summer interns.
She is studying with Professor Philip Davis at the University of Liverpool. Davis is famous for among other accomplishments his work on the Shakespeared-Brain. An amazing study that shows the brain's response to the use of the grammatical technique of the "functional shift."

We believe the principle explored in Davis' research can be extrapolated to other poetic techniques such as metaphor, simile, and image and accounts in part for the powerful response we see in people living with Alzheimer's disease to poetry. That is the anecdotal observations we see as increased facial expression, smiling, and verbal social engagement are tied to the increase in synaptic activity shown when the brain encounters this creative and unusual use of language.

Here is Helen's account of participating in the Alzheimer's Poetry Project this summer.

Everyday buses lurch, the subway rattles on its tracks and cars jam against one another in the throbbing heat of the summer commute. New York is undeniably a place movement, desirable for some, unavoidable for others. There are those, however, for which the heavy pace of the day to day passes them by entirely; office chairs are replaced with recliners, computer screens with that of the television and the heavy noise that otherwise rims this city with a quiet broken perhaps only by the assertions of an overhead speaker.

A dreary life? No, not necessarily. One different to that generally recognized as ‘New York’? Certainly. The inhabitants of Amber Court Residential Home are such as this. With a population of elderly residents at differing stages of the condition Alzheimer’s, this is not a group I anticipate as one of lively interaction and enthusiastic engagement. This is set to change.

When asked to read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 to the group my first reaction is one of apprehension, reading poetry aloud being something I have never felt entirely comfortable with; partly the remains of shyer younger years and partly a reluctance to share that which sits closest to my heart with a public audience. A previously fumbled reading has left me a little more apprehensive than normal and today I am especially glad of Gary’s optimistic and energetic introductions.

We begin the session and the apparent simplicity of the first poem’s first line ‘Pan es Pan’ belies its power in waking up this audience; previously bent heads begin to rise, formally stilled mouths move along in time and there really is no better way to understand this ditcho than by the smiles that start to appear around the room on its conclusion. In a later session, one resident, apparently disengaged from the entire activity, is roused from his silence with careful questioning, to the point where, reluctant to be held back from participation any longer, he takes the sheet to read the poem aloud himself. We later learn that such an outcome was beyond the imaginings of those caring for this man.

The irrepressible spirit of a woman in her eighties is communicated when she spontaneously delivers a saucy alternative to The Purple Cow", a move that has much of the room laughing with her by the end. The mood transforms from one of at best sedate, at worst dull, to one of play and mischief, I guess what one might call ‘fun’; not something instantly associated with elderly care.

Once the interest of the group is sparked, and the focus maintained, I am introduced and take my place in front of this now receptive crowd. On beginning to read I realize that what I am keenest to communicate is not the clarity of the words as such, but what they strive to find; the feeling, or truth, beneath. It is in looking into the faces of those so different to mine that the line ‘And thy eternal summer shall not fade’ takes on a new resonance; the context of age and decline becomes an asset rather than a hindrance, as that celebrated in the vital insistence of these words – the eternality of shared human experience that goes beyond the individual human life – begins to voice itself afresh.

It is in this moment that I cannot help but realize that in keeping poetry ‘to myself’, in surreptitious private readings has been, for so many years, to miss the point entirely, as it is only in sharing the contents of one heart that we can hope to move others. This was not perhaps what I expected to learn from this internship, thinking myself there to bring the residents out from the shell of their condition, rather than to move out from underneath my own. A better and more valuable lesson would have been hard to come by; as those sleeping minds reawakened to Shakespeare’s distilled and eternal truth, so did mine in a mutual understanding that overcame illness, cultural difference and age. The capacity for literature to bring us all back to the real nature of shared life, so easily forgotten in traffic jams or breakfast queues, is something that the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project is proving impossible to deny.

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Ever wonder what Shakespeare really looked like? Check out this article from last March on the Cobbe painting of Shakespeare.

Tree Poem

2010-07-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

This poem was created by the Mindmovers, early stage group at N.E.W. Curative Rehabilitation in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Executive Director, Noreen Greatens and Program Director, Bob Kralapp of Legacies Arts Project Inc., were receiving training as part of our affiliate program.

The poem was created by asking simple questions about trees. What is your favorite? What a person might do in a tree? What animals might you find there? The answers are in order given with care taken to get the language as close to the words the person says when answering and with only light editing.

The discussion and answers grew more animated as the creation of the poem developed. Bob did a great job of getting the text down and led an exciting performance of the poem upon completion. Especially spirited was the section on the gopher and fermentation!

TREES

My favorite tree is an oak tree.
If it’s in your yard you just climb it
and you look back down and think -
I’ve got to climb all the way back down.
Then there’s a flying squirrel -
Rocky J. Squirrel.
They eat nuts and bury them.
And they jump.
It feels great.
There’s an element of confidence.
It feels like you’re moving on.

Or an apple tree.
An orchard of them.
Full of apples,
juicy and green.
The Granny Smith.
Then there’s Johnny Appleseed,
From Appleton, Wisconsin,
Famous for planting apple seeds.

The crabapple tree
has beautiful pink blossoms.
It’s in the spring.
It’s almost like snow
when the blossoms fall.
And you jump.
They sure taste juicy.
A little sour but awfully sweet.
Crabapples fall on the ground
and they ferment
and gophers eat them
and they get drunk.

That was the best kind of tree to climb -
the crabapple.
You hang from your knees
and you look and look.

Enrich your Caregiving Journey

2010-07-20T04:47:00.000-07:00

Enrich your Caregiving Journey by Margery Pabst and Rita Goldhammer starts with a poem by Pabst that captures the caregiving experience:

Limbs
Arms and Legs
Tense, constricted,
Unable to bend except
Bowing to relentless days
Brimming over.

Feeling Apart
just keeping up.

Full disclosure, I have gotten to know Pabst through the work for the APP she is funding in Florida through the Pabst Charitable Foundation.

For me this means she has not only written a creative and useful book, full of practical tips on how to become a strong caregiver, she is also committing the resources of her foundation to helping caregivers and advance creative solutions as well.

The book by Pabst and Goldhammer is on one side practical, nuts and bolts advice and tips- like understanding that the values you bring to the table may not be the values of other family members also involved in helping with caregiving for your loved one.

For instance one person may be very private, while the other person is outgoing and wants to be around friends. This could effect who to invite to visit the person and this simple understanding and framing it as a value helps navigate and understand the family dynamics.

On the creative side of the book is that all the tips and advice are framed in stories of fictional families, this literary concept allows Pabst and Goldhammer to maximize the life situations the caregivers find themselves in, but like all good writing it draws you in and I found myself wanting to know what would happen next to the family, how they would handle the next hurdle. This narrative drives the book and humanizes the hands-on advice.

The lessons in the book and the knowledge they impart are hard won. The authors draw on their experience as caregivers and create a book they wish they had access to during their own experiences and that heart infuses the book at every level.

In the introduction Lisa Edstrom, the Associate Director of the University of Minnesota, Center on Aging writes, "This book is an important guide and tool that can't be read to soon. Caregivers most often find themselves suddenly immersed in an unfamiliar world of decisions and stress.

By preparing yourself for your role, you can grow in self awareness and experience both person well-being and effectiveness while enhancing your relationships and the well-being of your loved one."

You can find out more about the book at

http://www.pivotalcrossings.com/

One last note the book won the 2010 Caregiver Friendly Award from Today's Caregiver.

APP in the News

2010-07-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Wonderful article in today's WORCESTER Telegram by Jacqueline Reis
(Photo credit- T&G Staff Photos / CHRISTINE PETERSON)

TACKLING ALZHEIMER'S WITH LONG-AGO LESSONS

This poetry session was part of training the APP is doing with Skip Shea and Anna Chinappi and the Center for Peaceful Living.

APP on NPR

2010-07-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a National Public Radio show on the APP produced by Paul Ingles

"In New Mexico, poet Gary Mex Glazner has found that poetry can sometimes have a beneficial effect for people struggling with Alzheimer's disease. Reporter Paul Ingles accompanied Glazner on a recent visit to the Sierra Vista Assisted Living Center in Santa Fe."

Here are comments from Ellen Sue Stern

"I just want to say that
after my mom died
that I wished I had known
during the horrid years of her decline...

we'd be there, watching her eat her napkin,
Maureen screaming, total chaos, mom begging to leave
we'd walk out in total despair

after my mom died
I read writing by individuals
in early stages of dementia
what an eye opener.

they expressed their reality as
nothing like what we were projecting on them, i.e.
we suffered over leaving them
and how horrible it was there

but for them, guess what?
the power of now

they were actually living in the present moment
none of which negates the horror-but
as a family member,

it would have been nice
to know that by the time I was out the door,
she had long forgotten the pain and chaos
that we assumed she was feeling
because its what we were feeling

wow!

I've made a point of sharing
the info with far too many friends
whose parents
are now in some stage
of dementia.

You can read more about her at:
www.ellensuestern.com

She sent them by Facebook as I was preparing
the info about the NPR show and gave
me permission to publish them here.
Hope they are useful!

APP in the News

2010-07-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to an article by Kate Santichon the APP in the Orlando Sentinel

"Once-somber faces light up with recognition, heads nod, hands clap, listeners giggle and laugh. A palpable energy and connection builds from a room of strangers often lost in their own thoughts."

Photo Credit Jacob Langston

Lion's Face New Opera by Elena Langer and Glyn Maxwell

2010-05-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

Photo Credit: Alastair Muir

The Guardian has a wonderful account by poet Glyn Maxwell on: "How do you write an opera about dementia?"

He writes, "The more I learned, the better the poems became. The Institute of Psychiatry in south London's Denmark Hill opened its doors to Elena and me. We talked to scientists and researchers, saw x-rays and brain scans. We met care-givers, psychologists, music and drama therapists. We saw good care homes where we'd still never want to go, and poor care homes that we tried not to think too much about."

Click here for the full article- www.guardian.co.uk

Here is the website for Lion's Face

More on Lee Chan-dong's film, "Poetry."

2010-05-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

UPDATE- LEE CHANG-DONG'S POETRY WINS THE CANNES AWARD FOR BEST SCREENPLAY!

Here is a clip from Maggie Lee's review of the film in the Hollywood Reporter,

"Bottom Line: A disturbingly ambivalent view on art's relation to life and death.

CANNES -- Rhyming couplets, rather than religion, is the opium of an old lady beset by Alzheimer's and a family crisis in Lee Chan-dong's companion piece to "Secret Sunshine." While both films feature maternal figures whose lives are derailed by tragedies they cannot help, "Poetry's" tone and emotions are so painfully muted, its style so elliptical and Lee's exploration of the function of art in a morally vacuous society so ambivalent that it makes for extremely difficult and challenging viewing."

read the full review here http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/poetry-film-review-1004092975.story

Poetry is now being touted as a possible winner of the Golden Palm award!
Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune calls the film one of his favorites and says, "The South Korean writer-director's protagonist is exceptionally rich: a 60ish grandmother coping with financial difficulties and the early stages of Alzheimer's."

More reviews on the film: Financial Times

Chicago Tribune

Huffington Poet

ABC News

My Mother's Keeper

2010-05-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

Nancy Gerber writes, "When my mother told me she'd had three children, at first I thought, 'There goes the Alzheimer's again.' But then I remembered: my father had badly wanted three children, and in between my birth and my brother's, there had been a miscarriage. A lost child.

As my mother's ability to relate to the world around her became more and more fragmented, I would look to these gleanings as a way to form some kind of connection between us to replace what was rapidly slipping away. Even so, I was not really comforted by what I learned from the delusions, for I wanted all of my mother, not just what was left of her memory."

Gerber's story My Mother's Keeper, is a thoughtfully written, powerful account of her experience of the early stages of her mother's dementia.

I recommend this book to anyone seeking to cope with the acknowledgment that a loved one has Alzheimer's or related dementia. Along with Gerber's prose are photographs by Joan and John Digby that highlight the story. You may find out more about the book by writing:

The Feral Press
P.O. Box 358
Oyster Bay, New York, 11771

or

www.pp-pub.com

Nancy Gerber is a mother, daughter, and writer with a doctorate in English from Rutgers University. She is the author of two books: Portrait of the Mother-Artist: Class and Creativity in Contemporary American Fiction (Lexington, 2003) and Losing a Life: A Daughter's Memoir of Caregiving (Hamilton, 2005). Currently she is enrolled in an analytic training program at the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis in Livingston, New Jersey.

Alzheimer's Poetry Project in Philadelphia

2010-05-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Held our third training session in Philadelphia last week and one of the poets Sojourner Ahebee, wrote about the experience in her blog.

"Participating in the Alzheimer's Poetry Project allowed me to discover another way of encouraging my grandmother, who has Alzheimer's, to be creative. She loves this very long poem by Langston Hughes called The Negro Mother. I am so impressed by how much of it she has remembered and she beams when she recites it."

Here is a link to the full post-

http://trumpetworld.blogspot.com/

It was great working the Philadelphia poets including her mother!
Happy Mother's Day!

INDIAN MOTORCYCLE

2010-04-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

INDIAN MOTORCYCLE
Jean C. Howard

When you sell
the Indian
I am away
in a hotel in Denver.
The news shoots
like electro shocks
through the mouths
of our family

Because when you sell
the Indian
despite the plead
my husband
made of you
before we left

Rumors of it running
through
as if we were losing
not just you
but the past of you
the boy running skinny
on the west side of Salt Lake

The you of you
that cried in boy terror
as great schoolmates
trailed your way

The slip of you
being bloodied at your
porch step
almost making it in

The almost of you
always
a dad that picks
you up and throws
you back out
to be man
to be a man
to be a man.

It is not the machine
we are losing
old and graced
still kicks up
in the garage

But the grace of you
sliding lightly across
the gym floor
arms adjusted
like tuned pistons
punching light
into your foe.

It is the blonde head
of you smashing waves
into the sky

The nuts and bolts
of you
greased and snarling
glistening gears
that ache for more.

It is the Zen of you
tight and tuned
and loose with liquor
kissing fear
right on its smacker

The girl of you
sewn tight in man-skin
mirrored by daughters
a fighting wife

The mother of you
curled like a brooch pin
within your gullet
her dirty housedress
her eyes of water
her breath still tinted
with hints of rose

When you sell
the Indian
you sell the promise
that you’ll go on

That thoughts won’t slip
by, silver trout
darting lightning
behind words

That you won’t wander
through the house
searching searching
all night long

Losing the “it”
of things,
of names and places
of checks your wrote.

When you sell the Indian
that which is precious
spokes and leather
aging chrome
still kicks up
deep in the garage

You forget that night.
With me, the daughter
frantically
trying to get it back.

Jean Howard was one of the original Slam poets in Chicago. She now lives in Salt Lake City and this poem reflects her experience with her father's Alzheimer's disease.
More about Jean on her website here http://www.jeanhoward.com/home.htm

"Poetry," by Lee Chang-dong in Cannes Film Festival

2010-04-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

The excerpt below on Lee Chang-dong new film is from HanCinema, Click to read the full report. This trailer is in Korean but it looks like an interesting film.

"Korean dramatic film "Poetry" is set to be released in France on August 25, according to the film's production company Uni-korea on Friday.

Uni-Korea announced through a press release that "Poetry", helmed by renowned director Lee Chang-dong, will be distributed by French distribution company Diaphana.

The movie, starring veteran actress Yoon Jung-hee, is about an elderly woman who takes poetry classes and writes her own poems while battling Alzheimer's disease.

"Poetry" has been chosen to compete at this year's prestigious Cannes Film Festival."

Sweetest at the End

2010-04-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

A wonderful essay by Elinor Lipman in today's New York Times' Modern Love section. She describes her family's experience with her husband's frontotemporal dementia.

Dementia Blog

2010-04-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

Check out Susan Schultz' Dementia Blog.

Schultz writes "The Dementia Blog was written over the course of six months during the worst of my mother’s dementia. In August 2006 she was still in her home; by January 2007 she was settled into an Alzheimer’s home. The blog, like all blogs, moves backwards from the present into the past. Because it moves back, the reader has no sense of cause and effect and often does not recognize what has happened until reading further back. This form struck me as appropriate to a meditation on memory and self-loss."

It is a fascinating collections of images, including these poignant lines,"— The woman who is not wearing shoes comes up behind me and places her hands on my shoulders. She squeezes them. I turn and ask her name. She does not know."

Perhaps other people will or have used Schultz' to record their experiences in being a caregiver.

Thirty Seconds Before Dinner

2010-04-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

Esther Altshul Helfgott's poem with its image of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, puts me in mind of the story from London about using replays of soccer, or what the rest of world calls football, to reach sports fans living with dementia.
Football Replay.

I love her image
"but this Harley flew
out of the picture frame
as if it were a bird."

You may read Esther's blog at Witnessing Alzheimer's

He was different tonight
more withdrawn
though he did raise his arm
when he saw a motorcycle
hanging on the wall.
You wouldn't expect
to see a Harley-Davidson
in a nursing home
but this Harley flew
out of the picture frame
as if it were a bird.
Abe was astonished,
even though his facial muscles
remained tight
and his mouth stayed closed.
For thirty seconds his eyes lit up.
Afterwards, we returned to where we were before:
me wondering what to do next,
he not waiting to go to dinner.

APP poet Zoë Bird reports on Valentine Day at Sierra Vista, in Santa Fe

2010-03-28T20:14:00.001-07:00

This was a special, short Valentine’s visit with the Dragonfly kids. On Monday, Feb. 8, we all got together and made valentines for the S.V. residents using recycled materials in the Sapling classroom; each of the 6 kids made 4 valentines for each of S.V.’s 24 residents. They were beautiful, and very touching; Helen, for example, made a valentine for Helen the elder reading, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Helen! I love you. I have the same name as you. Love, Helen!!!”

Actual delivery of the valentines on the 10th was really moving. Many of the residents were napping when we arrived, but the 6 kids presented their valentines to those who were present and the emotional reaction was tremendous. Residents were smiling, weeping and singing (Lupe sang, “America the Beautiful” and Frankie sang “Love Me Tender,” beautifully). The kids were shy at first, but warmed up with all the good feedback & seemed very happy about the visit. Molly (their teacher) & I were crying too!

Joel, an especially sweet and encouraging soul, seemed so overcome that I asked if I could give him a hug, and he accepted. I only got a chance to take a couple of photos, but the one with little Helen walking back from bestowing her valentine on a former kindergarten teacher shows something of the pride the kids felt & the level at which the residents were touched by our special “We love you” visit. Very, very special day.

Love me tender, love me sweet
Never let me go
You have made my life complete
And I love you so
Love me tender, love me true
All my dreams fulfill
For, my darling I love you
And I always will.

Love me tender- Ken Darby

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
...Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
...Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
...Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
...Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
...Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
...Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
...And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

.....Bright Star- John Keats

Between Us

2010-03-23T03:22:00.000-07:00

Between Us*
By Ken Saulter

Losing my memory,
losing it to disease,
is getting to be a problem.
Like when I'm in a in a group
and people talk to me
and suddenly I fall silent,
while my brain skips a beat.
They, and I, know it's not a senior moment.
Eyes divert to shoe laces or thereabouts.
The moment becomes one of palpable regret.
So here I am, a fraction of a person,
a clown without make-up or costume,
waiting giant seconds to recover.
They say I will not remember
these separation bricks
in the wall that is, regrettably,
being built between us.
I worry about forgetting habits, like
my gym locker combination,
after 20 years of use, and my many passwords,
and then, someday maybe,
where I live; or maybe not.
And, against our will,
the wall gets higher and higher,
But, I keep on living.
trying to lower the wall
or slow it down,
or build a gate,
or something.

kjsaulter@gmail.com; March 22,2010. Ann Arbor, MI;
*Inspired by the poem "Tea Time",
in Slamming Open the Door by Kathleen Sheeder Boanno;
Alice James Books.

Beyond Forgetting

2010-03-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

Denis Glover with Hone Tuwhare from a 1976 tour.

I like Drew Myron's poem, "Erosion," from the new anthology edited by Holly Hughes, with a forward by Tess Gallager, Beyond Forgetting.

Myron writes about the poem, "I'm honored to have 'Erosion,' a poem about my grandfather included in the book. My grandparents Bart and Lu (Lucinda or Lucy) Myron were wheat farmers in Washington's Spokane Valley. After 40 years of farming, they retired and spent winters in the Arizona desert. In their last years, they lived with my parents. Bart lived to nearly 95 (just a few months shy) and Lu lived to 97."

The poem ends:

futile to search for data:
the face of a son, the hand of the wife
price of wheat, words,
any words to rise, rescue us

from this wait,
this long silent loss.

You may read the whole poem here:
http://www.drewmyron.com/poetry

Myron's poem with its rural images and knowing it is inspired by her farmer grandparents, puts me in mind of Denis Glover's "The Magpies," which is one of New Zealand's best known poems. I had the good fortune to hold a poetry session at an adult day care center, in Wellington, a few years ago and was introduced to the poem. We got everyone saying the poem together and the "Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle," was delightful to perform.

The Magpies

When Tom and Elizabeth took the farm
The bracken made their bed
and Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said

Tom's hand was strong to the plough
and Elizabeth's lips were red
and Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said

Year in year out they worked
while the pines grew overhead
and Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said

But all the beautiful crops soon went
to the mortgage man instead
and Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said

Elizabeth is dead now (it's long ago)
Old Tom's gone light in the head
and Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said

The farms still there. Mortgage corporations
couldn't give it away
and Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies say.

Kate Marshall Flaherty

2010-03-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

Kate Marshall Flaherty recites her poem, "Faraway."

Kate Marshall Flaherty is a poet, yoga instructor, founding member of the Peace Theatre and guide of teen retreats on the Golden Rule. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three spirited teens. "Far Away" was inspired by visiting her own Grandma Millie in Bethel Nursing Home, NY, when on one visit her Aunt had cut and taped up pictures of clothes in order on the wall after Grandma had put her panties over her dress.

Kate remembers that no matter how foggy or quiet or vacant the day might be, that Grandma Millie always called us "my friend" as a kind way to cover that she'd forgotten our names, and she always brightened up for lemon squares.

Musician Mark Korven heard the poem several years ago and was moved to write the bittersweet Nyckleharpa music for it. He and actor Tony Duggan-Smith found the Guild Inn Estate grounds the perfect wintery scene for the reading with its random and haunting architecture.

The Circus

2010-03-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

The poem "The Circus," was created by residents of Oak Park Place in Baraboo, Wisconsin, in July 2009. The poem was composed by asking people to describe seeing a circus parade, what they liked about circuses, what type of food you would eat and what animals you might see at a circus, the answers are in order as given. The prompts are not included in the text. The second and third lines are from a well-known song and the residents
sang them throughout the performance of the poem as a type of chorus or refrain. The poem celebrates the town being the hometown of the Ringling Brothers and taps into the vivid images associated with the long history of circus parades in Baraboo. The photo shows participants creating the poem. Photo Credit: Brian D. Bridgeford/Baraboo News Republic, Baraboo, Wis.

The Circus

I like the Trapeze performers, the aerialist, and the moment they let go...

He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young man on the flying trapeze.

Too busy farming to go, but if I did, I would like to see:
lions, tigers, ponies to ride, and elephants.

Colorful exciting bands, beautiful horses,
circus wagons of gold and red,
they came from all over.

Trapeze artists...will they be caught or will they fall?

He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young man on the flying trapeze.

I enjoyed everything that makes the circus fun,
horses, ponies, big animals, small animals.

I am not as acquainted with elephants.

A dinosaur would be the biggest animal in the circus.

Zebras, people-
all kinds of people- clowns,
people are clowns!

He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young man on the flying trapeze.

It was an adventure- never been before,
we took off from farming,
rode in the back of a pickup truck.

Something different that's for sure.

Cotton candy.
Peppermint striped taffy.
Peanuts.
Popcorn.
Hotdogs.
Root beer.

He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young man on the flying trapeze.

I'll stay away from you tiger.

A forty-horse hitch! The calliope!

He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young man on the flying trapeze.

The parade went right by my house,
it was exciting, with clowns and animals.

Keep up the good work clowns!