The O sheens

One reader of Poets for Living Waters asked: What is a ‘poetry action’? Or a ‘reading action’? He went on to suggest that poetry is a failure to act. Many folks may be wondering the same thing, so I thought I'd post a reply...

The phrases ‘reading action’ and ‘poetry action’ have been specifically created to point awareness toward the fact that self expression, listening, and independently distributing ideas are all indeed actions. One typically may not think of them as such because they are quite miniature in scale. Any type of ‘poetry action’ is profoundly nonheroic. By asserting ‘reading actions’ and ‘poetry actions’ we are enacting a value-system of the nonheroic and instead promoting a value system foregrounding the systemic, the relational.

A poem is more like a plankton than like a vigilante. Whoever thinks of plankton as particularly active? But did you know that within the plankton are the seeds of the clouds?

Poets are cultivating new climates for change.