“What’s It All About? Poems that Make Jewish Sense of Nature”
Upcoming Sessions at Congregation Gates of Heaven
https://www.cgoh.org/event/wh
1. Wednesday, November 13, 2024 • 12 Cheshvan 5785
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
2. Wednesday, November 20, 2024 • 19 Cheshvan 5785
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
3. Wednesday, December 4, 2024 • 3 Kislev 5785
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
4. Wednesday, December 11, 2024 • 10 Kislev 5785
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Course Description: “What’s It All About? Poems That Make Jewish Sense of Nature.” Led by Susan Comninos over four workshops: November 13, 20 and Dec 4 & 11. $60 Registration for all four. If you are a walk-in for a single class, each will be $15.00.
Have you ever witnessed a striking scene involving nature, like swans feeding in a flooded park, a bear rounding a corner of a neighborhood street, or a deer snacking on berries in a parking lot?
Making full sense of it can be hard, especially if we want to go beyond much of contemporary poetry’s tendency toward environmental despair — and instead or also explore what can make such a scene illuminating, remarkable or even redemptive.
In this poetry course, we’ll discuss published poems and write new ones that compare our witnessing of nature to stories from the Hebrew Bible or Jewish values. (Think: what might the Noah story have to tell us about the meaning of soggy lawns? And how might the Jewish belief that life is sacred inform a poet’s take on a field of poppies or a possum at the side of the road?)
As part of this course, you’ll be invited to take walks in nature, reflect on encounters with the wild, and ask yourself in focused way: what’s it all about?
About the Instructor: Susan Comninos is a widely published writer and author of a recent book of poems, “Out of Nowhere” (Stephen F. Austin Univ. Press/Texas A&M, 2022). Her individual poems have appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Rattle, The Common, Prairie Schooner and North American Review, among others. She’s taught writing to undergraduates at Siena College, The College of St. Rose, and SUNY Albany, as well adults in the community. She’s currently at work on a second collection of poetry, “Wild Joy of Receiving”; the title poem, pegged to the Noah story, is forthcoming in the Baltimore Review later this month.
