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poetry

A photo of poet Andrea Gibson.

For Andrea Gibson, life was a poem—a beautifully complex spectrum of gender, time, and life itself. Gibson (who used they/them pronouns) was a poet, an activist, a filmmaker, a friend—but most of all—an inspiration to anyone on this planet who dares to push back against the societal constructs which are woven into us at such an early age.

Comedian Tig Notaro sat down with them for Interview Magazine in which Gibson shone through as being equally thoughtful and hilarious. After describing themselves as "gender queer," they elaborated: "It just means that I don’t necessarily identify within a gender binary. I’ve never in my life really felt like a woman and I’ve certainly never felt like a man. I look at gender on a spectrum and I feel somewhere on that spectrum that’s not landing on either side of that."

Their work encouraged many, and in 2023, Colorado Governor Jared Polis awarded Gibson Colorado's Poet Laureate. That same year, Gibson shared the poem inspired by their grandmother, Love Letter from the Afterlife, which they had written to comfort those who were grieving. To try to find a semblance of beauty in the pain of loss and to reassure all of us facing mortality that there is… more.

For the past four years, Gibson has battled ovarian cancer, and much of that fight was captured in the upcoming documentary (co-produced by Notaro) Come See Me in the Good Light. Heartbreakingly, Gibson lost the battle just this week. Exemplifying the love that surrounded them, their death announcement read in part: “Andrea Gibson died in their home (in Boulder, Colorado) surrounded by their wife, Meg, four ex-girlfriends, their mother and father, dozens of friends, and their three beloved dogs.”

But Gibson, ever the romantic, wanted their beloved Megan Falley, to personally and intimately receive the words of the poem. And in a final television interview—just months before they passed—Gibson read it to her.

  Andrea Gibson reads their poem.   www.youtube.com  

 
“My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am.
 
 
It’s OK. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories.
 
 
Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry, I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited.
 
 
There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep-seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before.
 
 
Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too— I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

The comment section on YouTube reflects some of the better parts of humanity, which Gibson no doubt inspired. One person writes, "I see the news that someone I never met in person has died, and it knocks the breath out of me and leaves me weeping. Your light, your depth, your words have touched my soul. Your poetry has been the portal to a connection to you that makes our never having met in person meaningless. I love you, Andrea. Thank you for everything."

Baby Cora bears a striking resemblance to actor Woody Harrelson.

We can all get a little fascinated by doppelgängers and it's fun to find people who look alike. But what do you do when your baby girl looks uncannily like a famous middle-aged man?

In 2022, mom Dani Grier Mulvenna shared a photo of her infant daughter Cora side by side with a photo of Woody Harrelson on X (formerly Twitter), with the caption, "Ok but how does our daughter look like Woody Harrelson." The resemblance truly is remarkable, and the tweet quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of likes, shares, and replies.

Naturally, the jokes about Harrelson being the baby's secret father came next, but then Harrelson himself got wind of it.

The actor shared a screenshot of Mulvenna's tweet on his Instagram page and included a delightful little poem he called "Ode to Cora."

You're an adorable child
Flattered to be compared
You have a wonderful smile
I just wish I had your hair


How adorable and wholesome is that? Not only did he acknowledge his look-alike, but he even made a self-deprecating joke about his receding hairline.

People gushed in the comments and Mulvenna shared how tickled her daughter will be someday by the connection.

"You've made our day ❤️ can't wait to show her this when she's older, you have another fan for life xxx," she wrote. Mulvenna also shared on X that her daughter doesn't always look like Woody Harrelson, but when she does, she really does.

What a cutie. What's hilarious is that sweet little Cora has no clue about any of this excitement and she won't for many more years. What a fun story her parents will be able to share with her.

Social media has created a world where people can connect in ways they never would have before. When these platforms are so often used for negative means, it's lovely to see something so sweet and pure come out of them.


This article originally appeared on three years ago.

"I am still a dancer made of song."

Humans have been writing poetry for thousands of years, communicating feelings and ideas in beautiful, powerful ways that prose just can't quite reach. Poetry can be hard to define, but you know it when you see it—or rather, when you feel it.

Emily Dickinson once wrote, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” A poem hits you somewhere—your brain, your heart, your gut. And one poem that packs an incredibly moving punch has come from an unlikely source—an elderly woman with dementia.

Poet Joseph Fasano shared a message from a fan who shared that they had brought his book, "The Magic Words: Simple Poetry Prompts That Unlock the Creativity in Everyone," to their mother, a 92-year-old former ballet dancer living with dementia. The mother was excited to write a poem, and they slowly worked through a prompt from the book together aloud.

This poem was the result:

"Let the days be warm

Let the fall be long.

Let every child inside me find her shoes

and dance wildly, softly, toward the world.

I have a story I have never told

Once, when I was small,

I looked up at the sky and saw the wind

and knew I was a dancer made of song.

I am still a dancer made of song."

Wow. What a testament to the power of poetry to reach beyond our usual modes of communication, which dementia so cruelly disrupts. In a few simple lines, we're able to see this woman as she might see herself, as the human living under the veils of age and disease: "I am still a dancer made of song." 

Poetry prompts can help people express themselves

The person who shared the poem thanked Fasano for "helping people find their voices," which is exactly what his book of poetry prompts was meant to do.

The Magic Words book"The Magic Words" is a book of poetry prompts from Joseph Fasano.Amazon

In the book's introduction, Fasano shares that he'd been invited to speak to a class of second graders in New Jersey in 2022 to share "the craft and magic of poetry." As part of his efforts, he came up with a poetry prompt that could "help guide their imaginations" and "unlock the images, thoughts and feelings inside them, without asking them to worry about how to structure a poem." He called the results "astonishing." When he shared one of the students' poems on social media, it and the prompt took off like wildfire, as people who never thought of themselves as poets felt empowered to share their imaginations within that framework.

From 7-year-olds to 92-year-olds, anyone can benefit from the self-expression that poetry facilitates, but many people feel hesitant or intimidated by the idea of writing a poem. Fasano writes, "Poetry is what happens when we let ourselves be," and this idea seems so clear than in the former dancer's poem above. Dementia can create roadblocks, but poetry provides a different avenue of communication.

younger woman looking at a book with an older womanCaregivers try many different ways to communicate with people living with dementia.Photo credit: Canva

The arts can be a powerful tool for people with dementia

Using poetry to help dementia patients communicate and express themselves isn't just wishful thinking. Studies have demonstrated that cultural arts interventions, including poetry specifically, can be beneficial for people with dementia. In fact, the Alzheimer's Poetry Project (APP) aims to use poetry as a means of improving the quality of life of people living with dementia by facilitating creative expression. "We do not set boundaries in our beliefs in what possible for people with memory impairment to create," the APP website states. "By saying to people with dementia, we value you and your creativity; we are saying we value all members of our community."

Poet Gary Glazner founded APP and shared a story with WXPR radio about how he came up with the idea while studying poetry at Sonoma State University:

“I applied for a grant and got a grant to work at an adult care program. The moment I love to share with people is there was a guy in the group, head down, not participating and I said the Longfellow poem. ‘I shot an arrow into the air’ and his eyes popped open and he said, ‘It fell to earth I know not where.’ And suddenly he was with us and participating. It was just this powerful moment to see how poetry could be of use to elders but specifically with people with dementia."

Whether we read it, write it, speak it or hear it, poetry has the power to reach people of all ages in all kinds of mysterious ways.

You can follow Joseph Fasano on Twitter and Instagram, and find his books on Amazon.

This article originally appeared last year.

If there's one thing that unites us all, it's the inevitability of death. That may sound morbid, and it's not something most of us care to think about, but our mortality is something every person on Earth has in common.

However, ideas and beliefs about what dying means are as diverse as humanity itself. So when someone manages to nail a universal truth about death, we pay attention. And when someone does so in a way that touches us deeply, we share it as a way to say, "Look at this gorgeous evidence of our shared human experience."


A poem posted by David Joyce on Facebook hits that mark. Written by contemporary writer Merrit Malloy, "Epitaph" captures how our loved ones can best keep our essence alive after our death—not merely through reminiscence, but through purposeful acts of love.

Joyce said that the poem is included in the Reform Jewish liturgy as an optional reading before the Kaddish, a prayer traditionally recited for the dead. But it is also used regularly in all kinds of funerals and memorial services, and Joyce's posting of it has been shared more than 123,000 times in a little over a week.

Read it, and you'll see why.

Epitaph - By Merrit Malloy

When I die
Give what's left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.

Look for me
In the people I've known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not your mind.

You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.

Love doesn't die,
People do.
So, when all that's left of me
Is love,

Give me away.





While the world rages on around us, let's just sit for a moment in this beauty and remember that when all is said and done, the love we leave behind is all that will remain of us after we're gone.

Thank you, Ms. Malloy, for the gift of your words.


This article originally appeared on 10.23.19