Wake, Butterfly: Exorcise the Grief with Dawn Lundy Martin

Dawn Lundy Martin invites listeners to notice where the grief resides, then let it go.

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly—
it’s late, we’ve miles
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.

Here’s an edited version of Dawn Lundy Martin’s prompt:

Exercise grief from your body by first noticing where it resides. Sit outside in the sun for ten minutes in silent meditation with the phrase “let go” being a return thought if any other language enters. Focus on your breath and on where your body feels grief—not what produced the grief. After, write a list of those parts of the body. Then write for ten minutes toward that vibrational place of beautiful, wet longing. Draft a poem that brings together the parts of the body where grief is held and the language of hunger and unrestrained longing. 
 

Credits: Anne Sexton, “The Truth the Dead Know” from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). Copyright © 1981 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr. Reprinted with the permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.

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