Poetry Magic 1

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Powerful angels, just as this frog drips with blood and dries up, so also will the body of him, NN whom NN bore, because I adjure you, who are in command of fire, Maskelli Maskellō (add the rest, the usual). Read Natalie Diaz’s “ No More Cake Here.” What kind of magic appears in these poems? What kind of party does Diaz imagine, and what purpose does it serve? What story does it tell about the speaker’s brother, and why might she have chosen to write a poem like this to tell that story? Exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute, 39 Belgrave Square, 7-30 November, Monday-Friday 10am-5pm, FREE. Curated by Katia Pizzi and Ben Thomas.

The man had stopped by our Guru’s tent for tea the previous day, and had felt weird that night, as if he’d lost his energy. To put it another way, he had lost his mojo – and he believed it was because of my Guru’s magic. If we are the soil, the poetry is the rose that blooms. And the magic — that’s what brings it to the surface. The online database Thesaurus Defixionum Magdeburgensis now provides texts for over 1,700 published curse tablets, many with translations and additional information, and the database is searchable, which provides an enormous resource for scholars. The most accessible English translation of a variety of tablets is in John G. Gager, ed., Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).The best treatment of the topic remains Christopher A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

You’ll dedicate each line or stanza to a specific idea or feeling you’d like to conjure, let go of, or release. Each line, in effect, will give you the opportunity to focus your intention and energy. This is where poetry spells really get powerful since you can focus stanzas or lines on archetypes, gods, goddesses, guides, ancestral symbols, power colors, sacred sounds, or goals and conjurings.

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The same Ephesia Grammata were reputed to have saved Croesus from burning on his pyre and to have enabled a wrestler who wore them to defeat all opponents—when the amulet was removed, he was thrown thirty times in a row (Eustathius on Odyssey XIX.247 2.201–2).

Poems are an act of discovery, and require immense effort – to write and to be understood. The argument against popular amateur poetry is not that it uses out-of-date forms (there is no authority here, and art is always an mixture of elements coming in and going out of fashion) but that popular poetry finds its conceptions too readily. Contrary to contemporary dogma, poetry doesn’t have to be challenging, but it does have to explore the nature and geography of the human condition. What kinds of things do you think of when you think of magic? Do you believe in magic? What communities or culture consider magic to be real or important? What purpose does that serve?

What is free verse poetry?

What words mean something to you? What words speak to your memories and personal power? Are there words that speak to your identity, your resistance, your body, your journey? Choose five of these words and write a 5-stanza poem using each of them, or write five poems (as a set to be read aloud together) utilizing each.When you speak them aloud, you can call on these qualities. Dream poetry