diVERSES reKINDLED: In Conversation With Ariana Benson

No animal is more of a poet than a beaver.

Though award-winning poet Ariana Benson didn’t directly state as much, she certainly gives enough evidence.

As they do the work, beavers pay attention to how the work itself responds.

A tree is kind. It talks to you as it falls. There is a dialogue in cracks in splinters.

A poem creaks as well, swishes where the lines are smooth. A poem whispers the form it wants, at times repeating itself until the poet changes its shape.

An attentive eye, a perceptive ear, can spot where a poem is leaning from too much weight.

The work of a poet is to write a poem, but what doesn’t get enough attention is that writing is an act of watching and listening.

What I often tell my communication students:

the words are the least important part of what we say. Listeners and readers aren’t actually noticing every single word. They are noticing the emotion, the tone, the pauses, the pace, the music.

Trees fall. Poems end.

If we pay the right attention, we control the falling. We control the end.

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Full conversation with poet Ariana Benson and poet Geoff Anderson: https://youtube.com/live/gAuCAbJIB7c