#Reading Poetry Archives - Madhu Bazaz Wangu
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#Reading Poetry

Thursday, July 2 2026

Posted on July 1, 2026
in #Nature Lover, #Reading Poetry, Creativity, Flourishing, Meditation & Journaling at Ashby Ponds, Nonverbal Activities, Sharper Brain after Retirement, Well Being
4 Comments

Framework for Longevity Michael J. Castori What is the secret of Longevity?Invest in bonds Bond with loveParental marital filial people spiritualLove thy neighbor as thyselfNo greater love hath manThan he give up his life for another Bond with natureWith its broad range of animal plant and mineral lifeWith its sun moon stars land sea and airAnd all the creatures thereon and thereinWith its solitude music challenge reverence Bond with a positive mindsetAim high and you won’t hit lowIf things go your way don’t get too highIf things go against you don’t get too low Bond with an upbeat lifestyleEngage in spiritual intellectual social recreational pursuitsThat guarantee health strength and daily breadWoo the positive spurn the negative Bond with existenceAn existence that you deem worthy of your worshipDaily lift up some thought word and deedTo Him to...

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Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Posted on June 29, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, Being in Nature, Creativity, Flourishing, Imagination, Journaling, Meditation, Meditation & Journaling at Ashby Ponds, Reading, Walking, Well Being, Writing
2 Comments

I hope the poems I read in the class this month have motivated you to read more poems. Here is a link to mindful poetry for you to explore: https://cih.ucsd.edu/mindfulness/mindful-poetry I thought you may want to know that by the age 85 and older, about a third of people have dementia. Prevention is the most powerful antidote to the illness. You can’t prevent something you cannot see and dementia is one such illness. It increases exponentially after age 65. The mental decline is linked to lifestyle: physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, social isolation, poor sleep, lack of mentally stimulating activities and misuse of alcohol. All opposites of the eight good habits we’ve been reading about and hopefully practicing.  Prevention should start early. Our Ashby Ponds community may be retired but it has not quit...

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Thursday, June 25, 2026

Posted on June 24, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, Attention and Awareness, Imagination, Well Being
4 Comments

Unity and Peace, Manoj Wangu, Pencil Drawing, 2026 So often it happens that after having written the first draft of a poem or a story I leave it alone. When I return to it after a few days, or a week, even a month I surprise myself. How did I come up with that idea? How did I write it? Did I write it?Then I realize that when I wrote it I was not alone. My inspiration, my muse, my spirit within – whom I have been referring to as the Authentic Self – was one with me. Writing Mindfully Who writes the stuff to which I sign my name?Who whispers behind the mask?What gushes forth during moments of quietudethen sidles back swiftly wherever it comes from?Sliding down my arm to my fingertips,I transcribe fiery truth.Enraptured, I write...

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Thursday, June 11, 2026

Posted on June 11, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, Imagination, Reading, Writing
4 Comments

Few Words of Wisdom from "Nine Gates" Essays by Jane Hirshfield. A poem’s first draft feels as if there was something already there. Wisdom of your heart-mind encounters language and a poem might be born. Poetry comes out of emotional and intellectual experiences. Using stories, metaphors and simile. Just as clouds with sufficient water will rain, a human heart with sufficient feeling would find its most natural expression  in the images, emotions, words and music of poetry. Poetic forms appear when conventionalized habits of mind are tripped off allowing deeper grain to reveal. We see things as we are not as they are. What we see sees us. When we approach things with our full and unselfish attention they speak to us on their own terms and with their own wisdom. When we surrender...

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Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Posted on June 8, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, #Story Telling, Creativity, Flourishing, Oral Stories, Originality, Writing
0 Comments

Magnolia Blossoms, Ashby Ponds, 2026 Have you been tinkering with the poem you started in the class? Or perhaps wrote another one? Great job! Few facts about poetry: The craft of writing poems is deliberate, attentive, and it requires absolute concentration. It is simultaneously intuitive and inventive. Poetry emerges like the bursting of a bud. It grows and ripens like fruit.Poetry grows on us. It helps refine our thinking and enhances journaling. You may not want to become a poet but you learn to have a grasp on words and how they have power to stir deep feelings and emotions in you that you may not have experienced before. Reading poetry, like writing in a journal is a private, intimate experience. It stirs self-examination. It helps us deal with paradoxical emotions we don’t understand. Poems...

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Thursday, June 4, 2026

Posted on June 3, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, Attention and Awareness, Creativity, Imagination, Oral Stories, Well Being
2 Comments

As a college student, I admired poets and those who enjoyed reading poems, but rarely did I read poetry myself. Later in life, my younger daughter, Zoon gifted me Pablo Neruda’s Odes to Common Things. I read and reread the poems, and loved each one of those jewels, simple yet stunning.  To understand the structure and methods of writing poetry, I read Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry and Molly Peacock’s How to Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle. Several years went by without my reading another poem. Writing one had not even occurred to me. Between 2007-2011 my website blogs were commentaries on several sacred text, all written in verse including Taoist, Tao-te Ching, Buddhist Dhammapada and Hindu Bhagavad Gita. Each week I copied one chapter from one sacred book from...

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Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Posted on April 20, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, #Story Telling, Meditation & Journaling at Ashby Ponds, Reading, Reading Books, Sharper Brain after Retirement
2 Comments

Loneliness, Oil on canvas, 1977 Whether reading for pleasure or personal growth, what you enjoy depends on your interests and experiences. What you choose to read is as unique as what you enjoy eating or wearing. When you select a book to read, what are you seeking? Pleasure, growth, transformation? It is not what you choose to read but what happens to you when you are absorbed in reading – that pleasurable feeling of forgetting who and where you are, temporarily experiencing life through someone else’s perspective! I read to be entertained, to learn, to adventure into unknown worlds where my heart is slashed, where my guts are punched, or a brick falls on my head. With each book I read, my emotional and intellectual sensibilities emerge and deepen. In 2003, a group...

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Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Posted on April 13, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, Meditation & Journaling at Ashby Ponds, Reading Books, Spirituality
4 Comments

Inventor, Manoj Wangu, Colored Pencils, 2019 When, for no particular reason, someone in real life or even on television makes you cringe or stirs negative emotions in you become conscious of yourself, examine your thoughts at that moment and ask yourself, why am I reacting negatively against this person? Am I biased or prejudiced? Am I stereotyping him or her? And bear witness to your own answers. Now let’s move on to reading for pleasure, the topic for this month. Does reading make you happy, make you forget who you are or where you are? Reading is my passion—anything that has something to do with language—fiction and nonfiction books, stories, essays. In addition, to reading I’m devoted to writing. I write more than I read.  Dorothea Brande (Becoming a Writer, 1934) and Julia Cameron (The Artist’s...

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Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Posted on November 24, 2025
in #Reading Poetry, Being in Nature, Creativity, Spirituality
4 Comments

It is said, the common characteristics of individuals who live in mountains, near rivers or oceans, in the wilderness and love to spend time in nature overlap with the traits of those who call themselves spiritual. These traits are kindness, peacefulness, compassion, and contentment with what is. These folks do not criticize or judge. They have motivating and kind words for others, and operate with an intention of making the world a better place.  One may ask, why is this so? What has nature to do with spirituality? Spirituality relates to people’s emotions and beliefs rather than their thinking or physical self and surroundings. Upon closer analysis six spiritual themes emerge: feeling of connection with something more than oneself, inner vibrancy, presence, joy, gratitude, and compassion. The data shows that those...

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Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Posted on November 10, 2025
in #Reading Poetry, Awareness, Being in Nature, Sharper Brain after Retirement
2 Comments

Let’s focus on our wondrous senses this week. Do you think you exploit your body’s unlimited potential? That you pay100 percent attention to it? That you are aware how many possibilities it has for providing enjoyment even at our age?  The first step to awaken your body and mind is a 2-minute body scan, from the soles of your feet to the top of your head, first thing every morning while still lying in the bed. Be grateful to each body part and each sense for what it does. At this stage of life all our senses need help to continue functioning: eyewear, hearing aid, dentures, replaced knee or hip.  Perhaps most of everything else that mother nature provided you at your birth is in working condition. Whatever is not used to...

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