Don’t Apologize I met Abby M. at my show at Carnegie Mellon University. She shared this beautiful drawing that she had done of a line from B. Thanks, Abby!

My Heart

Today I got an email from a student in Germany who created this lovely embroidery of a line from “Worst Poetry.” Click the photos below to go to Julia H.’s website!

Best and Worst

Today Michael H. sent me this:

“When my favorite author, Jonathan Carroll, posted this line from your poem, “An Origin Story,” as his status on 16 July, it spoke to me and to the feelings I have for the woman I love, who left me at the end of April after eight years together. I will never forget her. On the last day of July, I went into Scapegoat Tattoo in Portland, OR and made that vow permanent…”

I think this is the first time someone’s ever gotten a tattoo from a line of “An Origin Story.” In the actual poem we’re speaking specifically about platonic love, but this is such a beautiful (and heartbreaking) story that Michael shared in connection with it. I’m always amazed with the way people make poetry their own. (Plus, I love that our quote gets to hang out right below John Lennon!) Thanks for sharing, Michael.

Moon Type Technically, this line isn’t mine. It’s from a children’s rhyme that I used to say when I was a kid. But for my poem “Astronaut” I made up a melody for it and altered the words a little. Roxanne Pasibe penned this beautiful text version of it for Behance. You can see the original source here.

Wave Watercolor I’m not sure who made this, or where it’s from. This is one of the most quoted lines of my poetry, and I really like this particular envisioning of it. I especially like the way you can almost see through the page to what’s going on behind it.

Cosmic SketchI think this was drawn by someone named Christianna Strom, but I’m not sure. In any case, I really like it.

Daughter Dance I’m not sure who the “Graffiti Dancers” are but they have a video of two dancers doing a performance to “B” that is quite beautiful. Click the image above to see the dance!

Universe HandsAnother set of universe hands. Not sure who the artist is.

Art Class

Susan Hubner writes:

“Hi Sarah, I am a Grade 11 Visual Arts teacher. A few of my students created art work based on “If I should have a daughter.” To give you the background, we had watched Shane Kocyzan’s spoken word “To this Day” which was illustrated by artists across the world. My students were excited by this and wanted to do something along the same line. So I got them to find their favourite songs, poetry etc. Each student presented them to the class and then the class voted for the top three. Yours was the top choice. So I then divided your poetry into different stanzas and the students choose the stanzas that they wanted to create a art piece from. They could choose any medium and then go with their inspiration.”

Check out Sue’s students’ wonderful work. I’ve included the lines of “B” that inspired each piece.
“I’m going to paint the solar systems on the backs of her hands…”

“You’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house, so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire…”

“Rain will wash away everything, if you let it…”

“I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat…”

“I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat…”

“There’ll be days like this, my mama said…”

“When you open your hands to catch, and wind up with only blisters and bruises…”

“There’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s swept away…”

Prezi Poem Prezi is this fancy new alternative to the traditional power point. I haven’t fully investigated it yet since I don’t usually use visual aids during my presentations, but it seems like there is a lot of potential for creativity, which is neat. Recently, prezi had a competition which involved folks creating a presentation in coordination with a TEDtalk. Someone made this really awesome one from mine! Click the image to see it in full.