Poet Tom Sleigh reads his favorite Dickinson poems and shares from his own work. Artist Lesley Dill shares her Dickinson-influenced work. Following the presentation, the two artists will have a conversation about their shared muse.
Artist Lesley Dill works with paper, wire, horsehair, photography, foil, bronze, and music. Her artworks are in the collections of over 50 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her opera based on Dickinson’s poems, Divide Light, was performed by New York’s New Camerata Opera Company in 2018.
Tom Sleigh’s ten books of poetry include Army Cats (John Updike Award) and Space Walk (Kingsley Tufts Award). His book of essays, The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees, is being published as a companion piece to his latest book of poems, House of Fact, House of Ruin.
From Song That Can Only Be Sung Once
… Maybe under
some other sky something like glory smiles on us,
maybe there life is clear, maybe there things open up
on the way the sea stretches out to the horizon—
but us, we’re blown by chance the way wind blows
blades of grass lightly blowing them all one way.
Excerpt from “Song That Can Only Be Sung Once” from Army Cats by Tom Sleigh © 2011 by Tom Sleigh. Used with permission of Graywolf Press.