Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Reclaiming the Magic of Poetry in a 2021 Time Such as This

4/17/2021

With April 2021 being the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Month, it is also the perfect time to share a shortened re-post of the article ‘Tis the Season for the Magic of Poetry Part 2: Angels and Poets. It was first published in 2014 as part of a series for my AXS National African-American Cultural Arts column.

When considering the recent shooting deaths of 13-year-old Adam Toledo and 20-year-old Daunte Wright, as well as mass shooting in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Atlanta, Georgia, poetry might seem to lack any real kind of serious significance in 2021. But as pointed out in the original first part of this series: One important reason poetry matters is because it often helps to expand humanity’s capacity for putting brutal and sublime experiences alike into usable, meaningful, contexts.

A Significant Utilitarian Role

The publication of an anthology such as Black Gold (compiled and edited by the late Ja A. Jahannes) is always an important event for a number of reasons. For one, it contributes to the preservation of a powerful literary tradition which has served to document the diverse poetic voices of different eras. Another is because it helps secure a niche market known to make traditional publishers somewhat nervous from a business perspective when it comes to investing in that same market. However, this being the digitalized information age, new traditions have formed in which established poetry organizations such as the Academy of American Poets will email subscribers poems on a daily basis.

In addition, online publications like Poetry Life and Times, edited by Robin Ouzman Hislop, publish contemporary poets on a fairly regular weekly to biweekly basis. Moreover, its sister digital venue Poetry Lifetimes, edited by Sara Russell, delivers poetry titles and headlines on a daily basis via the popular Paper.li content aggregation platform. Each of these, and others like them, demonstrates the significant cultural and utilitarian role that poetry continues to play in the lives of numerous individuals, organizations, and communities.

Angels and Poets

The book The River of Winged Dreams has gained some popularity since its publication in 2010 partly because more than half a dozen of the poems take their themes, and sometimes titles, from different holidays and other special occasions. The following, however, is presented at this time for its evocation of grace and compassion, two of humanity’s better qualities which even those who are fairly humbug on the holidays can appreciate when extended to them:

The Poet-Angels Who Came to Dinner
(from The River of Winged Dreams)

1.
Neither had been invited but both were welcomed.
They spoke through wordless intuition, cool nods of
“Peace-Be-Still,” and, “As-Goes-Love-So-Goes-Life.”
Their quiet burned my brain with inklings of wonders
to come––as I set my table with what I had:
half of a cheese sandwich left over from a lucky day.

2.
From the eyes of one, my meager offering drew
liquid letters and symbols that splashed into goblets
until they overflowed with flavors of wine.
The second stranger laughed. As he howled, their
sorrow and their joy set my table anew—laid it heavy
with glazed yams, marinated dreams, and aromatic breads.

3.
Then their wings spread and revealed feathers painted
with the names and words of poets known and unknown.
Echoes of vows and prayers exploded blinding songs of light.
By the time I could see again, my guests had gone.
I stared at the bountiful table they left, too stuffed
with awe, to feast on the generosity of their grace.

4.
A knock at the door made me think they’d returned.
It was instead an old grandfather, homeless, with three
children whose parents had been lost to war and disregard.

They had not been invited but all were welcomed.
I nodded through tears of wordless intuition:
“Peace-Be-Still,” and, “As-Goes-Love-So-Goes-Life.”

Also Check Out for National Poetry Month 2021:
‘Talks Between My Pen & Muse’ An Inspired Literary Debut from Poet Aurie Cole
Where to Find Poetry Fine Art Poster

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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Floating along: A Review Essay on Duncan McNaughton’s Somewhere in the Stream (part 1 of 2)

11/26/2019

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(Postered Chromatic Poetics title art graphic by Aberjhani)

Just before I took off running from Hurricane Matthew as it slammed the southeastern United States in 2016, presumably courtesy of the still-raging global climate crisis, I wrote the following notes on Duncan McNaughton's contemporary poetry classic, Valparaiso (Listening Chamber publishing, 1995):

As seen through the lens of this reader's experience of his work, McNaughton is a hunter and gatherer of significant meanings, and names, obscured by time and human negligence. Both a dissector and a sculptor of forms (as well as formlessness), a skillful translator of elusive moments crammed as much with pointless absurdity as with essential insights.....

Three years later, following a very narrow miss from Hurricane Dorian, I opened a copy of his SOMEWHERE IN THE STREAM (Blue Press Books, 2019). With this latest addition to the impressive and too often overlooked corpus of McNaughton's titles--now in fact time is the time for publication of a volume of his collected works--for some reason I felt a little less threatened by upheavals of physical-world conditions. Hurricanes seemingly indicative of negligent environmental stewardship, flaming tempests of political corruption, and suicidal addictions to war and hate fueling suicidal addictions to drugs and violence all took less of a toll on my personalized corner of the world. Maybe there was a reason for that.

A reader contemplating the title of this most recent volume of grace, wit, wisdom, and genius from someone often dubbed a poet's poet might suddenly ask: "Somewhere in the Stream" of what exactly? Potential answers--at least for those unfamiliar with McNaughton’s earlier works or unaware of his connections to genre-influencing poets like Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, and Diane di Prima--could turn out to be as ambiguous or obscure as they might precise and informative.

Since the poet is McNaughton, stream of individual consciousness gives us one good possibility. So does stream of collective memory, or of human comedies, absurdities, tragedies, antipoetic ironies, and language. It makes sense also to consider the stream of life, or existence, in general. How it manifests, flows, diverges, halts, dims, or glows to the rhythms of its own self-determining frequencies with seemingly little, if any, regard for human intentions constitutes a recurring observance, if not an actual theme, in many of the 51 poems contained in this collection.

Published by Blue Press based in Santa Cruz, California, Somewhere in the Stream (2019) is the latest poetry collection by renowned poet and educator Duncan McNaughton.

So why does any of this matter? Because McNaughton's sensibility is one which surfs brilliantly through history, layered philosophical concepts, and rhythms of multiple languages with startling ease to collect observations well worth the attention of Gen-Z, Millennials, Baby Boomers, and Traditionals alike. Tagging along gives the feeling at times of accompanying an interdimensional space explorer seeking confirmations of intelligence and civilizations outside boundaries of known planetary systems. Or popular literary conventions. As such, his poemized captain's log (if you will) documents the many strange contradictions of what it means to be human.

Read the short title poem at the volume's beginning and you are immersed instantly in a sense of intimate familiarity:

Always an empty space out
front for my Rocket 88

The Blue Chrysanthemum, Rue Parallèle,
Joanne's boîte,
corner Rue de la Vieille Lanterne
I'm usually here, at the bar, about
this time of night, left foot on The Stone

Aznavour at the piano

Everyone who matters to me drops in

Arthur! Ça va?

Here, space in the physical (on the page) sense appears to underscore prominence in the emotional sense. A thorough embrace of human intimacy, romantic and otherwise, unimpeded by space or time, is one of the great gifts of McNaughton's poetry--and also one of its respectable challenges. On a planet home to billions where so many still find themselves condemned to a strangling sense of alienation, the poem lets readers share in the luxurious comfort of knowing a place exists where one is always expected and always welcome. It allows the narrator to become anchored in affirmations of community tinted with soul-sustaining beauty.

This sense of community as represented in McNaughton's poetry has never been restricted to zip codes, national boundaries, or even a single period of history. It has always welcomed the voices of different poets and thinkers grappling with the frequently-cruel and yet often-humorous demands of existence itself. With that in mind, his poems may read as engaged conversations, private letters, public editorials, or notes to a singular self taking inventory of a singular life. Many of those "who matter" the most do indeed "drop in" for cameo appearances in the pages of SOMEWHERE. Among them are both historic and more contemporary poets and authors such as: Bill Berkson, Emily Dickinson, James Baldwin, Jack Collom, Robert Grenier, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, Jack Kerouac, Jack Spicer, Osip Mandelstam, Colin Christopher Stuart, Walt Whitman, and D.H. Lawrence--just to give a quick sense of the wide range of literary territory this astonishing title covers.

How a given society judges or misjudges some of the most powerful, if not necessarily most influential, voices humanity has produced is not always encouraging. In "AT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,"(caps McNaughton's) for example, the narrator observes:

The small man alone in the corner is
William Blake. Interesting smile.
Fewer and fewer care.

With Blake, one of the original titans of Romanticism, sitting ignored in a corner, the elephant in the room is the huge unasked question about our modern times. When an over-dependence on technology methodically shortens attention spans and ruling oligarchs pass demagoguery off as democracy: how wise it not to care about the sustained life-example of a poet-artist such as Blake?

NEXT: Floating along: A Review Essay on Duncan McNaughton’s Somewhere in the Stream Part 2

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A Literary Craftsman Re-Discovers His Inner Visual Artist

4/22/2017

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Postered Chromatic Poetics art graphic by Aberjhani for new store at Fine Art America. Also available as print and in other art formats.

National Poetry Month might strike some as an odd time for an author to debut new work as a visual artist. It is in fact not so strange at all.

If you've had a chance to check out my current essay series at Charter for Compassion, then you know it deals in large part with honoring empowering traditions. But not only that. It is also about extending and tweaking them in ways that add to their value in the 21st century.

Poet-Artist Galleries at Fine Art America

What this means when it comes to my new online visual arts gallery is that I am making an attempt to participate in the tradition of literary-artists-as-visual-artists. It is a very rich legacy that includes both notable classic icons and outstanding contemporary talents. These include the following:

William Blake
Jean Cocteau
Kahlil Gibran
Matthea Harvey
Terri Windling

Before anyone feels the need to ask, I will state categorically that I do not consider myself anywhere near the level of artistic skill which these individuals commanded or command.

I am someone who once upon a time as a child enjoyed a fondness for drawing characters from the comic books I read, and, for creating abstract labyrinths with cryptic symbolism. Without means during childhood to develop any real skill as an artist, the impulse to draw gave way to the need to write.

Creative Labors Beget Creative Possibilities

"Dare to love yourself" coffee mug with quotation and artwork by Aberjhani. The coffee mug is one of many formats available for framing the art and text.

My current adventures in the world of constructed visualizations--Postered Chromatic Poetics-- have, I believe, ironically enough been stimulated mostly by my writings on and with professional award-winning contemporary artists. Some have been subjects of my journalism, inspired specific poems, provided covers for books, or been clients for whom I wrote text to accompany their splendid exhibits. Among them:

Gustave Blache III
Amiri Geuka Farris
Allen Fireall (1954-2014)
Jack Leigh (1942–2004)
Jerome Meadows
Jaanika Talts
Luther E. Vann (1937-2016)
Michele Wood

Others have simply, blessedly, been good friends who allowed me the pleasure of witnessing their creativity in progress. Or: who shared with me important moments of aesthetic or spiritual breakthroughs which led to brilliant creations.

An Enhanced Way of Seeing

Serious historians, poets, playwrights, novelists, journalists often try to present their work as useful lens through which people may view or vicariously experience an unfolding moment. One might even get lucky enough to capture a meaning in the process of taking shape.

For me, working with visual art has helped refine the focus on how that lens should be designed. It is the kind of enhanced way of seeing that teachers of the creative arts have often suggested artists cultivate in order to render their perceptions of the world in uniquely-styled colors and voices.

The Postered Chromatic Poetics format emerged as a natural one that, for now at least, accommodates the advantages of social media marketing and helps secure hard-earned intellectual property rights.

The two biggest bonuses are: 1) it has allowed me to grow as a creative being. And 2) I am able to share the adventures intrinsic to such growth. This latter is accomplished through a variety of practical products made beautiful by Fine Art America's customizable production operations: very fine prints, cups, shower curtains, hand bags, towels, t-shirts, and considerably more.

That I am far more prone to immersing myself in individual creative projects than I am to working overtime on marketing strategies is, to those who know me, not a secret. The Postered Chromatic Poetics art shop helps minimize any tension between the two equally-important labors while increasing the maximum benefits of both. To define that as a win-win situation--which any creative is always grateful to experience--would not be wrong.

Author

Aberjhani is an American poet, historian, essayist, editor, journalist, social critic, and cautious artist. His many honors include the Choice Academic Title of the Year Award, the Notable Book of the Year Award, and Poet of the Year. He is currently completing final edits on a work of creative nonfiction about the cultural arts, race relations, immigration, and human trafficking in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia.

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Poetics and Jazz of Compassion Presented with a Creatively Maladjusted Twist

4/7/2017

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Detail of "Big Band" portrait by Leroy Neiman used as part 1 of special series of posters for Jazz Appreciation Month. Among iconic talents seen here are: Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, and Louie Armstrong.

April, when both Jazz Appreciation Month and National Poetry Month are observed, is always a special time at Bright Skylark Literary Productions. This year it is doubly special because in addition to featuring several re-posts of classic articles and essays about poetry and jazz on this site, we have also teamed up with our Charter for Compassion partners to present the timely new 4-part series: Poetic Traditions of Compassion and Creative Maladjustment.

The celebration of Jazz Appreciation Month actually got underway with Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion, the poem and essay published in tribute to the late great Al Jarreau after his passing earlier this year. Jarreau in recent years had been among the headliners for the annual International Jazz Day concert and one of the premier talents of the modern jazz era. You can check out part 1 of the tribute by clicking here and part 2, which includes the poem, by clicking this Postered Poetics artwork:

"Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion" JAM 2017 tribute to Al Jarreau in conjunction with National Poetry Month and Earth Day.

A Confluence of Compassionate Sensibilities

In addition to commemorating NPM 2017, the series showcased on the Charter for Compassion website does two important things:

1) It explores the conceptual relationship between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for a creative-maladjustment approach to civil disobedience and author Karen Armstrong’s recommended strategy for living a compassion-empowered life.

2) It utilizes as lens through which to examine poetic traditions of compassion, short biographical profiles of the Sufi genius Jalal al-Din Rumi, the great Pulitzer Prize-winning Harlem Renaissance and Chicago Renaissance poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Prague, Czech Republic-born author of Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke.

You can begin enjoying the series by clicking either of the following graphics:

"Love is the bridge between you and everything." quote by Jalal al-Din Rumi. Postered Poetics by Aberjhani.

Author

Author-Poet Aberjhani is currently completing a book of nonfiction narratives addressing race relations, histories of erasure, the cultural arts, and practices of slavery in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, USA.

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Sustaining the Sweet Joyful Howl of Poetry in the 21st Century

4/3/2016

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“Individuals often turn to poetry, not only to glean strength and perspective from the words of others, but to give birth to their own poetic voices and to hold history accountable for the catastrophes rearranging their lives.” --Aberjhani from Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays. ©Postered Poetics based on original poetry Spencerian calligraphy art by G.A. Gaskell. #NPM16 #PocketPoem

The launch of National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, in April 1996, came just three years after the debut issue of the Savannah Literary Journal in 1993. In addition to 49 poems by 35 brilliant writers with regional and national reputations, the 1996 edition of the journal featured six works of fiction and three pieces of creative nonfiction.

My contribution to the journal that year was a personal essay but the title of it, Angels and Shakespeare (later published in I Made My Boy Out of Poetry), revealed the central place verse has always held in my life. So did this epigraph borrowed from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

“For this reason Monday burns like
oil... and it howls in passing like a
wounded wheel...”

(Pablo Neruda, from Walking Around)

Both National Poetry Month and the publication of the journal (up until 2001) could be considered as invitations to readers, writers, and publishers to explore a more deeply intimate relationship with language. These invitations coaxed them as well to experience the different levels of power words can wield when endowing our lives with either newly-claimed or wholly-unexpected meaning.

The responses, now 20 years down the timeline, have mushroomed into a worldwide cultural mainstay where National Poetry Month (NPM) is concerned. In regard to the Savannah Literary Journal, published by the former Savannah Writers Workshop, it has confirmed the value of one of the city’s most prized artistic legacies.

Of Bloggers and Nobel Laureates

But what should we say of poetry as a whole during the last two decades when life as so many once knew it shape-shifted into a spinning mass of digital signals, globalized communities unbounded by geographic borders, and astounding varieties of terror clashing head-on with determined demands for liberty?

Former Poetry Society of Georgia member Gerald Chan Sieg (1909-2005) receiving the Savannah Literary Journal Irene Tromble McAlister Literary Prize from editor Robert Keber in 1999. (photo Bright Skylark Literary Productions Collection)

That now populous demographic of humanity known as bloggers did not exist in 1996 and programmer Peter Merholz would not condense the term “weblog” to invent the word “blog” until 1999. Nevertheless, poetically-inclined bloggers during the first and second decades of this 21st century have done a great deal to ensure poetry occupies a prominent position within the global imagination and humanity’s collective ethical consciousness.

Moreover, the ever-mindful Nobel Prize Committee actually saw fit in 1996 to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality." And in 2011 it bestowed that same honor upon Sweden’s Tomas Tranströmer , "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality."

A Movement Designed to Inspire

Obviously the Academy of American Poets’ commitment to recognizing, honoring, and documenting literary excellence within the work of American Poets did not begin with the establishment of NPM. That happened back in 1934 when founder Marie Bullock surveyed America’s literary landscape and came to a certain conclusion.

Despite the quietly-evolving cultural canonization at the time of such poets as Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Jean Toomer (1894-1967), Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), E.E. Cummings (1894-1962), T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), and other American quill-masters of the period, it became apparent that more needed to be done to place poetry on some level of esteem comparable to what it stirred in the literary capitals—such as Paris, London, and Dublin––of Europe.

National Poetry Month more than half a century later represented a game-changing upgrade from previous efforts. Since its start, affiliated programs each successive year have helped observations to grow in scope and influence. Initiatives such as Poem in Your Pocket Day (observed this year on April 21), the Dear Poet Project, and Poem-A-Day (via email) contribute immensely to sustaining the sweet joyful howl of poetry in these new millennial times. The key words and hashtags that dominate social media every April––like #npm16, #pocketpoem, #jazzpoetry, #celebratingpoetry, and the tagged names of favorite poets––denote only one small measure of how successful the campaign has become.

Cover of Academy of American Poets Journal Vol 50 NPM16. “Greens, Biopsy 2” Digital C Print 2007 by artist Yedda Morrison.

It also did not hurt when citizens of the United States elected a lover and writer of poetry, Barack H. Obama, as their first African-American president in 2008. The following is from a 2009 essay written to commemorate both NPM and Jazz Appreciation Month:

…The birth of the Academy meant the birth of a movement designed to inspire, cultivate, and preserve the voice of American poets. And although it likely was not his intention to do so, President Barack Obama extended that movement not only by bearing the “stigma” of being an accomplished wordsmith but by inviting Elizabeth Alexander––an author of several books but of whom many had never heard until Obama spoke her name––to serve as his Inauguration Day poet.

(Aberjhani, from All that National Poetry Month Jazz)

If there is one thing populations of the world have needed, and received, from poetry for the past two decades, it has been inspiration. But not only inspiration in that classic form which reaffirms the value of faith.

Poetry in our post 9/11 era provides the kind of inspiration that defiantly raises poets’ voices against the brutalities of war, the insanities of terrorism, and the indignities of oppression in all its toxic forms. It empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.

Although the last edition (to date) of the Savannah Literary Journal was published in 2001, its legacy continues to stand as a richly inspiring one. Many of the poets, essayists, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers featured in its pages have since gone on to win national and international acclaim in various fields. These are but a few listed in no particular order: Janice Daugharty, Linda Rocheleau, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, David C. Hightower, Susan Johnson, Lily Keber, Ja A. Jahannes (1942 -2015), Errol Miller, Kathleen Thompson, Toussaint St. Negritude, Dufflyn Lammers, Anis Mojgani, and Vaughnette Goode-Walker. Again, these represent only a few.

Most would probably tell you their greatest contributions to the literary arts thus far have not been particular poems or stories or books. They have instead been the relationships cultivated with the hearts and souls who heard what they had to say and then drew from that hearing enough motivation to speak their own truths to power and pain and joy.

Despite the Cacophony

Whether through contributors to literary journals, the sustained dedicated efforts of members of the Academy of American Poets, or bloggers content just to have a platform where they could post lines at will, poetry has maintained a dynamic living breathing presence in the world.

Despite the cacophony of bombs and bullets which so often drown out the music of laughter (or possibly because of them) poetry at this point in history may very well be more commanding than any other previous time. There are many reasons to believe its potency, and its beauty, shall grow even stronger in the future.

Aberjhani
© National Poetry Month 2016
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

2016 National Poetry Month poster featuring a florilegium with text excerpted from poems by diverse classic and contemporary poets. The poster was designed by Debbie Millman and produced by Emily Weiland. NPM16

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Reclaiming the Magic of Poetry in a 2021 Time Such as This

A Significant Utilitarian Role

Angels and Poets

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact the Author

Floating along: A Review Essay on Duncan McNaughton’s Somewhere in the Stream (part 1 of 2)

Contact the Author-Artist

A Literary Craftsman Re-Discovers His Inner Visual Artist

Creative Labors Beget Creative Possibilities

An Enhanced Way of Seeing

Author

Poetics and Jazz of Compassion Presented with a Creatively Maladjusted Twist

A Confluence of Compassionate Sensibilities

Author

Sustaining the Sweet Joyful Howl of Poetry in the 21st Century

Of Bloggers and Nobel Laureates

A Movement Designed to Inspire

Despite the Cacophony

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Reclaiming the Magic of Poetry in a 2021 Time Such as This

A Significant Utilitarian Role

Angels and Poets

AberjhaniCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceAuthor of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact the Author

Floating along: A Review Essay on Duncan McNaughton’s Somewhere in the Stream (part 1 of 2)

Contact the Author-Artist

A Literary Craftsman Re-Discovers His Inner Visual Artist

Creative Labors Beget Creative Possibilities ​

An Enhanced Way of Seeing

Author

Poetics and Jazz of Compassion Presented with a Creatively Maladjusted Twist

A Confluence of Compassionate Sensibilities

Author

Sustaining the Sweet Joyful Howl of Poetry in the 21st Century

Of Bloggers and Nobel Laureates

A Movement Designed to Inspire

Despite the Cacophony

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Creative Labors Beget Creative Possibilities