Sun, Jun 21 · 1:00 PM PDT
## 🎭📜 Poetry Night IV — masks, freedom, wonder, and what survives
Poetry discussion night — not an open mic.
### Short summary
There is a specific kind of life skill most people learn too early:
### Reading
I’ll bring a reader-friendly packet with quick clues, context notes, and discussion questions so we can stay with the poems without turning the room into English class.
Christina Rossetti — “A Birthday”
Paul Laurence Dunbar — “We Wear the Mask”
Frances E. W. Harper — “Learning to Read”
Claude McKay — “If We Must Die”
Walt Whitman — “A Noiseless Patient Spider”
Rabindranath Tagore — “Where the Mind Is Without Fear”
Kabir — “I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty”
Matsuo Basho — “An ancient pond!” / the frog haiku
Sara Teasdale — “There Will Come Soft Rains”
LINK TO THE POEMS :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZHDRRSOqJAoxnTc_SSAX58OfokO3ePHy/view?usp=sharing
### The question sitting over the room
How much of a life is performance, and how much of it is the thing underneath trying to breathe? What survives us: the mask, the voice, the fight, the attention, the soul, the world — or none of it?
### A few questions already sitting in my head
Which poem feels most alive tonight — not “best,” alive?
### The room I want
People who do not need a correct interpretation before trusting their own reaction.
### How the night runs
We’ll start with one simple question:What’s one line — from anything — that has actually stayed with you?
### Small note
This is not a poetry slam and not a school lecture.
### When and where
📅 Sunday, June 21, 2026 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM Vancouver Central Library Room TBD — I’ll add the exact room number closer to the event.
### Cap 12 + waitlist
Small room on purpose. Poetry gets worse when people start auditioning for intelligence.
