Poems of Auguration

For those who have taken the introductory course, a new offering with an eye on the days ahead.

There was a time when the flights of birds would be known to a people in a particular place and they would have known that bird movement might well be related to crop health or maybe even health itself. The movement of birds could be a good omen.

For the ancient Romans there was a religious figure called an ‘augur’ who foretold events and interpreted signs for the public. The word augur comes from the Latin word for bird (avis) and the word for talking or singing (garrire – note this shows in a word like ‘garrulous’). And this is because the augur relied heavily on the flights and songs of birds for his foretellings.

Soon there will be an inauguration. Like it or not.

Inauguration has that word ‘augur’ in it. Ancestrally, an inauguration is the moment where installment of somebody or something would happen under good omens. Under the propitious flights of birds.

Now I’m no augur but I only make the point that the persistence of this old, old word is an invitation to remember that which you and I have probably never had - the lived experience of and be awestruck about it: that the pulsing world, birds in particular, were so tied into your capacity of feeding yourself and good fortune that you needed to name a job and a person to look after this for an entire community. Such were their relations. Would that it might be so again. But perhaps these poems could be a way to wonder about such things. These three pieces I've taken up are magnificent feathered and winged wonders.

Poems of Auguration

Mondays 3pm Eastern - October 21, 28, November 4, November 11

or

Mondays 7pm Eastern - October 21, 28, November 4, November 11

email me at mstillman@gmail.com to register!