This week was a lighter week in terms of workload, but still one full of new and exciting experiences! I attended a reading and book signing featuring our visiting faculty writers of the week, Roy Hoffman and John Hoppenthaler, the latter of whom I took a writing workshop with titled “Writing and Revising the Sensuous Poem.” This workshop taught me a lot about the importance of evoking the five senses and creating a visceral reading experience for your audience by playing with sound and silence. I really loved one of our assignments in which we were challenged to write a series of haiku somewhere in nature. I spent one early morning sprawled out on the public dock by the lake, just taking in my surroundings and writing whatever came to mind. It was so grounding and peaceful; I definitely recommend it!
This week, the Chautauqua Institution celebrated America at 250 in partnership with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. I attended a sold-out lecture by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns, where he and legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen discussed and interpreted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution sentence by sentence. I also listened to historians David W. Blight and Tiya Miles reflect on how these foundational documents can be and have been interpreted to limit or expand our rights.
All of these conversations left me reflecting on the current state of democracy in this country, and the responsibility we as writers, journalists, and readers have to exercise our freedom of speech and creative expression. This week, the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle honored their graduating class as the “Voices of Democracy,” and we celebrated their dedication to reading diverse literature. Reading has always been so important to me, and now that it is getting harder to discern fiction from reality, or truth from disinformation, due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, and propaganda, I find that reading is more important than ever before. Writing, or the ability to put your thoughts and feelings into words, is also such an immense privilege, and it’s our responsibility to write our truths before our stories are written for us.
This sort of call-to-action was present in our featured author readings at the end of the week. Fiction writer Laurie Halse Anderson and poet Adrian Matejka were in conversation with one another, and they discussed the importance of resisting book bans, teaching literacy, and allowing younger generations to have access to a variety of works—graphic novels, fiction, and nonfiction—that feature diverse experiences and perspectives. I had led a book discussion on Adrian’s recently published poetry collection Be Easy: New and Selected Poems earlier in the week, which was a new experience for me, but I found it so valuable to really linger on his works and develop my own interpretations of them before listening to him speak. The ability to think critically and formulate your own opinions before receiving external feedback is so essential, and it’s a skill I definitely intend to harness more as I continue with my journey at Cornell and within the literary arts community.
I’m happy to report that I had lots of free time to enjoy the lakeside and all of the fun events the Chautauqua Institution has to offer. I went to an art festival, the cinema, a celebration of the Chautauqua Institution’s 152nd birthday, a live performance of the stunt dog show Puppy Pals, the Alonzo Kings ballet, an orchestra concert, and a chamber music concert featuring Scottish singing. Since my final week at Chautauqua is projected to be the busiest one yet, I’m trying to take advantage of my free time while I can! Wish me luck with my last week!