WORDS CREATE WORLDS: Poems by Ada Jo Mann (Chad)
Congratulations, Ada Jo! I’m so happy for you. And thanks to the others for sharing their work. Poetry has been…
Poems
Words Create Worlds: Poems
Ada Jo Mann (Chad 1967-69)
Peace Corps Writers
147 pages
April 2023
$14.99 (paperback)
PCV Ada Jo Mann
Words Create Worlds is a collection of poems that span the life of the author, Ada Jo Mann, who grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chad from 1967-69.
Ada Jo Mann 2023
Her Peace Corps service led to a career in international development which took her to many countries around the world where she focused on building strong communities and organizations using a strength-based approach to change called Appreciative Inquiry. Upon the author’s retirement, she began taking courses at the independent bookstore, Politics and Prose, in Washington, DC. As a participant in the Poetry Circle she was inspired to try her hand at poetry and this collection of her poems was the result. In addition to the international focus of her poems, the author writes about memories of growing up and the impact of nature on her daily life.
i keep banging out stuff with no publication plans and don’t think of them as ‘privishings’ (as lawrence fixel spoke of work assigned to the drawer vs publishing work that you consciously decide to send out).
“there” is where they come from: ‘there’, for the inside to outside and i don’t pay attention to the shape the outside becomes. of course, i may change it, reshape it by mixed arrangements. operating not simply without shame or style but from impulse (pulse)because i feel the time is a worn thread.
a dumpster of memory and idea that is only phenomenologically momentarily necessary. if the moment passed without proceeding and how to make poetry work fun. if fun is the right word here.
and is it poetry if it isn’t fun in the making no matter how serious the content? well maybe, but i’d have to fiddle with the ‘fun’ concept.
“making” is the operative word really: and the pleasure or satisfaction of making something well and the thrill of the doing in the making.
©Edward Mycue 17 December 2014
Ada Jo, congratulations on your poetry publication. Many of the Hemingway wannabes thought Paris was their breeding ground. But some of us know that Chad offered something unique that dwells in us long after we left the continent. Good luck with the book. RPCV Chad 1977-1979
The Chadian Companion
A Poem by Michael Varga
A yellow snake craves shade
From Chadian sun under the tin lid
Of my shallow well as I thirst.
Spied before, I know to be cagey
As I lower my bucket to the depths.
Just as I pull the liquid to my lip
It lunges at my knee, stinging flesh,
As blood dribbles into gray sand.
When I wake, Ongombaye wipes
A pagne rag across my forehead
And, smiling, exclaims, “He lives!”
I landed on a cold moon, reverted
Just in time to savor that special
Chadian way of ‘being with you’
As we sweat anew, sun searing.
Congratulations, Ada Jo! I’m so happy for you. And thanks to the others for sharing their work. Poetry has been a wonderful teacher and friend to me over the years. Thanks for putting your your work out into the world, so I can also learn from you. Warm regards, Julie Dargis (Morocco 84-87)