SummerWood residents let their imaginations run wild

By Avigayil Halpern

Poets Silvia Pasternak (left) and Lillian Hillman.

In 2009, Andy Weil, a local Connecticut poet, came to Hoffman SummerWood Community in West Hartford to do a reading. A performance poet, he shares his work in libraries, schools and community centers across the state. At the suggestion of his mother, who was living in an assisted living facility at the time, Weil began reading at nursing homes and assisted living communities – residents were bored with standard activities, and his poetry provided a welcome new entertainment.

After Weil’s first reading at SummerWood, he was immediately approached by Activity Manager Robin Lund. She invited Weil to return on a weekly basis, to lead a group of residents in writing their own poems; thus, “Senior Voices – Expressing Yourself Through Poetry” was born. Since the program’s genesis at SummerWood, Weil has formed almost 30 groups at eldercare facilities across Connecticut and Massachusetts.

SummerWood’s chapter of Senior Voices meets on Friday mornings. The group is made up of neatly dressed women in delicate jewelry, grouped around a table in a sunny library. Weil, animated and excited in a magenta polo shirt, jokes with the women before opening the meeting by discussing a previous week’s prompt. He had asked participants in his groups to imagine becoming an inanimate object – here he gets out of his seat and crouches down to illustrate how one could imagine the perspective of a wristwatch – and he’s excited to share a poem by a woman from another facility.

This exercise, he says, asks the poet to engage with “a deeper sense of self, all the things we take for granted.” He reads the poem, by a woman named Rose, written from the viewpoint of a pair of automatic doors. The whimsical collection of rhyming couplets imagine the doors sliding back and forth, bumped by residents’ wheelchairs and knocked into by crowds, delighting in the visits of dogs and children. The women in the room laugh appreciatively – they, like the writer, know the joys of small and fluffy visitors.

Weil reminds the group of another prompt they’d recently worked with: struck by a fortune cookie slip that read, “Failure is nothing but a dress rehearsal for success,” he’d asked participants to create their own fortune cookie one-liners. One woman – dubbed by Weil “The Checkbook Poet,” for her habit of writing her work exclusively in that medium – jumps excitedly at the chance to read hers. “To be or not to be? Just let me be!” she declaims, as the room fills with laughter and appreciative nods.

Other poems read include one that expresses the all-too-familiar desire to ignore one’s responsibilities and flee to the beach on a beautiful summer day, unique not only for its playful spirit – “Oh heck, to the beach I go!” – but because the poet is 103 years old. Another woman’s poem alludes to the Flood of 1939 in Hartford, which several women remember vividly and which leads to a spate of reminiscences. A new participant in the group, who had been reluctant to write, is struck by the title of a book on a shelf across from her and jots down an inspired line.

Weil winds down the session by sharing abstract, whimsical quotes, sending the women into delighted giggles. He leaves the group with an assignment: “Turn your brain around,” he tells them, and create similarly puzzling and silly lines. As the women file out of the library, they smile and joke with one another, many carrying notepads on which they will write new words for the coming week.

Several members of SummerWood’s Senior Voices have had their work published, including one woman who has self-published two thick volumes of her poems. Most recently, Silvia Pasternak and Lillian Hillman, both dedicated participants, have had their work included in a book published by Altrusa, a civic group that sponsors a yearly poetry contest for individuals over the age of 55.
To Take or Not To Take
by Silvia Pasternak

Round or flat, oval or square
All size milligrams – not in a pair.
Swallow or chew take one or take two
Yellow or white, pink or blue.
So many colors what do I do take in the morning or at night?
Take it when the time is right.
Before breakfast lunch or dinner
Some say it will even make you thinner.
Take with food, take with water
Be sure to take in the correct order.
Forgot to take now what do I do?
Skip a day and then take two.
Pills, Pills, Pills…….
Come in all sizes, shapes and colors
Someone please tell me what will be
If I say no more pills for me.
I think I’ll just have a glass of wine
Red or white, dry or sweet, any old kind will be just fine!

Take a Deep Breath
by Lillian Hillman

Take a deep breath and blink your eye –
Just like the one hundred years gone by

From the ground up to the sky – horses fly –
Spirited four-legged steeds give way to motor power, fulfilling dreams

Take a breath and breathe a sigh. Fifty years gone by.
Life and death have left its mark.
The sky dims, the brightness dulls
Dreamed dreams abandoned

Laughter silenced, tears and sobs, joy and sadness grasp for air,
Hold on
Step carefully, you’re still here

Breathe slowly and dry your eyes, sorrow fades and life stirs

Life duties send out their cries, another breath and another blink.

The skies have cleared, the fledglings have fled; their own nest to build.

Between your first breath and the blink of an eye One Hundred Years gone by.

Take a deep breath and blink your eye — another new way of learning to fly

Take a deep breath and blink your eye………….

The Ledger welcomes Avigayil Halpern

Avigayil Halpern of West Hartford has joined the Jewish Ledger staff as the paper’s summer intern. A 2014 graduate of the Hebrew High School of New England, Halpern is also an alumna of the Bronfman Youth Fellowships and the Jewish Women’s Archive and Prozdor’s inaugural class of Rising Voices Fellows, as well as Drisha Institute’s Dr. Beth Samuels High School Programs. She has had work published in numerous media outlets, including Haartez, the Jewish Daily Forward, Zeek, and Jewcy, and she is a contributor at Jewschool.com. She plans to spend the upcoming academic year studying at Midreshet Ein Hanatziv, in the north of Israel, after which she will attend Yale University.