Tag Archives: Poetry



”Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.”

-Rabindranath Tagore

More from A Rite of Passage: Memorial Music: “The Show Must Go On” by Queen Memorial Music: “Dreams Old Men Dream” by the Cold War Kids Memorial Music: “Will You Miss Me when I’m Gone?” by The Carter Family

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What is Expressive Arts Therapy? An Interview with Adriana Marchione

Adriana Marchione discusses how expressive arts therapy can help people coping with loss and grief

Today, SevenPonds speaks with Adriana Marchione, MA, REAT, RSMT, a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist and Registered Somatic Movement Therapist. Currently based in San Francisco, California, she is the founder of a well-established arts and healing practice called Creative Source and … Continue reading

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“Sonnet” by Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop's images in "Sonnet" makes the end of life a release into joy

Is the end of life best imagined as a climactic release? Although not explicitly about death, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “Sonnet” all but dramatizes it as a swift vault from captivity to liberation as the poem depicts the soul’s gleeful escape from “caught” (1) … Continue reading

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”Waking or asleep, / Thou of death must deem / Things more true and deep / Than we mortals dream, / Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?”

–Percy Bysshe Shelley, from "To a Skylark"

Read the full poem here. More from A Right of Passage: Memorial Songs: “Casimir Pulaski Day” by Sufjan Stevens  “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”  Memorial … Continue reading

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How Can We Plan A Memorial Service? An Interview with Rabbi Sara Shendelman

Rabbi Sara Shendelman discusses the services she offers for people planning a memorial service for a loved one

Today, SevenPonds speaks with Rabbi Sara Shendelman, a rabbi and cantor as well as a former ordained minister. Currently based in Berkeley, California, she officiates all types of weddings and conducts memorial services, both interfaith and Jewish, for individual families. … Continue reading

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“Kyrie” by Ellen Bryant Voigt

Ellen Bryant Voigt's sonnet sequence on the post-WWI Influenza of 1918

Few may be familiar with the Influenza of 1918. Although it took half a million lives in the U.S. and 25 million worldwide, most of whom were young adults, the pandemic somehow eludes due emphasis in our history books. One … Continue reading

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