The Jacobson Center at Smith College – Making the most of Students’ Education

When she was 15, Joan Leiman Jacobson entered Smith College at the age of 15. She graduated in 1947. A native of New York, Mrs. Jacobson spent more of her life in New York City. She also spent most of her life as a passionate promoter of writing and poetry.  

We became interested in Mrs. Jacobson in a roundabout way. She and her husband endowed the Jacobson Center for Writing, Teaching and Learning at Smith College. Sara Eddy, Tweetspeak Poetry’s Summer Lights Poet this year, works at the center as the assistant director and Writing Enriched Curriculum Specialist. 

 

The members of the center’s staff are drawn from the college’s faculty. Several of them are lecturers in English language and literature. They specialize in specific areas of writing – science writing, technology, general writing, public speaking, and multilingual writing. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Aaron Burden via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Poets and Poems: Sara Eddy and “Tell the Bees” and “Full Mouth”

I will admit having talked with family pets over the years as if they were human. I’ve even projected conversations into their mouths. When my children were young, I wrote hand-illustrated stories about their pets. Judging by what I’ve seen in books and social media, I am not alone.  

When it comes to food, I’m more utilitarian; some might say cretinous. I don’t get excited into flights of rhetorical fancy over food, with one possible exception: Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream. It’s the Texas-based company’s most popular flavor – and with good reason. They should market it as “heaven on earth.” Blue Bell ice cream is not sold in St. Louis, but I have a friend who makes runs to Rolla, Missouri, where it is sold, just to buy the ice cream.

 

Poet Sara Eddy is a beekeeper. She talks with her bees. She projects conversations and thoughts into the mouths and minds of her bees. And judging by her poetry, Eddy also enjoys food – each jam, truffles, honeycake, oysters, cantaloupe, dumplings, muffins, raspberries, donuts, olives, and burritos, to cite a few.

 

But in her hands, bees and food are something more than humorous stories or tributes to favorite things to eat. They are metaphors for life and its experiences, and she writes about both bees and food in ways both original and profound. 

 

Eddy has published two chapbooks, or short collections, Tell the Bees (2019) and Full Mouth (2020). Published by Writing Maps, Tell the Bees is a short collection of eight poems, published as a type of pamphlet with color photographs of her own beehives. Full Mouth, part of the New Women’s Voices Series of Finishing Line Press, includes 30 poems, published in a more traditional short book format.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.