- Playing
- My Adversity
- From
- Shana Weber
Everyone faces sorrow and sometimes shattering hardship. This poem explores the repellant and seductive pull of death, that ultimate darkness. But also the freedom that facing fears can bring.
More from Shana Weber
A student perspective on previously-loved clothing
(04:00)
From: Shana Weber
How to be chic, green, and stay on a budget as a student
Students ask each other if global warming is real
(04:40)
From: Shana Weber
Students ask each other if global warming is real.
Toiletbowl Conservation
(04:09)
From: Shana Weber
A sustainability professional explores water-saving dual-flush toilets.
Adventures with Chickens
(03:31)
From: Shana Weber
Traveling with chickens while moving from coast to coast
Related Pieces
Piece Description
Everyone faces sorrow and sometimes shattering hardship. This poem explores the repellant and seductive pull of death, that ultimate darkness. But also the freedom that facing fears can bring.
Broadcast History
Debut piece (not aired nationally)
Transcript
How do I embrace you, my adversity?
Your writing seems stone and steel,
set harshly and irrevocably, ridged,
a mountain range, saw-toothed and humpbacked.
How do I wrap my arms around the enormity?
You will be my greatest and best teacher,
enemy mine.
Friend and foe, my best and wisest self.
Clever trickster, ultimate learner,
You will crush me with your lessons,
you will empty me of knowing.
I will be lost in the losing.
I will be husked ...
tattered wisps of corn silk atop my head
will stir ever so softly as tides shift.
Stumbling about in a lightness place,
I sometimes relishing the rich dark welcome;
empty of ...
pretense-less ...
matter-less ...
nothing-ness.
Will you be my adversity, will you be my teacher?
You always say yes, I always shy and worry away.
Tired of the shy worried one, the hiding one, I say,
Come out all you neg...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
Robert Weber is a dancer and artist in New York City who has discovered another artistic outlet through poetry in recent years. His poem "Adversity Mine" challenges and welcomes questions of death and fear when facing personal crisis. Read and produced by his sister Shana Weber.
