SPOKEN: Saluting the Beaten Track

Leslie Gillette Jackson (1921- 2013) was a painter and poet whose masterful words and works convey elegance, intelligence and perceptiveness. In her small collection of paired poems and drawings, Poet in Spain, Leslie reflects on wanderers and pilgrims, describing this collection as “poems of the road” which offer both promise of continuation and prospect of reconciliation. Here, Kim Rosen, master poetry reader, reads a short poem from this collection – “Stare Super Antiquas Vias” – an allusion Jackson’s notes tie to Jeremiah 6:16 which calls on us to “ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it” but but which we have declined to walk. Leslie’s poem is a humane reminder of the lure of temptations, the “snakes with human heads” we find on our daily walks along the beaten track. This poem is also captured in the black and white line drawing that Leslie created specifically for this poem  Two collections of Leslie’s paired poems and drawings can also be read on POBA. See Kim read “Stare Super Antiquas Vias.”