Complied by: Aimee Shramko
Posted: February 26, 2026
This January, OLLI members had the opportunity to explore the interaction between poetry and music in an immersive course led by Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski(1) and Dr.Mike Silvers (2).
Held at the Musical Instrument Museum, one of ASU OLLI’s Community Partners, this class began with a guided tour of the museum to interact with instruments from across the globe.
Next, students learned about the relationship between poetry and music. They read and discussed a selection of poems that connected with musical instruments and music in general.
They learned the term ekphrastic, meaning writing that engages with other forms of art.
In a second session, they composed poems that connected to an instrument or musical sound and shared them in a celebratory reading with the group.
Below, two of our OLLI members have generously shared their compositions with all of us. Enjoy!
CRANE SONG
By: Julie J. Casey
Toppled in water near shore.
Dressed for dinner…then hot soup.
Bones ground to garden grist
with one bone spared. Then the
tap, tap, tapping of holes.
Spirits dampened once more
hunting the shoreline again
with the man whose breath
lures my kin, deceives with
a song like my own.
Then left on a ledge
near the water’s edge where
the tide swept me into
the sand to be hidden in
timeless embrace.
Soft scrapings - a spade that
carries me from my grave
to water - sand washed away
by tender hands. Strong breaths
from the boy clear my throat.
Yes! His air races through me.
Liftting me high, diving low.
To my song on the breeze,
I swoop and ripple and roll
in the pitch of his trills.
About the Author:
Julie J. Casey is originally from Minnesota, raised alongside the Mississippi and Minnesota
Rivers - environments that influenced much of her life and writing. She has enjoyed living in
Phoenix for the past 30 years with her husband Daniel, family and many critters.
BEATITUDE: ON THE HUMAN X-RAY USED as the HEAD of a DRUM
BY: K. Sheffield
Once I stood silent
as you stand silent,
obeying the rules, following directions,
politely taking my turn.
I stood mute
as you stand mute,
let them see right through me,
believing that I was only what they saw.
They froze the flowing of my breath,
the beating of my heart.
They thought they’d gotten rid of me
But I lay in wait
as you lay in wait,
staring up at the sky, burned by the sun,
accusing it of keeping its distance.
I longed to have my silky skin caressed,
my life opened, my voice heard.
Are we so different? We are not so different.
Too transparent, too easily burned,
too willing to wait, to obey,
to be stretched and shaped by others
to believe what we’re told,
left hollow inside.
Butt listen, do you hear?
From the dumps and the landfills,
the dungheaps and the middens,
from earth and air and history:
A drum. A beat. A beatitude.
Blessed are the polite and obedient,
for their time always comes.
Blessed are the silent and the longing,
for they are the loam of life.
Blessed are the frozen and the burned,
for they shall see the sky as their equal.
Blessed are the stretched and the beaten,
for their voice shall be heard.
About the Author:
“I’ve always loved many things, but two primarily: language and music. So this chance to write poetry about a musical instrument was irresistible. I’ve been writing all my life, and spent my career teaching linguistics, humanities, and English to both native and non-native speakers. In retirement I’ve been pursuing many interests—poetry and other writing, music composition and performance (from a lifetime of choral singing to playing the flute), visual and digital arts, and studies in social sciences relating to spirituality and well-being. I am constantly grateful for this rich time of life which allows not only a broadening, but a deepening of being.”
About the Instructors:
1. Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski, PhD, Teaching Professor, CISA - School of Applied Sciences and Arts, Barrett Honors Faculty
Poet Laureate, Phoenix, AZ
Founding Director, Revisionary Arts
Teaching Professor, College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, ASU
Founding Editor, ISSUED: stories of service
Asssistant Professor of Practice, U of A College of Medicine-Phoenix
Faculty Editor, Grey Matter, Founding Editor, rinky dink press, Website www.rdpoet.com
Dr. Dombrowski is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, AZ, a TEDx speaker, the founding editor of rinky dink press, and the founding director of Revisionary Arts, a nonprofit that facilitates self-care and healing through poetry. She's published three collections of poetry and is the recipient of an Arts Hero award, a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, a Great 48 award (2020), the Arizona Humanities Outstanding Speaker Award (2022), and a Capital Times Leader of the Year Award (2023). She's also the founding editor of ISSUED: stories of service, a journal for military affiliated peoples at ASU, and the faculty editor of Grey Matter, the medical poetry journal of the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix. She also curates the Pharmacy of Poems in the Compassion Center at Banner-University Medical Center-Phoenix.
2 Dr. Mike Silvers, PhD, Curator of Education, Musical Instrument Museum
Originally from Tucson, Arizona, Mike Silvers joined MIM as curator of education in 2024. He oversees the development and implementation of engaging, inquiry-based educational experiences for guests of all ages. Silvers has a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before coming to MIM, he was an associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for more than a decade. There, he served as chair of musicology and on the faculties of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program, the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies, and the Center for Latin American Studies. Earlier in his career, he taught music at the Escuela Internacional Sampedrana in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
PHOTO CREDITS:
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Jaume Plensa, Self-Portrait with Music, 2018
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Julie Casey, Musical Instrument Museum exhibit photo
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