“Natural History Does Not Include My Plans to Fly”—BC Mossberg
Reviews from the Cosmos as Barbara Mossberg Imagines
Barbara Mossberg disrespects reality. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.—Richard Feynman
She overlooks the frazzled chaos and insignificance of how things appear in the short-term to see that if it’s dark, it will become light, and meanwhile, the light that is in the darkness; if we are to dissolve, we will become something new and shining and needed—Neil deGrasse Tyson
We are like the earth and stars, grounded in our fates, doomed to disappear, but part of a process that is never-ending.-- Walt Whitman
She upends despair with the knowledge that everything matters and continues infinitely.—e. e. cummings
“Come Fly with Me”—BC Mossberg covering Frank Sinatra Professor Mossberg’s distinguished career spans five decades inspiring readers, audiences, students, and leaders, to believe how they matter and
to celebrate their being.
A prizewinning poet, author, and teacher of existential imagination, epic, and eco literature, in other words the large, the deeply and actively involved, the outsized spirit engaged with our earthly fates, Mossberg brings in the world’s writers, scientists, and thinkers to inspire optimistic hope as a motivational speaker and honored educational leader. Mossberg is dedicated to a wildly out-of-the-world optimism and brave faith in our world.
A wordsy and passionate person who will think your story is just what our world needs, and must be written (“we have to hear this; it’s your legacy, and who else but you?”), she transforms her own experience and
knowledge—often deeply sad--into her creative writing, including her memoir escapades Clown Cantos: Everything Is Alive In Its Own Way, Singing, and the recent Here for the Present: A Grammar of Happiness in the Present Imperfect, Live from the Poet’s Perch, and Sometimes the Woman in the Mirror Is Not You and other hopeful news postings.
“The most underrated duty is the duty of happiness”—BC Mossberg covering Robert Louis Stevenson
The takeaway of any of Barbara Mossberg’s works is a belief in the duty of happiness, despite, despite-- and a gratitude for you, with her on this fateful journey in what Dante calls “this our life.” Mossberg writes to encourage our spirits to endure, to see the honor, hilarity, holiness—and hope, in all that happens, to see beyond despair to new possibility. She sees life like Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, which she says is a “great pity party” in which Shakespeare describes himself as an old battered tree in winter, a day’s growing dark, a fire turning to ashes: he fears he i getting too old to be loved. Then, the sonnet requires a rhymed couplet after all this moaning, that expresses things in a new perspective. Despairing? Not so fast! He cleverly says, since I’m so close to being done for, you’d better get it now, and love me all the more. Mossberg seeks the new perspective which enables us to go on, to persevere.
“I dwell in Possibility”—BC Mossberg covering Emily Dickinson
Despite how things seem, it is possible to find the beauty—and hope. Mossberg sees any place can be a stage; any stage in life can be theater, a tragi(of course)comedy. Her lyric optimism can be seen on You Tube, Flash Mobs, in the university classroom, Board rooms, conference podiums, library spaces, Monarch forests, and theater stages, promoting the transformational role of poetry in people’s lives.
STREET THEATER
Mossberg began her career in a driveway as a puppeteer in The Little Theater, with puppets she made herself, producing plays for the neighbors at 15cents which included home-made lemonade and cookies.
TAKE THE CAKE
Ever since, Mossberg never performs without providing cake (and reciting e. e. cummings’ “i thank You God for most this amazing” which says it’s our birthday—hence cake is required. She first published poetry at age 12 , “A Party in Boston,” which she considers one of her higher paid publications. In graduate school in Indiana, she was part of a troupe taking puppets to schools.
EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
Mossberg’s imagination, hope, and vision has been shared in roles in the national arena., Mossberg is a graduate of UCLA, with an Indiana Ph. D . She has served as President of Goddard College, founding Dean of the California
State University Monterey Bay, US. Scholar in Residence for the USIA (US. State Department) American Studies Specialist, Senior Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, Bicentennial Chair of American Studies, University of Helsinki, and many other organizations and institutions. She has worked in over 20 countries representing American literature and culture, lecturing and consulting. (This is the subject of her lecture concert “Flying with Emily Dickinson.) She has been National Council of Research on Women Senior Fellow, and American Council on Education Senior Fellow, and served as Moderator for the Aspen Institute. Barbara Mossberg has been
Professor of Practice at Clark Honors College, University of Oregon since 2013.
Dr. Mossberg uses her public platforms to promote the power of words in each of our lives and human fates. She has been recognized by National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Mellon Foundation (Aspen Institute) and others. Twice named the Senior Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, she is a current Fulbright Specialist. At the University of Oregon, she has been awarded the Clark Honors College Faculty Innovation Fellowship, and the University’s highest teaching honors, the Williams Fellowship, and Ersted Award, as well as is nominated for the national teaching Cherry Award at Baylor University.
MIXING IT UP IN THE PUBLIC ARENA
Committed to arts activism in the public sphere, she created and hosts the weekly hour Poetry Slow Down (podcast), and publishes in poetry and academic journals, newspapers, Huffington PostArts&Culture
columns, restaurant reviews, books (Emily Dickinson: When a Writer Is a Daughter was named Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year;Sometimes the Woman in the Mirror Is Not You and other hopeful news postings was chosen for Finishing Line Press’s Dublin Writers Abroad).
THE EMILY DICKINSON FLASH MOB
As a keynoter for academic conferences and organizations, and fundraisers, Mossberg participates in lit crawls, Flash Mobs, poetry slams, and civic celebrations. She serves on boards for the environment, education, drama, and the arts, including as President of the Outdoors Forest Theater in Carmel, California, producing community theater musicals that drew from, over nineteen area schools. Her roles as scholar, writer, and poet “in residence,” include her federal appointment as US. Scholar in Residence for USIA., representing American letters in over twenty countries, Writer in Residence at Thoreau’s Birthplace in Concord, MA., and Pacific Grove’s California laureate/Poet in Residence at the Poet’s Perch since 2010, for which she says, “Pinch me.” She is a co-founder, continuing Board Member, and past President of The Emily Dickinson Society.
WALKING WITH DANTE, IAN CHILLAG, AND DOLLY PARTON
Her newest book Clown Cantos is organized around Dickinson’s poem “God be with the Clown/Who ponders this tremendous Scene/This whole Experiment of Green.” It aligns Ian Chillag, Dolly Parton, Einstein, Dante, e. e. cummings, Emerson, Walt Whitman, with worms and turkeys and other wonders and wild mysteries.
DR. B
Her students call her “Dr. B,” her favorite title of all. At the University of Oregon, she teachers Eco literature and the Green Imagination, Revolutionary Imagination (Oxford Study Abroad), Thinking Like the Sun, Epic Influences: Poetry, Leadership, and You, John Muir’s Backpack, Emerson and Einstein, and for the Osher Institute of Lifelong Learning, Drama, Memoir, Emily Dickinson.
DR. B OFF-BROADWAY
She is a dramaturg of companies putting writers on stage and into ballet, including for The New Umbrella and Ballet Fantastique, interacting on stages for Off-Broadway 59E59, Oxford Theater (UK), the Cherry Center for the Arts (Carmel, CA), and the Hult Center (Eugene, OR). An actor in community theater and one-woman shows, playwright (including the memoir poetry play about growing up as poet in her family, “(P)raising the Dead,”Flying
with Emily Dickinson, and Emily Dickinson’s Pop-Up Kitchen), she is writing a concert drama about John Muir’s wife Louie Wanda and their glorious love, writing the Book and Lyrics with 20 original songs, andTrees!
The Tree-mendous Story of the Improbable Role of Poetry in Saving the Earth
.
MEMOIR STARRING YOU
Barbara Mossberg leads memoir workshops designed to see and celebrate each person’s story. When she performs her memoir plays, audience and community are invited to participate in the collective story. Her dream is to perform
Sir Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage again when she is 80 or 85 (she promises to use a dialect coach this time). Acting in and teaching this play for forty years, she believes it gives a joyous way of resilience in all that weighs us down, to fight against expectations that make us “mere,” to believe in our own genius, and to override natural laws against flying.
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