Common Threads is a program and anthology featuring seven to ten poems by Massachusetts poets to be read and discussed state-wide.
The poems for this year’s anthology are by Herman Melville, Anne Sexton, Etheridge Knight, Linda Bamber, Marie Howe, Martin Espada, Jeffrey Harrison and January Gill O’Neil. The editor this year is poet Alan Feldman, longtime Wellfleet summer resident and lover of sailing, who made the final selection of poems and chose the theme: Born to be Lonely: Massachusetts Poets on Connection and Disconnection.  Each of the poems, in their various ways, explores the tension between a desire for solitude and a need to connect with others.
Rosalind Pace will host a freewheeling discussion of the poems at the Truro Library. Pace describes such a discussion like this: “Imagine that a poem is a living being that comes into the room with us, sits down, and says something. What makes us perk up and listen? Should we get more acquainted with this living thing? Maybe we get to be good friends. Sometimes, we find a soulmate. Poetry is like that. It makes our hearts bigger. It connects us with each other, often in deep and lasting ways. It helps remind us that life is complicated and beautiful, often at the same time.”
Rosalind Pace, of Truro, has been teaching a poetry seminar on the Art and Craft of Poetry at the Wellfleet Library for many years, and mentors a memoir writing group at the Truro Council on Aging. She was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry for 2016.
Visit the Common Threads program at Mass Poetry here; this year’s anthology can be downloaded here, or picked up at the Library.  By clicking on ‘Media package’ from the Common Threads webpage, or right here, you can watch short videos of each poem being read.