Creation
IS
ACTIVISM
Mercy Benefit Concert 2023, a fundraiser for:
The Community Solidarity , was a wonderful success!!!
Thank you!
Congratulations to the Xanadu community!!
We are 2022/23 Crown Award Recipients. This is an honor presented to our digital publication by the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association.
This award honors the top online student galleries chosen from those of its members. Xanadu was one out of two online magazines nationwide to receive such prestigious recognition.
Xanadu is the only gallery in New York selected. Much thanks to the many hands and hearts who contribute to the magazine.
Want to know more? Click here.
August Marmalade
Eliana Kazin
Typically orange, but today a sour lemon.
A sour lemon, with a whisper of banana Laffy Taffy.
Lucious golden locks, urine is trickling.
Silent snickers 6:47, saffron horizon peeping ahead.
I appear as the daffodils sprouting when the air turns to spring. However,
faded. Faded ancient paper, disintegrating with every fingerprint.
A flashing traffic light— slow down or speed up? Double highway lines
a forcefield
of sight
I am scribbled on post it notes, shoved between pages
sticky from August marmalade.
Baby's buttons splashing in a pool of honey.
AMC butter popcorn, greasy like the trusted
Maybelline mascara tube.
❧
Window
Ciara flores
I am windowed.
People walk past overlooking me
While I'm stuck in a holder unable to move
Or feel anything I’m feeling.
But you saw me,
You made me feel seen by you.
But what I didn’t know was
You were using me the whole time
To fill your cup of happiness.
Using me until-—
I was out of my own happiness.
Now I am locked, facing the people walking by
Studying them,
Looking at the tile floor and nice lighting,
But trapped in the mall
Being used to see what the manikin behind me
Has to offer.
Other stores surrounding me
Knowing that I should have known better.
Photo by Cecilia Lee
Sky Rocket
Juan Quintanilla
I have fireworked too long for you.
I have been floating materials of sulfur,
the carbon monoxide and the carbon dioxide
just filled with excitement to explode
30 feet in the air shining with colorful lights.
Then from the ground you can feel the excitement
gone when the ashes have come down.
I, the firework, have given you too much entertainment
now to see you just using me for your happiness.
Photo by Ava Hedstrom
The Green of my Nature
Kate Pratt
The lush of the ground of giant over grown forests
and in the same forest are the leaves on top the same over grown trees.
The frogs in the marsh hiding in the lily pads they blend
all too well in
and in the same marsh are cattails, cultivating along creeks.
The tall grass at the beaches, preventing sand from straying too far from the sea
and at the same beach are the metallic trash bins collecting soda cans.
The flowing sea weed sprouted deep below the waves
and in the same ocean are sea basses swimming along.
The sounds from the grasshoppers and crickets conjoined
and in the same song is the melody
of the night.
The nature that is found in every single walk of life,
is the same nature within my roots and soul, shining a beautiful and bright
Green.
By Judy Reilly
❧
Photo By Katie Mondry
Dark Hallway
Madelin Saravia
I walk down a hallway.
I walk alone.
I’m hallwayed and there is no one to hear me.
The stairs are breaking down
and the posters advertising events
I will not attend are falling as I move
past lock doors.
I fall and get up
but there is no one to help me
or at least give me their hands.
I break down
but there is no one to comfort me.
I’m depressed
but no one notices.
I walk down in a black hallway—
The lights are all off.
The Comfortable Web
Sardara Singh
In a digital abyss, we often dive
where pixels sway, real emotions hide.
The weight of sadness, like gravity's pull.
It's tempting to sink, to let it fully rule.
With every scroll, the melancholy grows,
A feed of despair, where the darkness shows.
Yet in that void, a strange comfort we find,
As if chains of sorrow, our hearts do bind.
Creativity and passion do thrive,
But only for those who try.
The real shall pry, as the rest will cry
Curiosity is key, as long as the cat doesn’t die.
Knowledge blooms, as we all gloom,
In a shadowed room, thoughts are consumed.
Doomed are the clickers, or that is what’s said,
But who are we, except bugs that are webbed.
Photo by Katie Mondry
Ode to a Razorblade
William Iemma
A weapon of sculpting, indispensable
in a war of thoughtless, bloody scars
and scarred, bloodied thoughts.
A tool of creation, gracefully cleaving
through cardboard and cardstock
and mending misplaced paints.
A utensil of nurturing, a protective flame
born from its shredding of fibers and twigs
or a wound treated by the hastily severed bandage.
I thank you for your precise, vicious separation—
the necessary restructuring responsible for creating
a blossoming, beautiful being.
Featured Artists
Our Dear Cool Father.
Thank you for arriving!
Wonderful to see you.
Our magazine prides itself on diversity amongst its artists. We are a publication run by students, for the student body. Here you will find lifetime creators and students who have built and shared something for the first time. We like to include all things that might inspire more creation. More voices.
Just take a walk around our gallery and you will be dazzled. Truly dazzled. Read a few poems and prose pieces and reflect on the voices and craft. Visit the art section and disappear into the oils and acrylics, the water colors and charcoals. Imagine the eyes of our photographers and love what they have shared. Go to the media page and listen to the TSDC live performances. Enjoy the raw, softly produced spirit of those musicians and spoken word poets.
This is a good place. A place that believes creation is activism. That the more we create, the more we exist. Walt Whitman wrote that a "kelson of creation is love." Yep, we agree. We are steered by it. We believe that a community of thoughtful sharing is a strong and beautiful place.
Want to read more about our team here at Xanadu? Head on over to our about page where we discuss our history and talk about our plans for the future.
Art by Kate O'Phelan
2022/23 PTA Reflections
The PTA Reflections is an annual contest that honors the creativity and arts within the Whitman community. Students were encouraged to write and submit poetry based on the prompt: "Show Your Voice." Below are the poetry winners for this year:
Award for Literary Excellence Shelly Chen
Sarah Cruz
Award for Literary Merit
Samantha Regalado
Julia Crapanzano
Award Literary Achievement
Aleena Ashgar
Madeline franz
Chris Ramirez
Emily Szwedo
By Sofia Hudak
Congratulations!
2023 Walt Whitman Birthplace Poetry Contest Winners:
Adelrhany Georges
Candida Villalta Meza
&
Paige MacPherson
Walt Whitman
Over 200 years and there is plenty of evidence that Walt Whitman is very, very alive. And yet, there is plenty to reveal he is sadly absent. These days, we need his spirit and his funk more than ever. 200 years. Pick up Song of Myself and read one section a week (there are 52 sections) and we will bring him back- To Stay!
The "Father of the Free Verse,"- our town's very own Walt Whitman was an extraordinary essayist, journalist, and poet. Whitman was a controversial humanist who brought aspects of both realism and transcendentalism into his works. Whitman struggled to receive both recognition and compensation for his works when he first began writing, specifically his most famous work, Leaves of Grass. His writing was considered to be extremely controversial due to his mentioning of sexuality and broad thinking. Whitman fell in love with the written word at an early age through reading classic works of Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer, along with the Bible. Other than just being a writer, Whitman made a living through teaching and journalism. He continued working on his writing within newspapers, constantly developing his unique style. Whitman was praised for his non-conformist way of writing, as he was known to have little to no form, meter or rhyme. However, we know now that he did indeed have a wild new exciting and free and democratic way of exploring the human experience. We are so, so proud he is our father.