A SOOTHSAYER BIDS YOU. The ominous subject line accompanied a poster emailed to anyone who had interacted with Bennington’s SILO in any capacity previously— a Vincenzo Camuccini painting of a fallen, stabbed Caesar with text advertising tales, verse, flames, and games overlaid. The advertising was also found around campus the week leading up to March 15th, inviting students to attend the vague event being held at the End of the World on the Ides.
The gathering commenced at sunset on March 15th. Two fire pits were set up (checking off the promise of flames), and there were tents that protected a Roman food spread, that included globi made by Willa Brosnihan, who is the managing editor/co-lead of SILO and apparently well-versed in the creation of ancient deserts. The fires, along with the music and food, allowed a respectable crowd to gather just on the basis of community. The first activity was the creation of the verse. Two groups were created and gathered in circles around the fires, whereupon pencils and a notebook was passed around for the creation of an exquisite corpse poem. Each person contributed a word or a line to create an entire poem that was read dramatically over the fires before being tossed into the flames after being read. Fleeting, but two are memorialized thanks to audio transcription here:
Fish have legs but hate leaving bed / Heavy will hang the leaded head / Dance, revel, partake in wine and mead / Expunge these lands, I do decree / Mud your boots / Hooray! / Trek the valleys where the sun shines low / And walk in terrible, heavy boots / The neon sky splits / The salt spits / And the hawks / The flames / Eat wood, engulfing an orange glow / It is a scream
And the fire was beautiful / And are you betraying your father? / Steam radiates from the cascading waves of flame / The warmth dissipates before it reaches my outstretched hands / I see in the vapors a vision of to come / Wild, sick singing / Such a crowd that gathers / The goat that slays the fawn / The altar stands with shed blood / The ram hungry for the seed stands confused / Why hold me down when you can stand on your own without feet?
The games, with the following being Goat, Goat, Scapegoat, generated plenty of laughter and buzz. Students interacted with each other in ways that they had not before— making new friends, and coming together for the slightly ritualistic celebration of the stabbing of Caesar, 2066 years later. Miracle Thornton, Editor-In-Chief of SILO, commented on the creation of the idea. “The idea came up when my Co-Lead Willa and I were brainstorming our event calendar over lunch,” she recounts. “When the idea came around to the rest of our team, Willa facilitated a really lively conversation about what the event could entail. Many ideas were thrown about, such as the sacrificial goat— pinata!—, spitting flames, and ritualistic poetry shenanigans.”
Bennington students, with a proclivity for community, fire pits, literature, and ritualistic shenanigans, had a wonderful time. One student, Kitty Bailey, compares it to playing pretend with their friends and peers: “It was delightful, particularly because it really felt like we all immersed ourselves in the vibes and suspend our disbelief,” they reflect. “[It’s] so nice to read poetry over open flames and run around. I think it really nourished my inner child to kinda play pretend and be around other people having just as much fun.”
SILO, Bennington’s student-run literary magazine established and running since 1941, has hosted events with great turnout in the past. Hoping to harness this, they decided on the Ides of March event. Calling it a “delightful divergence” from the typical Evening With SILO event, Miracle Thornton says that it will hopefully be one of many happenings on campus held by SILO this term with the goal of bringing together all students on campus. Currently, SILO can be accessed at https://silobennington.wordpress.com/. Submissions are currently open until March 31st, and students can submit here, with a cover contest running adjacently. For any students interested in keeping up with SILO, their publications, and future shenanigans, they are encouraged to email silo@bennington.edu.
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