Okay…someone tell me…what is the name of the national or international group that requires its members to drive ten to fifteen miles below the speed limit to slow down traffic and befuddle my need to be on time? Inquiring mind needs to know, because if I can’t beat them, I gotta join them or build that airspeeder real soon.
Street Wars
July 10th, 2011Space and experience
March 19th, 2011Recently I’ve mused about how space plays into experience. This came about after listening to Dave Matthew’s CD, Big Whiskey in my bedroom then my car. It sounds different. Now I know that’s a concept even an elementary student would theorize might happen, duh…you snort, but just thinking about these little variables that play into experience inspire and thrill me. Imagine if we speak with someone in a bus as compared to a superstore. Imagine if the length of a poem’s line runs on for twenty words instead of two, and then you read it in a coffee shop as opposed to an outdoor fair. Imagine how incredible life is – that so much must come together in each moment. Space; heck, spacetime – the fun frontier. Here’s to being in the right place at the right time. Here’s to Samuel Coleridge who said, “Poetry: the best words in the best order.”
Automatonphobia, Geeks and Nerds, and Sci-Ku
February 10th, 2011It began with Jeff Williams. Who is Jeff Williams? He’s a Springfield artist and musician from a popular local band NIL8. Fabulous performers, the kind that made you think, “these guys will make it far,” the group toured nationally, opening for famous bands including Smashing Pumpkins. Recently, Williams passed through my life because his work is on exhibit at Robert Morris Gallery in downtown Springfield. Williams kicked my geek meter up a notch on two fronts (or maybe it’s nerd meter). First, his art is titled Automatonphobia. Google that one! Love it, love it, love it! Second, after speaking with him about the show, he referred to himself as a nerd. This prompted an extensive search of the terms “nerd” and “geek.” What is that quote about no man in his own country? In postscript, in the ever turning synchronistic cogs of my life, I also at this time came upon a literary magazine that listed a page of Sci-Ku poetry. Having invented our own Low-Ku here in Springfield (Low-Ku — the poetry, not of nature, but of urban life and all its unpleasantness), it was delightful to find Sci-Ku. Love it, love it, love it. Not to mention the Fibonacci Sequence…plasmoids…white dwarfs…but that’s another post.
Year of the raspberry
November 21st, 2010Rumor has it that the alternative English rock band The Lightning Seeds named themselves after a misheard lyric in the song Raspberry Beret by Prince: “Thunder drowns out what the lightning sees.” Inspiring poetic lyric and a wonderfully fun-poetic-mistake-for-a-band-name. This has been the year of the raspberry. My most successful crop this year was in fact a raspberry bush. The thing didn’t stop producing. I’d go to it in late morning and gather a meal, and find such peacefulness and joy in the act of gathering berries. It is a gentle, slow, and quiet process. The plant towered over me, and I felt lost in it sometimes. I marveled at the attention it took. To avoid thorns, I moved my hand slowly under and over and between the leaves and prickles. A light grasp was needed so as not to smash the fruit. Then, a gentle hand was still needed when I washed and inspected the raspberries for tiny black bugs or decay. The fiery bush has so inspired me that I penned a poem for the Springfield Watercolor Society’s first-place-ribbon painting in its fall exhibit. I titled my poem, The Hunt. Find it soon somewhere, or I’ll post it to this blog. In the meantime, check out this link to John Bradley at the NEA website and enjoy more raspberry mania. http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/writersCMS/writer.php?id=07_26
Oh Where, Oh Where is Natalie Merchant
September 24th, 2010Natalie Merchant has a new two-disc CD out titled, ” Leave Your Sleep.” It consists of poems by famous poets or authors that Merchant has set to music, some that she once sang to her children. The CD comes with a small book containing 25 poems and a short bio written by Merchant on each poet. I should love this CD. There’s a book for heaven’s sake. But, I don’t. Merchant claims she is no poet, those she calls, ” our soft-spoken clairvoyants,” but her own lyrics are more clairvoyant, interesting, unique and beautiful than any in this collection. Shucks, I even think Merchant’s CD title is more creative than its poems. It surprises me because four of the poets are personal favorites: EE Cummings, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti, and Robert Graves. Perhaps the ditties will grow on me. I’m ready to leave this opinion behind.
Desperate for poetry
May 27th, 2010The world seems desperate for a new poetry. A fad new to me is Flarf poetry. Just yesterday it was brought to my attention by a fellow writer who read an article in The New Yorker about it. Flarf is similar to found poetry, but instead of using the page to find words, one uses Google. Just the word, flarf sounds too close to barf, and fluff, and fart for me to feel comfortable in relation to poetry. Oh, I love a good bodily function as much as the next guy, and I’ve done workshops using what I call clip-poetry, where we cut words from magazines and craft a poem by pasting them onto a page. These are legitimate ways to find inspiration and fun and to build poems. And I immensely adore Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein, but didn’t someone say that all fun and games makes Jack a dull boy. When it comes to poetry, I don’t always want a cartoon, or the chipmunks singing, or improv, or a reality show. Sometimes I crave Andrea Bocelli or Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh brilliantly in the lead. You see, well written-on-the-page poetry can be complex and beautiful and crafted as fine wine is aged or a good movie built using great actors, an interesting layered story line, stunning costumes, dialogue, set, etc. Enough said. The world is desperate for easily accessible everything. Simple reality shows, U-Tube, and simple fun, loving sitcoms. We all want and need that at times. But we need the other stuff too. We need the basic written, well-crafted poem. In the same way we try to train our college students to be better thinkers and close, discerning readers, we need to be desperate to extend that lesson to everyone, at every age, even to ourselves and our kids. That’s the stuff that makes our brain bigger.
Beets and poetry, continued
March 25th, 2010The other subject that was on my mind during my beet feast (and has continued to pop up over and over again in my thoughts like a hang nail) was a comment made by a friend about poetry. I’ve heard the statement before. It irritates me every time I hear it. It bothers me even more when the person is a fiction writer that lets the bomb fall, and it torpedoes me like a big piece of bird poop flung on target. “I don’t understand poetry.” Who would ever walk into an art gallery and say to a fellow artist whose work was on exhibit, “I don’t understand realism or sculpture!” Who walks into a concert given by another musician and says to him, “I don’t understand the blues or country!” I won’t go on and on about this. Read the introduction to The Maze 2008 if you want to hear me preach more about this pet peeve. Just remember, if you dislike poetry or a poem, be honest. Tell the poet, “I dislike poetry.” Or confess, “I don’t like this poem.” Those are statements poets may hate, but can understand and respect. If you’re a nice person you can substitute, “Ah, poetry’s not really my thing.”
Beets and poetry
January 27th, 2010Two subjects linger in my mind on this Tim Burton-like day, where black trees with spindly branches seem to reach into the rain as if the drops might medicate their gloom. Beets and poetry. Yes, beets and poetry are on my mind. While the sun fails to shine outside my kitchen window for the umpteenth day in a row, lunch consists of beets, cottage cheese with mandarin oranges, and mushroom soup. Ah, you might say…there lies the rub, but no, the soup is Campbell’s soup. The last time I checked, Campbell’s was not in the pharmaceutical business. Beets play a role in the book, Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. I enjoyed reading this book, but that was years ago. The book was better for me because beets were in it, not beets tasted better to me after reading the book. I don’t remember if this was in the book, but I thought the beet, a heart, a symbol of immortal love. Anyway…I love beets. Why? I do not know. They taste a little woodsy. Perhaps there’s an unconscious connection to the outdoors or trees or some other earthy thing I adore. Though I can’t place what it is about the color that is attractive to me, the color is deep and rich, and an unusual color for a vegetable. The texture may be the key. Cooked beats, like turnips, don’t fall apart as easily as potatoes, retaining their form, though they can get very soft. Yum. Beets taste good. Particularly pickled beets with hard-boiled eggs. I plant and harvest beets, boil them until the skins slid off easily, mix up a concoction of vinegar, water and sugar, boil some eggs, drain and peel the eggs, put everything together and refrigerate over night. Abracadabra. According to Wikipedia (a source I might add that you should use at your own risk), “the first known mention of the word abracadabra was in the 2nd century AD in a poem called De Medicina Praecepta by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed that the sufferer from the disease wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle. Abracadabra…beets and, I feel a little beeter, I mean better, and I haven’t even gotten to the poetry.
Book overload
December 2nd, 2009I have too many books. Occasionally I lose my sanity and sell some to the local used bookstore. I almost always regret it. A year or two ago I got rid of an attic-full of science fiction books. Biggest mistake of my life. Well, maybe not the biggest, but stupid all the same. I love books. I like the cover and spine colors, the different shapes and sizes of letters and words, the interesting publishing logos, the way they stand tight up against each other in my bookcases, or lean slightly upon one another. I like the texture of books bound in glossy paper, or knobby cloth or smooth, soft leather. I haven’t even commented on the smell, the sound, or the feel of them. I like that a thousand images and a thousand ideas sit inside them, not to mention a thousand characters, a thousand worlds. On the right wall they provide insulation. In the right space, decoration. In my life, just the right volume of intelligent noise.
In the Heart of Contemplation – Daniel Day Lewis
September 20th, 2011Recently saw a photo of Daniel Day Lewis dining at Augie’s Front Burner in my hometown of Springfield, Illinois. A first date with my sweetie was there. Wish we might be in conversation with Lewis over dinner about poetry or metaphysics. Last of the Mohicans continues to be a favorite—unusual since Westerns and historical films are not my forte. But what a masterpiece— the music, the story, the scenery, the acting, DDL with long hair—. I dare say that we all expose a fraction of ourselves in the choices we make, whether that is from words in a blog or the acting jobs we take. I find a sort of poetry in Daniel Day Lewis from Gandhi to The Unbearable Lightness of Being to The Crucible. In fact, fondness for poetry motivated me to buy one of his father’s books when I discovered C. Day Lewis was poet laureate of England from 1968 until his death in 1972. Complete Poems was published in 1992 by Stanford University Press with an introduction by his widow, Jill Balcon. As many times I do in a game of chicken with fate, I flipped open the book and gazed upon a poem, “Is It Far to Go?” followed by an asterisk that notes, “The third stanza is on CDL’s tombstone in Dorset.” The book’s introduction states that Lewis is buried near Thomas Hardy—my footsteps have fallen there. Then there’s Lincoln. DDL plays Lincoln in a 2012 movie by the same name. A story I tell too often at readings is about the synchronicity of landing in central Illinois, the land of Lincoln, with my dog, already named Lincoln when I adopted him from an east coast pound. “An Address to Lincoln” remains a favorite poem, crafted based on the love of a dog and the Gettysburg Address.
Tags: Anita Stienstra, Augie's Front Burner, C. Day Lewis, Daniel Day Lewis, Dorset, Gandhi, Gettysburg Address, Illinois, Jill Balcon, Last of the Mohicans, Lincoln, poetry, Springfield, The Crucible, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Thomas Hardy
Posted in On Books, On Media, On Poetry | No Comments »