Difficult

Like a sea poems consistently break the flow with a twisted sentence structure.

Palm trees

woodpeckers dig nests in them
nests of coir fall under them
dispute, wind, out of need

Versatile Saramago

When I read that Jose Saramago's book The Notebook is also a blog, I was looking for a shortcut. I thought I will be happy with the link at my disposal. From what I understand, that blog must be somewhere but only in Portuguese. So no luck there. I read the book feverishly last night. He is like modern Samuel Pepys spanning the extremes of a closeted writer and a person who knows all about current politics.

Jorge Amado

Apelles
Rita Levi
Teratology
Carlos Fuentes - Aura
Spiritual family of Saramago
Ramon Lobo
Enric Gonzalez - Stories of New York
I like the sound of Teide in Tenerife

Kerouac's diet

Which of Breughel painting has most life?
Like a Breughel painting, On the Road teems with life, celebrating our moments on earth even as it mourns them. - Jay Atkinson,
Paradise road

The first time I heard of Kerouac was in reference to the Death cab for cutie work being comapred to him.

Colors and sounds

Henri cole
Pierce the skin
The poems recall the plains, managing to keep the interest of the poem in all of its breadth instead of just as a line coursing through the page, zig-zag, left to right and down, repeat.

Listening to the lonely whistle

The Living fire

Maud Gonne
Rosicrucian

I liked 'Three Journeys'. 'Execution' and other poems which I would write in a single line show to elaborate on an experience.
A book that I will sit with to learn how to write.

Review

Reading experiences

My Reading Life
When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd by Walt Whitman - elegy on the death of Abe Lincoln.

A Dance to the music of time

"Pat, don't you think the passage of time is what all literature is really about? Poems, plays, novels, everything?"
- Gene Norris, Pat's English teacher.

Millay

I like the courage in Interim
Back cover

Her elegies are good. 'still' appears a lot in her poems.
A maiden lost in love is not down.

No rose in a garden that ever grew
In Homer's or in Omars or in mine

-Edna St Millay

If memory worked differently
our poems would not end in
rhymes but begin with synonyms
or end with antonyms

If it remembered experiences with
varying degrees
our poems would end in
er and est

Her sonnets

Life

The Lesser tragedy of death reminded me of another poetry book which is about a dead person.

Clean slate

The volley ball court
is sand raked
Three birds walked
towards the center
of a triangle
and then
they flew

Formats

A Pecha Kucha poem by Terrance Hayes in Lighthead

Yellow milk

A grandfather has cows
He names the young
after the labor
of his
grandchildren

Cows in Africa

Travel

The Masque of Africa
Makerere
Marabou stork
Kasubi tombs
Buganda
Busoga
Sezibwa falls
Lake flies

Authorial Alliances

This morning listening to an NPR program on a book about Salinger's life, I was reminded about Mornings with Mailer
Dormer

Analysis

Chronic symptons are koans- apparently unaswerable questions meant to increase our consciousness - Arnold Mindell

liquid antibiotics

Growing up Jung

subculture and counterculture

Culture attacks all certainities ... Hanif Kureishi,My ear at his heart

Yet to figure the meaning.

Daffodils

Night is the name we give to the shadow of the earth. - Becoming Animal, David Abram.

Wordsworth has given us daffodils but David Abram's prose opens our eyes so we can see nature's beauty in all its forms and intensities of light.

Paul Shepard

Wheres the porthole?

I skewed my eye
and warily see
my face
inside out
like inside of
dolls we played
with in 80s.
detachable heads
reachable forms
of eyes, nose,
mouth inside.

******************

I felt a funeral in my brain
Dear Migraine

Mountains

The mountains are shedding their snow early - Money for nothing, Kevin Holdsworth.

I have admired Humphry peak, I have admired it with snow but I never thought of the snow belonging to Humphry. I can speak to the mountain as one. I find it hard to imagine multitudes.

In the shadow of a Mountain

Miracles of light

If not for life
lets go to the
moon and mars
for the sorts of
Reflection
Luminescence

Universal experience

It is so much easier to write if your experience is familiar to others. Then everybody is on the same page and its the impact part that you are focusing on in writing. I havent seen the Aurora Borealis, so I am still a stranger to the experience. It would be a different reading experience otherwise.

Lord

we call you by numerous names
your christener's anguish
calmed after the ennumeration.

By writers

Burn this book
R S Thomas
William Polmer
Inward testimony

Poems have become as instant as coffee or soup mix*

Magnetic poetry
is like Manischewitz soup mix
with all the ingredients
in there.

*Poetry and Ambition

I will read everyday till the end of my life.
7.17.7

Like fossil springs

Behind me is a small bridge
an arch
the water is green
the green trees hide the sky
Bro and I hang onto hanging roots
A ripple caused by a dive
that will wet us.

Tarzan

Beginnings. Ends.
Bring them all.

vine of time.

Bus

2 chinese girls
sleepy with their heads dunked in hair
The hanging heads led
by the bus in motion
faces revealed only in halt.

The lady driver has a fine uniform.

If you live in a house
the only one around
then wont you always
feel like staying out?

How will it be to
sit at a wide window
at a table looking
at green mounds or water
or a three stripe wooden
fence

Writing

Write one true sentence and from there you can start off - E.H, On writing.
'something new to add to human knowledge while he is writing' - E.H, On writing

EH's gain if he rereads his work
James thurber didnt draw after going blind.
Reading your writing is like
seeing a picture you are drawing
you know how much is done
and how well.

2.19.7

Mall visit with no purchases

A huge banana nut muffin at Cupz
2 spring rolls at Panda express
Chocolate icecream with almonds at coldstone
Kids fancy competition in the mall.

Time

brings with the penury
of wait

Baja fresh

Saturday OT fetches me
a free lunch
Fajitas on neighbors plate
overthrows my mental choice
of soft tacos

We carry out a burrito
hungry colleagues opens
the metal foil wrapper
to reveal 4 bare tortillas

Sweet tomatoes

at beautiful Ahwatukee foothills
Tasty Tapioca pudding

All I want is
a window
a mountain

Dream

Willing to take even a strangers advice

A murderer confesses to a psychic friend

A friend gets wet from the water flowing down
Next time shes warned to rid her of guilt

Buttons at the back of the collar

Blanket

The memory of the night is cold
Morning find me snug.
The stirring in the night
embedded me well.

Rain

It rained at Southern Avenue
It stopped raining in tempe
Today its moving south.

My sweatshirt is better
than me at telling the rain.

The kind that does not
reach the ground
it only falls in the air
seen against the light

Exercise

The new machine at the rec center
blood circulates hot in my palms

strength training
the fat and flesh
of my arm go flat
and spread from the pull
funny feel

Dexterity

A cramp in the palm of the foot
Toes of the other scratch it
only to incur a tightening hold
that wont release

Moon

When I see anything beautiful
I share it with you

I wait for a beautiful thing
to seize me before I write of it
before I tell others of it
I check its existence
fortune
rewarding exclusive experience

Write

2.14.7
while the veggies cook

Dream

Grannie, you have slimmed down
your grey hair is in a plait

Some poems have to share
their title if they are from
the same womb.

Granpa,you comfort me that
we will meet in the other world.

On a raised place
on the right
a person with clout and unhappy with the happenings
is on the right with a group behind him

on the left
unware of whats about to happen
a man walks in measuredly like a lion
prescience wouldnt change his course

Someone in the crowd blamed him for the riot
An axe is thrown at his mid-body
No scream or shout.

I am screened by the trellis under the bridge
'Where is his wife?'
'Where is his wife?'

I see a familiar face.
We pace around looking for his remains.
Blood stains lead to a closed room.
The wooden gate reveals two dark men.
one over the other.
I salute the legs to not incense him
to excuse my unintentional intrusion

The friend is lost
In my search, I realise the place is
Bhadrachalam.

It rains
At first a hand swipe washes its existence
Then the drizzle makes its force felt
Then it turns to a controlled sprinkle
like the one to spruce a naked front yard

I could have taken the axe assault for you.

Dream

I remember from the part
you appear
But it has long begun

Is there a dream collage
or a roulette for a person
each day stopping at a number

The one with us running
must be an odd number

Why cant we make up
clothes or mores?

If

you are the wind
I am
the sand on the shore

you blow in time
I am forever.

Time tossed

Bad time is a good reason
to hold off making a call
When you cant hold off
even worse time becomes
a good time

Imaginary relief from
solved imaginary troubles

Deified daily objects -
blue bicycles can
stalk too

Forgotten Mending

Despite their loud shine
I bought the black shoes
One painting day
in the shuffle of things
being moved from one room
to another, some furniture
leg must have got stuck in the
sandal
a strap gave way
I was getting ready to do away
with them with a new pair
And then it struck me
that there are cobblers
to mend

There are street hawkers
who mend broken plastic buckets
The man who collects garbage
earnestly wants the
cardboard boxes
lying outside.

Eye opener

Creative Nonfiction

Vol 27. Writing it short

Ikkyu

We've been lucky, true- lucky enough to live through some stupid stunts.
In luck, theres a duty to talk about the lessons... - Kevin Holdsworth.

Brevity


Vol 21.

Lessons from the unlikely - Erie Newport (raising a kid with Down syndrome)

Solar Addiction

I smuggle some
sunlight from an
empty room
I dont know when
I have raked enough
My basket never
seems to fill

Whole Cloth

He measures the cloth
with his metal scale
Snipping it off
with heavy scissors.

**************
We know they have more to do with folklore than with fact - most of them were spun by grammarians out of whole cloth -The way we talk now,Geoffrey Nunberg

Mother poem

I recognised Kim Addonizio of Ordinary Genius: a guide for the poet within
The matter
Lucifer at the Starlite

The Turquoise ledge

Reading of author's experience of being photographed in old time dresses, I was reminded of a trip in Kulu Manali where we draped indigenous clothing to have a picture of us taken. Even silly seeming things done on trips find a place in memory.

Ofelia zepeda
Proclamation
Her account of saving a rattlesnake stuck in a net is riveting.

ground catching fire

The bees have lost their stores of food in the hive, and now they want me to feed them until their scouts locate a new site for their hive.

Fascicle

Up until now, the one thing I knew about Dickinson was her much quoted death poem. I did see that there was a number associated with another poem.
With Dickinson, her mystery is coming under light.
Poets thinking
Henry Fuseli

Sirocco in It was not death
Shelleyan maenad

Staples in The Soul has Bandaged moments

Heard of her, reading now

In the beginning of Revenge, I am reminded of Dream of the evil servant poem.

Myth

That gooseberries on the front door repel snakes
Yesterday at Satya Narayana vratam,
The family who held the pooja
Offered gooseberries to the Brahman
An old lady gets ready to chase the Brahman
‘Its auspicious to touch the feet of a Brahman
In the month of Kaarthika!’

Designing Life

A term of Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Composing a further life
Erikson's stages of development
Imru'u l Qays

Turmoil at readers end

One morning I had a spill. Tea on a book. The spill led me to Out,Out. After reading the poem, I wondered why it didnt appear in an anthology of Frost poems that I had read.

Reading poems related to dreams I read The Tower. Ben Bulben in it makes the title Under Ben Bulben familiar. Seeing the recurrence of Ben Bulben, I set out to read the poem but I am nagged by how I could have better appreciated the poems with some knowledge of Irish history and who are the poets from 1800 and 1700s with whom my origin lets me connect without effort.

In many days I havent come across a poem where I had to refer the dictionary.
Fons

Facing the heat

The fires is a must read for anyone curious about how a modern city works.- book's blurb.

That an opened door is an invitation for the fire to engulf the person who opens the door, that a big hole in the roof helps control the fire.. a hole in a roof is said to be enough to ruin a barn. The say of a buliding's architecture in its reaction to fire.

Irresistible

Looking in
Maquette
Tuggener
Andre Kertesz
Bill Brandt
Steichen

Dead Horse

Writing under prosthesis

There is a little difference between the glasses and the boobs to me,just things I wear when I'm awake, each an item to bridge the world between my dreams and waking time, between whoever I am and the rest of the living world.
- The sky begins at your feet

Big Idea

Big citizenship
Treehouse Foundation
City Year

What is a good book?

When I am looking for something new to read, its novelty should match The wave watcher's companion

I want it to have big ideas.

Reading poems on poets.org, I like how with the search on the top right, you can make an anthology of your own of any common subject. I wake up and think, I want to read poems on 'morning' and I just need to have time to read 70 poems on it.

Lyric check

To know if my poem is ready to go out, I will send it through the Dancing naked on the floor check.Its in the style of Billy Collin's Workshop

Alternately, Poetry should ride the bus

Morning kiss must be different from the others in some way
Here a link to a poem with marriage being sstained by morning and evening promises.
Midnight poems


you will not