Barry Graham's Blog, page 47

The Commune: Then and Now

The Commune: Then and Now:

versobooks:

“It has become increasingly apparent, particularly after the unraveling of societies like Greece and Spain, that we are not all destined to be immaterial laborers inhabiting a post-modern creative capitalist techno-utopia the way some futurologists told us we were ten years ago—and…

Poem: Throwaway

from Traffic and Murder

She came into the kitchen with the sky

crumpled in her hand.

That’s the sky, I said. Don’t throw it away.

It’s empty, she said

and tossed it in the trash.

Haiku

squirrel plays

in fallen cherry blossoms

spring afternoon

Photo: Daishin Stephenson

Photo: Daishin Stephenson

multcolib:Beginning today, and for the next 13 weeks,...

multcolib:

Beginning today, and for the next 13 weeks, photographs from The North American Indian, by Edward S. Curtis will be on exhibit in the John Wilson Special Collections. Each week three of the large plates will be changed out; this week, “Sigesh–Apache” (top), “Geronimo–Apache” (center), and “The Vanishing Race–Navaho” (bottom) are on view…

The World Is Not Our Therapist or Servant

(Image: J.M. Garge)

I find it fascinating how resolutely we ignore or deny nature when supposedly writing about nature, and instead shrink the world to our own size, and project our own face onto it. In A Summer with Tu Fu, Hayden Carruth writes:

See how the heron folds her neck

in flight. See how mysteriously she perches

on the dead willow in her heraldic silence.

“Mysteriously”? Who is mystified? Not the heron, as far as Carruth or the reader know. “Heraldic silence”? What does he think the her...

daishinstephenson:windows, bricks

daishinstephenson:

windows, bricks

Some of your books seem to only be available for Kindle. I much prefer holding a real book, and don't have a Kindle or comparable device at the moment. Any way of getting Cactus Jungle or Love and Rain in physical book format?

All of my books are available in paperback as well as ebooks, except for The Cactus Jungle, which is a compilation of three novels bundled as an ebook. The books it contains are individually available in paperback.

Here’s the paperback of Love and Rain: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Rain-Poems-Barry-Graham/dp/1491021535/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Many thanks for your interest in my work.

Photo

Novel and Haiku: a Hand Beckoning, a Door Half-Opened

R.H. Blyth wrote:

"A haiku is not a poem, it is not literature; it is a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature. It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night, become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive language."

For me...