Guy Conner's Blog, page 8

Poems inspired by Songs – 1 Little Alfy

In an earlier post (here), I said that I was going to post, at some point, some of the verses I wrote that were inspired by popular songwriters. This first one (I think it’s obvious, but I’ll say it anyway) was inspired by the Beatles.

Little Alfy

Little Alfy, my boy, went down, don’t you know
To paint picture-shows in the sand.
Oh my. Oh, my, my. Ain’t it grand, don’t you know
To paint picture-shows in the sand.

Little Alfy, my boy, went down, don’t you know
To paddle about and to play.
Oh m...

My First Guest Post

https://writingclimatechangebackintoh...

It’s about Climate Change Politics..

The post My First Guest Post appeared first on Guy Conner.

Do Unto Others…

If we have a representative democracy in this country, that means, or should mean, that elected officials are the representatives of the people – they take our place, and represent our interests and well-being.

One of the most pernicious ideas to gain currency in my lifetime is the notion that there is something inherently corrupting about being an elected official. Pete Schbarum’s Proposition 140 did immeasurable harm to this state, not only by making it more difficult for California to have...

Another French Translation

This is my translation of the famous introduction to the Flowers of Evil, just as I wrote it some twenty years ago. My goal was to reproduce the rhyme scheme of the original ( so much easier in French) and to give the English reader a sense of the poet’s overripe imagery. You can judge for yourself how well I succeeded.

TO THE READER
By
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Tr. Guy Conner

Drunkenness and error, stinginess and vice
Occupy our spirits and make us sweat.
And we feed on our oh-so-sweet regret
Like...

A Rock

The following poem was my reaction to the Kent State Shootings in 1970. It is yet another sonnet ( I seem to have written a lot of them). If I were writing the poem today, I would make the secret urge line more ambiguous, and I would make the link to Kent State more explicit. ( The shooters at Kent State were National Guardsmen, not police.) But on reflection, I think the little verse does a good job of focusing on the right issue.

A Rock

A rock – no harmless little thing to throw.
My sister...

Sometimes

Hiking has been one of my favorite activities for most of my life, but this is my only poem to use hiking imagery.

Sometimes

Sometimes,
I come upon you from above,
My muscles aching from the dusty trail,
My throat parched, and my eyes on fire.
And just
As I begin my slow descent,
I hear a gentle rustle, as of
A garment blowing in the breeze.
Warily, I peer over the rocky edge.
There.
You stand behind the surging waterfall,
Each eye a pebble,
Each breast a rock that stops the flow.
Farther in,...

Another Autobiographical Poem – Beaumont, 1953

Although I have lived in California most of my life, I was born in Beaumont, Texas, and I lived in the Deep South until I was 12. It was still the Jim Crow era in the South in those days, and many white people bore their prejudice like a badge of honor. I was fortunate to have very enlightened and completely unprejudiced parents, who shielded me from most of the unpleasantness. This poem is about what happened when I got old enough to walk to the neighborhood grocery store (Weingarten’s) by m...

Another Dream Poem

When I first posted about a dream poem , here. It got me to thinking about other poems that had come to me in a dream. I realized that I had presented another dream poem to my writer’s group back in the nineties, but had set it aside, because there were problems with it. (There will always be problems, if you transcribe an unedited dream). I looked in my files, and there it was, with all my colleague’s comments (Thank you, Katie Alvord, Sharon Bard and Gus Kearny). I took their comments to h...

You’ve Got to Know the Territory

[See my earlier post on polling here]

Candidates in down-ticket races have a problem – they need professional help to run their campaigns, but, unless they are independently wealthy, they usually can’t afford the price of a professional political consultant. For small cities (in my area of California, we have a number of incorporated cities with a population less than 4000), it is possible to talk and get to know each and every voter, but for larger municipalities, like my own city of Santa R...

Undecided Voters

In an earlier post, I made the following statement: “Undecided voters are usually much more important to look at than those voters who have made up their minds,…but not always. It’s time to explain what I meant.

Undecided voters are usually important, because the assumption is ( and studies have shown this) that once a person has chosen a candidate to vote for, they don’t switch to another candidate very often – for any reason. Therefore, the theory is, if you can determine the demographics o...