David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 127
June 2, 2020
Symbols have power
This is not something you hug and then step all over.This is not just Article II.
This is not just the Second Amendment
This is not a prop to wave in front of church you never visit.
This IS a man.
Do something
It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there will be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
~ Mahatma Gandhi
May 28, 2020
Review: Quickening Fields – My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Quickening Fields by Pattiann Rogers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A wonderful collection of poems by Pattiann Rogers, who has the remarkable ability to write lush language that is also precise an clear. If it has a theme, this collection speaks to the unity of all being and indeed the unity of all things, animate and inanimate, and of all things with the voice of the poet.
I don’t know how the wood thrush knows
how to match the pitch and fall of its cry
exactly to the pitch and fall the mountain ridge
makes against the evening sky….
Each round lobe of the three-leafed clover
fist perfectly into each green note
of the tree frog’s treble,and each tree frog
swells its tremolo in cylindrical bunches
of three-tones rings….
What is it that I imitate? to what structure
do I meld? my stance, my cry and mumble
fitting exactly into the chinks
and snugness of some other? What is it
that makes its own body, that finds the steps
of its own motion against the outline
of my voice?
The collection ends with the poet imagining her own “Death Vision,” something that we hope is not near even as Rogers begins her 8th decade. But even that is a vision of enfolding back into the unity in a new kind of being:
… all the deaths within deaths
that compose the body becoming as once
their own symbolic perception and praise
of river salt, blooms and breaths, strings,
strains, sun-seas of gravels and gills;
this one expression breaking, this same
expression healing.
These poems, written between 1980 and 2016, show the poet still speaking with sublime voice and vision. Read, sense, be.
May 24, 2020
Heron Tree has published my poem, “Enlargement”
Heron Tree has published my poem, “Enlargement,” which you can read for free HERE along with 6 other poems of mine they have posted over the years.
Thank you Editor Rebecca Resinski.
May 21, 2020
Review: An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A century later, this play seems as relevant as ever. What power does a person of science and medicine have against the rich, the powerful, the mass of pubic opinion, the corrupt? Do facts and science matter? Are we willing to betray our principles for our short-term gain? To betray our health and the health of our children? Can we face an enemy we cannot see, a disease, when our imagination fails to believe it? Is the answer to the worst of democracy some aristocracy of “superior” people?
In the end, is it really true “that the strongest man [sic] in the world is he who stands most alone”?
May 19, 2020
Review: The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt
The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt by Amy Clampitt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
As in any “Collected Poetry,” the totality of the poems in this collection is somewhat uneven. That said, Amy Clampitt’s work still ranks with the very best in English poetry over the last century. Her language is lush, her vocabulary rich (though sometimes verging the arcane and obscure), her poet’s eye that of a naturalist, a scientist, as well as an artist. She has been compared with Wallace Stevens, and there are echoes and influences here. The intellect joined with the body in a dance. The senses all given their due. I have savored these poems for over two years and will savor going back and rereading.
May 6, 2020
My good friend, Pat Bradley, has a new thriller out. Bitter Yellow is a great read – available on Kindle
My good friend, Pat Bradley, has a new thriller out. Bitter Yellow is a great read taking place during the 1918 Flu Pandemic and going at a fast pace that doesn’t stop until the last page. Available on Kindle HERE.
April 25, 2020
Six of my poems are included in the latest Magnolia Review
Six of my poems are included in the latest Magnolia Review available for free download HERE. The theme of the issue was ” A Day That Changed Me.”
“On the Edge of 1969” – on a day shortly after Woodstock when I realized I would never be cool“Beneath the Six-Sided Farmhouse” – on visiting my grandparents and meeting death in their basement“April 22, 1994—For Linda” – on the day my wife and I began our life together“The Context of February” – on the day I realized my first marriage was truly over“October 25, 2001, at 6:45 p.m.” – on the day my father died“Today (September 11, 2001)” – and this one is obvious
My thanks to Editor Suzanna Anderson for continuing to support my work and for allowing me the honor of selecting this year’s Ink Award winner.
April 24, 2020
Review: Blue Horses
Blue Horses by Mary Oliver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Mary Oliver’s poetry is often deceptively simple, earning a Zen-like wisdom from emotions and images quietly presented. Her latest collection returns to nature and to the most enduring human emotions–love, wonder, the awe-ful truth of our mortality and the power of that knowledge to make us truly see.
April 19, 2020
A poem for the pandemic
Caregiver’s Song
When voices like children
hear themselves in a trickling creek,
I laugh at the wisdom
of their foolishness—
and everything becomes still,
the sun gone down, the moon falling as dew,
my eyes gone black waiting
for my counting off till morning.
Come home, children, home free
before you are caught outside
by dark birds flying their hunger.
The creek sings in children
who laugh again and shout for haven
in the hills that laugh all echoes back.
And I may sleep some night at last,
counting off cold stars past morning.
published in the Hurricane Review
David Anthony Sam
