David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 140
June 29, 2019
Everyone should watch True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality on HBO
“There’s a history of untold cruelty that hides in the silence in this country.”
– Bryan Stevenson
Watch True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality, the original HBO documentary online at HBO.com or stream on your own device.
— Read on www.hbo.com/documentaries/true-justice-bryan-stevensons-fight-for-equality
June 26, 2019
Review: The Lost Words
The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A children’s book.
A book for adults to read to children.
A set of spells to enchant adults.
A book of beautiful art for heart’s sake.
A book of lost words for what may become lost worlds.
A spellbook that helps children spell and say the words for wild and free.
A book for children to save themselves from what we have helped them lose.
A book for children to chant to adults..
before it the words for wild things
are too gone to be remembered.
June 23, 2019
The 10 Most-Banned Classic Novels
The pen may not be mightier than the sword, but it sure frightens people.
So, you want to read a banned book? Here’s a list of banned and challenged classic American novels.
— Read on www.thoughtco.com/most-banned-classic-novels-738741
June 22, 2019
Review: The Heights of Macchu Picchu
The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A mythopoetic and somewhat surrealistic set of 12 cantos by Pablo Neruda, “The Heights” by one of the finest poets of the 20th Century transcends the personal/lyrical in an eloquence of vision. Neruda uses Macchu Picchu (Intentionally writing two Cs in the first word) to place himself in a larger world of history and time.
I love nearly everything I read by Neruda, but I wish that I could read Spanish better than I do so I could give a more informed review as to the quality of this translation. Nonetheless, Tomas Morin gives a workmanlike English version that is worth reading.
June 19, 2019
Clementine Unbound will publish my poem “Now Is Not the Time to Talk about Guns” online beginning August 20.
Clementine Unbound will publish my poem “Now Is Not the Time to Talk about Guns” online beginning August 20.
This is the second of my poems published by Clementine. Thank you Editor GF Boyer.
Congratulations to Joy Harjo, the new Poet Laureate of the United States.
Congratulations to Joy Harjo, the new Poet Laureate of the United States.
Read an interview with her HERE.
June 11, 2019
Don’t misread Darwin: for humans, ‘survival of the fittest’ means being sympathetic | Aeon Videos
One of the shockwaves from Charles Darwin’s idea that humans evolved from other animals was moral panic. If our ethics are not guided by an omnipotent and all-knowing god and, instead, life is driven by ‘survival of the fittest’ via natural selection, how could we possibly expect humans to behave with anything other than brash self-interest? Yet Darwin’s use of the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was hardly meant to suggest that existence was a knockdown, drag-out fight – he was very clear that generosity, sympathy and all those other traits that give us warm feelings are central to human survival. In this short video, the psychologist Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley puts kindness in evolutionary context, connecting his own recent neural-imaging work on compassion with Darwin’s view that sympathy is a cornerstone of human flourishing.
— Read on aeon.co/videos/dont-misread-darwin-for-humans-survival-of-the-fittest-means-being-sympathetic
And poetry expands our ability to by empathetic.
June 10, 2019
Review: The Wanderer shows a poet in prime and vital voice worth reading and rereading.
The Wanderer by Christine Gosnay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Christine Gosnay’s chapbook “The Wanderer” contains some of the finest poetry I have read from a poet of the new century so far. Gosnay is not afraid to use imagery from nature, but she does it in a fresh way.
Yellow heat strafes
the hand-deep water
where the shade-eyed darner makes its notch.
At the same time, she also revivifies the commonplace of living.
It means that when I pull nothing out from the soft center
where my stomach, pale and useful, longs,
pulling as if at a doll’s string to say ache
in a bright, unrecognizable voice,
I move my ind by the hand from the dark blue room
where it is thinking-feeling
toward the edge of the blank graph…
Her poems are collages of experiences, images, and thoughts that still maintain an overall unity of feeling and thinking. Unlike many collections, “The Wanderer” does not falter or contain poems that show obvious need for more rewriting. There is a consistency of tone and craft throughout.
Gosnay’s work here shows a poet in prime and vital voice worth reading and rereading.
June 9, 2019
June 8, 2019
Congrats to Allan Peterson – reading from his new collection -June 11 at City Lights
My friend, Allan Peterson, is reading from his new collection, This Luminous: New and Selected Poem, at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco on Jun 11. Stop by if you are in the area.
