David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 141
June 1, 2019
Congratulations to Fredericksburg poet Elizabeth “Beth” Spragins on the release of her new collection “The Language of Bones”
Congratulations to Fredericksburg poet Elizabeth “Beth” Spragins on the release of her new collection “The Language of Bones” available from Amazon HERE.
Elizabeth Spencer Spragins truly is in touch with ancient bards and the glorious music of the incantations of druidic sisters in her collection The Language of Bones. Roaming the geography and history of America, these verses hark back to the British and Celtic ancestry of the original European settlers. “Children run unshod, / Armed with goldenrod,” reenacting the past as they unknowingly step on its buried remnants. As the poet writes, the reader will indeed “linger late” and read with “awe and meditate” on history written in the earth and echoed in these lyrical poems inspired by those ancient bards.
May 31, 2019
Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman,born 200 years ago
Walt Whitman 200 – In celebration of the bicentennial of Walt Whitman’s birth on May 31, explore this selection of his poems, prose, and ephemera;…
— Read on poets.org/walt-whitman-200
Review: Did You Know?
Did You Know? by Elizabeth S. Wolf
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
First, the content: This seems a heartfelt and honest autobiography of a difficult life, often without self-pity. Wolf’s relationships with her parents, other family members, ex-husband, college professors and administrators, health care professionals, and bureaucracies in general are fraught–but she seems to exhibit little malice but much (probably appropriate) anger.
Second, the poetics: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Lyrical Ballads argued for a more natural language in poetry than what had come before, a poetry that was a form of heightened but still common speech. The Modernists found 19th Century poetry post-Wordsworth still too stilted and artificial. Post-post-Modernists have continued this journey away from “poetic speech,” often going to the other extreme of writing what seems prose with broken lines or even casual conversation strung out across the page. This style is one of today’s orthodoxies, and Wolf’s work falls here.
If you heard someone read from this chapbook, you would think it a transcript of a woman mulling over her life. That is fine, as far as it goes.
But I read poetry for language that is a selection, or a distillation of normal speech and writing, a “making new” from what is too trite, too used up. Yes, this means there is “artifice.” But art is artifice and artifact. Does it ring true in that artifice, speaking in ways that we normally do not but without feeling false? Given this aesthetic preference on my part, you may discount this review if you disagree.
But consider “The Next Night My Mother Called” from Wolf’s collection:
“I can’t talk to my parents,”
she said. “I am so mad.
My mother came over with a hot lunch
and I didn’t open the door.”
“Good for you,” I said. “You talk
to who you want,
when you want.
It’s your house.
It’s you life,”
“Life sucks,” said my mother.
“Also true,” I replied.
Wolf’s collection allows her to face and deal with much trauma. It has value. But it does not reward second reading as the best poetry does.
May 29, 2019
May 26, 2019
How to Honor the Fallen on Memorial Day
How should we best honor the fallen warriors this and every Memorial Day?
We could decorate their graves as was done on many a Decoration Day from the Civil War on until the day was renamed. Sales and barbecues are fine. But the seas of white monuments should makes us pause from our holiday activities.
We can thank those who put themselves in harm’s way for us with something more heartfelt than a perfunctory “Thank you for your service.” Maybe even improve their housing, health care. Perhaps make VA hospitals and educational benefits less bureaucratic.
My Uncle Thomas Kon was the son of Polish immigrants who chose to be Americans. He died over Belgium in his B-17. We could honor him and many other immigrants and children of immigrants who serve by recognizing they are American by choice, not just by happenstance of birth.
How should we best honor the fallen warriors this and every Memorial Day? Maybe by recognizing that we are all Americans, that our heritage is best remembered as the ideas and ideals we struggle always to live up to, and that our political disagreements should not erase the mutual respect we feel for each other as citizens. The fallen served to protect those ideals and the rights of citizenship from enemies of both.
Perhaps the best way to honor the fallen this and every Memorial Day is to be the best citizens we can be as we reach out across these graves to our political foes and together say, “We will strive to live in ways that better honor the fallen and the ideas and ideals they died for every day of our lives.” That doesn’t seem like near enough given their ultimate sacrifices. But it might suffice.
May 25, 2019
Review: The Hands of Day
The Hands of Day by Pablo Neruda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Yet another fine translation by William O’Daly of the late work of Pablo Neruda. One can certainly hear echoes of Walt Whitman in these poems, a poet Neruda read and admired. There are many fine poems in the collection, but an overall unity is sometimes disturbed by a few poems that seem here just to vent spleen against those who have wronged the poet. Don’t let that stop you from reading and spending some time here.
Neruda’s language within even many shorter poems goes from the prosaic commonplace to sudden surreal juxtapositions. The end result is to make words new. As Neruda desired of all art,
Strike a blow of fire with your guitar,
raise it, as it burbs:
it is your flag.
May 24, 2019
The Voices Project will publish two of my poems online
The Voices Project will publish two of my poems online.
“The Grace of Firstfall Last” will be published on July 24, 2019.
“Mermaids” will be posted on October 16, 2019.
Thank you Editor Denise Powell.
May 23, 2019
The American Journal of Poetry will publish my poem “Bequest” in Issue 7 due July 1, 2019.
The American Journal of Poetry will publish my poem “Bequest” in Issue 7 due July 1, 2019. This poem is part of an unpublished collection inspired by Arthur Rimbaud.
Editor Robert Nazarene calls the poem “devastating” and “an earthquake.” I am honored and gratified that he and the Journal find it “perfect” for publication.
