David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 151
September 17, 2018
Prolific Press will publish my chapbook, Final Inventory, a collection of poems about my mother, her death, and my mourning and remembering her.
Prolific Press will publish my chapbook, Final Inventory, a collection of poems about my mother, her death, and my mourning and remembering her.
Thank you Glenn Lyvers and the staff at Prolific.
September 16, 2018
Words matter: The death of sacred speech
The use of humility words, like modesty, fell by 52 percent over the 20th century.
Compassion words, like kindness, dropped by 56 percent.
Gratitude words, like thankfulness, declined by 49 percent.
And courage words, like bravery, plunged by 66 percent.
— Read on theweek.com/articles/791795/death-sacred-speech
September 14, 2018
Study finds fiction reading down, poetry up in US – Newspaper – DAWN.COM
The good news is more younger people are reading poetry.
Study finds fiction reading down, poetry up in US – Newspaper – DAWN.COM
— Read on www.dawn.com/news/1432643
September 8, 2018
The Poetry Quarterly has accepted a second poem of mine for their next issue.
The Poetry Quarterly has accepted a second poem of mine for their next issue. “Sewing” is loosely based on a memory of my grandmother.
In addition, two of my poems have been lister as contenders for PQ’s 2018 Rebecca Lard Award.
September 7, 2018
I am one of the scheduled poets reading Oct 25 at event cohosted by the Poetry Society of Virginia and Germanna Community College.
The Northern Region of the Poetry Society of Virginia is cohosting a poetry reading with Germanna Community College open to the public, October 25 4 to 6 p.m. I am one of the scheduled poets reading. After scheduled poets read, there will be an open mic opportunity.
September 2, 2018
Vine Leaves Literary Journal’s coffee table collection including several of my poems is on sale at Amazon.
Vine Leaves Literary Journal’s coffee table collection including several of my poems is on sale at Amazon.
My poem “The Sky Ungainly” is now published online at Plum Tree Tavern
My poem “The Sky Ungainly” is now published online at Plum Tree Tavern. You ca read it HERE.
September 1, 2018
A perfect poem for today – In Memoriam Sen. John McCain
High Flight
John Gillespie Magee, Jr
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, –and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
August 31, 2018
Poetry Quarterly has accepted my poem “In a New Land” for publication later this year
Poetry Quarterly has accepted my poem “In a New Land” for publication later this year
August 24, 2018
An excellent reading of Eliot’s Four Quartets
Dove Descending: A Journey Into T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets by Thomas Howard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Thomas Howard apologizes regularly for the prosaism and reductiveness of his line-by-line reading of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. And he is correct that the poetry is much better and much more than his analysis. Yet great poets need great readers, as Whitman maintained. And it is wonderful as one reader to be in the room listening to another, deeply appreciate and erudite reader as he lives with one of the great poems of the last 100 years.
Howard clearly is of a mind with Eliot in terms of the religious assumptions and faith consistent with Anglo-Catholicism. That does not mean a reader of another faith, or no faith, cannot find power, meaning, and even solace in the poem or in Howard’s exegesis of it.
I recommend Dove Descending, not as any sort of substitute for reading and rereading the Quartets themselves, but as a great resource in helping inform and reveal the poetry.
