David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 167
January 14, 2018
The dream is still alive even if some choose to believe in a nightmare.
The dream is still alive even if some choose to believe in a nightmare.
January 13, 2018
The strident hackers miss no chance to dramatize, hurt, fairly or unfairly, for they fear their emptiness
From A. R. Ammons “Garbage”
the hackers, having none
hack away at intensity: they want to move,
disturb, shock: they show the idleness of
pretended feeling: feeling moves by moving
into considerations of moving away: real
feeling assigns its weight gently to others,
helps them meet, deal with the harsh, brutal,
the ineluctable, eases the burdens of unclouded
facts: the strident hackers miss no chance to
dramatize, hurt, fairly or unfairly, for they
fear their emptiness: the gentlest, the most
refined language, so little engaged it is hardly
engaging, deserves to tell the deepest wishes,
roundabout fears: loud boys, the
declaimers, the deaf listen to them: to the whisperers,
even the silent, their moody abundance: the
poem that goes dumb holds tears: the line,
the fire line, where passion and control waver
for the field, that is a line so diffcult to
keep in the right degree, one side not raiding the other:
(G, 120—121)
Still a poem that must be read and reread
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
As is true for most readers, when I first encountered The Waste Land in the 1960s, I found myself in a very foreign poetic land. I read the annotations and explications. I listened to my professors. I reread and mad innumerable margin notes. I felt the poem’s power and despair. But its meaning seemed hard to parse.
Now, decades later, rereading yet again, I know the poem and the poem knows me. We still live in The Waste Land. The loss of all mooring after WWI still remains a debris we drift with. But the poem itself seems very approachable now, its discordant ballet of voices powerful as ever, but its sense much more apparent to me.
You must read and reread this poem. My critical opinion of it had moved over time to it being overrated—but now, no. It is a seminal poem of the last century. And its relevance today is profound.
January 10, 2018
HereABook author site
Here is the HereABook site for my books.
January 3, 2018
A vacant mirror looking at itself
Rayfish by Mary Hickman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
“There are no feelings in this piece–there is nothing but instinct.” So writes Mary Hickman in one of her prose poems in this collection. There seems a craftlessness that is perhaps intended. These seems more stream-of-consciousness essays than prose poems, but I must be wrong. The collection won the Laughlin award after all. “I generally know I am sick the moment I take the photo,” she writes, weaving medical procedures with art works, foreign stays with family matters. We wonder what is biographical and what is fantasy–but I do not wonder enough to reread. For me, something is missing. A phantom limb perhaps. A vacant mirror looking at itself?
The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry (Vol. 5, Issue 2) contains one of my poems
The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry (Vol. 5, Issue 2) contains one of my poems
January 1, 2018
In 2017 my poetry was accepted by these 32 journals and e-zines
In 2017 my poetry was accepted by these 32 journals and e-zines:
50 Haikus
Aji Magazine
Allegro Poetry Magazine
Burningword Literary Journal
Chantwood Magazine
The Deadly Writers Patrol
Dual Coast Magazine
Foliate Oak Literary Magazine
Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review
GFT Press One in Four
Glass: A Journal of Poetry
Gravel: A Literary Journal
Heron Tree
The Hungry Chimera
Into the Void Magazine
Inwood Indiana
Literature Today
The Muse: An International Journal of Poetry
The Mystic Blue Review
Piedmont Virginian Magazine
Poetry Quarterly
The Ravens Perch
Red Earth Review
The Sea Letter
Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine
Summerset Review
Temenos Journal
Three Line Poetry
Two Cities Review
The Voices Project
The Wayfarer
The Write Place at the Write Time
My thanks to all the editors.
December 29, 2017
Gravel has released its Winter issue which includes two of my poems.
Gravel has released its Winter issue which includes two of my poems.
