David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 181
February 9, 2017
My New Chapbook is Officially Released
Official Release of my new Chapbook: Finite to Fail (Poems After Dickinson) – Now in Stock
February 6, 2017
Join me and 4 Other Authors
“Feb. 28, 7–8 p.m., Headquarters Library, 1201 Caroline St., Fredericksburg. “Getting Your First Book Published—A Germanna Community College Authors Panel Discussion,” will feature a panel of authors, including Howard Owen, Jim Hall, Cory McLauchlin, Dr. David Sam and Rick Pullen. The panel discussion and Q&A will be followed by a book signing.”
February 4, 2017
My award-winning chapbook “Finite to Fail” is now available at GFT Press
My award-winning chapbook “Finite to Fail” is now available at GFT Press. If you purchase a copy, please review it on Goodreads.
January 29, 2017
What burns more than truth?
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A novel of an alternative future, a dystopia, and science fiction/speculative novel that could not happen here. Right? What if our electronic media encouraged our desire to be happy by not facing hard truths? What if more and more of us were pleased to be entertained and not challenged? What if our media became our reality and we ignored the natural landscape and starscape and stayed within four talking glimmering walls? And what if our politicians and leaders knew that, by encouraging all of this they, could keep power and do what they wanted with the full support of our ignorance? Would there come a time when reading deeply was banned? When thinking certain thoughts was outlawed? Where words were to be stripped of all but their most innocuous definitions? Surely this could not happen here? Right?
Sunlight
If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself. -Romain Rolland
January 28, 2017
The easy answer…
“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem. Neat, plausible, and wrong.” H. L. Mencken
Read and reread these books
Why Orwell’s ‘1984’ matters so much now – from the Washington Post, Book World editor Ron Charles http://wapo.st/2kk7wVY
Orwell warned us that “already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered.” And further, he saw that “the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth” leads democracy to turn into authoritarianism.
For decades many in the academy have argued that truth is relative. Now this has infected our politically conservative as well as liberal discourse.
Orwell’s hope was that those who cared about language and the right word would lead us back to a healthy polity by first fighting the “decay of language” that leads to doublespeak and “aletrnative facts.” Those of us who work the craft of language have this duty: to use words rightly and well and exactly in search for truths that may be elusive but are truly out there and in here.
January 24, 2017
Literature Today will publish my poem “Echoes in Green” in an upcoming issue.
Literature Today will publish my poem “Echoes in Green” in an upcoming issue.
January 21, 2017
Claudia Emerson’s “Impossible Bottle” – Slipping into Time Itself
Impossible Bottle: Poems by Claudia Emerson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What do you do when you discover you have a terminal cancer, much like family and friends who grew up where you did? If you are Claudia Emerson, between chemo treatments and doctor visits and trying to live your life for as long and as well as possible, you also write a beautiful (and as it turned out final) collection of poetry.
Emerson’s “Impossible Bottle” is that glass container within which a sailboat was placed as she watched when a child. It is also the container of her life, her body, her mind, her soul. And it is the bottle that is this book and her other poems wherein she tries to place a miniature that is true to all she was and all she lived.
Claudia Emerson had so much more to contribute and so many more poems to write before she dies. Her death came much too soon. She left behind these words and images, for which we are grateful. And their echoes haunt us now that Claudia Emerson has slipped away into time itself:
“Only/they can tell you, when you/return to them, what you can live without, what/regenerates, and on hearing it,/you feel a lightening, the way a snake must/on slipping through its discarded/mouth into another year, or, knowing nothing/of a year, into time itself.”
January 17, 2017
The Indianola Review will publish my poem “Anticipating Blindness” in an upcoming issue.
The Indianola Review will publish my poem “Anticipating Blindness” in an upcoming issue.
