David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 197
October 25, 2015
Two of my poems are in the Summer issue of Touch: The Journal of Healing
Two of my poems are in the Summer issue of Touch: The Journal of Healing
October 17, 2015
The October 2015 Issue 16 of Vine Leaves contains my poem “Taconic Orogeny”
The October 2015 Issue 16 of Vine Leaves contains my poem “Taconic Orogeny”
October 16, 2015
My poem “Ghosts: Paper or Plastic” is in the October 2015 Yellow Chair Review
My poem “Ghosts: Paper or Plastic” is in the October 2015 Yellow Chair Review
Two of my poems are in the October Issue of the Birds We Piled Loosely
Two of my poems are in the October Issue of the Birds We Piled Loosely
My poem “Still Life: Old Man with Mockingbird” is in the Autumn/Winter 2015-16 issue of The Write Place at the Write Time
My poem “Still Life: Old Man with Mockingbird” is in the Autumn/Winter 2015-16 issue of The Write Place at the Write Time
Two of my poems are in the Fall 2015 issue of The Scapegoat Review
Two of my poems are in the Fall 2015 issue of The Scapegoat Review
Attending Culpeper Local Authors Extravaganza
Join me and other Culpeper area writes Saturday Oct 17 at the Culpeper Library. http://ow.ly/Tu9OO
October 13, 2015
Aji Magazine will publish 3 of my poems in its Spring 2016 issue
Aji Magazine will publish 3 of my poems in its Spring 2016 issue. http://www.ajimagazine.com/
October 7, 2015
Faith in the Word
The Art of Description: World into Word by Mark Doty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
With this collection of thoughts and essays. Mark Doty shows that not only is he a fine poet, he is also a great explicator of poetry and advocate for its craft. He argues effectively for description of the world and the inner experience of it, and the informing of each by the other.
Doty also points to a critical problem with so much current poetry:
“Startling, to go description-hunting and realize that I can thumb through whole books of recent poems with very little evocation of sense perception within them. Why is this the case? I declare myself here on the side of allegiance to the sensible, things as they are, the given, the incompletely knowable, never to get done or get it right or render it whole: ours to say and say. The mightiest of our resources brought to the task, to make the world real.”
There is a loss of faith in the ability of language to be more than solipsistic, and a concomitant loss in the craft of making things sensible in both definitions of the word:
“Now everybody in creation mistrusts language, and half the poems we read make a nod toward the unsayable. What’s to be done? Language won’t do what we wish it would, but we have nothing else—so we have to go forward and behave as if it could do what we wanted (with some faith in the miraculous fact that it does, from time to time, give us a “Song of Myself” or a Tender Buttons, something the world wouldn’t be the same without).
“Perhaps we can inhabit the interesting middle ground that lies between, on the one side, giving up on referentiality altogether, and, on the other, cleaving to an outdated notion that words can be controlled, can say what we mean to say when we wish to make use of them.”
This a book for lovers of beautiful words and the desperate craft of believing that their distillation in unexpected liquors still makes life more alive.
October 1, 2015
Two of my poems are included in the latest BPL issue
Two of my poems are included in the latest BPL issue. https://birdspiledloosely.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/issue-51.pdf
