David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 210

Poetry Reading at Germanna

My next poetry reading and book signing:

Poetry Reading at Germanna
Fredericksburg Area Campus
10000 Germanna Point Dr.
Fredericksburg, VA 22408
October 16, Noon to 1:00 PM 

Reading and Teaching in Professor Sunithi Gnanados' English Class

Thank you Germanna  Professor Sunithi Gnanados' for allowing me to visit your English Class this wee, read from my own poetry, and show influences from the Romantic poets on some of my poems. The students were engaged and seemed to appreciate the opportunity.

One comparison I made was between the opening poem of my book "Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves" with Wordsworth Book Twelve of his Prelude:

From The Prelude Book Twelfth
William Wordsworth 

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence--depressed
 By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse--our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.
This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks
Among those passages of life that give
 Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,
The mind is lord and master--outward sense
The obedient servant of her will. Such moments
Are scattered everywhere, taking their date
From our first childhood. I remember well,
That once, while yet my inexperienced hand
Could scarcely hold a bridle, with proud hopes
I mounted, and we journeyed towards the hills:
An ancient servant of my father's house
Was with me, my encourager and guide:
 We had not travelled long, ere some mischance
Disjoined me from my comrade; and, through fear
Dismounting, down the rough and stony moor
I led my horse, and, stumbling on, at length
Came to a bottom, where in former times
A murderer had been hung in iron chains. The Songs Between
David Anthony Sam

There are certain places, certain times
when the soul flies freely
and feels one with the wind,
and one with the land,
and one with the lives around it.

 I have been graced with such places,
 such moments. They have demanded
 with need that I voice them
and allowed my voice to fulfill them.

 A Wyoming prairie sings to me.
 A cold lake in Oregon
made fresh from old winter snow dying.
A lakeshore where waves clap,
or an ocean of sand beside
an ocean of sea and mist.

 A small room with her face.
A park with their laughter.
A mountainside made blue to me by distance,
and a wide river valley between
full of green, a gray slab of road,
and the brown winding river.

There are such places, such times
that make me think if death were
this– this open disappearing into life–
death would be a fine thing.

 Instead I live between such places 
and such moments waiting only.

 And the song finds me when I am ready.

"Betrayals" accepted

The Journal "The Write Place At the Write Time" accepted my poem "Betrayals" for publication in its September 22, 2014 edition.

http://www.thewriteplaceatthewritetime.org/

The journal "The Birds We Piled Loosely" has accepted my poem "Bad Dreams"

The journal "The Birds We Piled Loosely" has accepted my poem "Bad Dreams" for publication in the near future

http://birdspiledloosely.wordpress.com/.

Poetry Reading at the Art Center in Orange (September 2, 2014)

Thank you Sunithi Gnanadoss for organizing my reading and introducing me. Thanks also to the Art Center in Orange for a wonderful venue and to the very appreciative audience members who attended and also purchased copies of my book. And, of course, always my deepest love and thanks to Linda.

The Dancing Bears by W. S.

The Dancing Bears by W.S. Merwin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

While I can see what the young Merwin was trying to do here, with real or imagined myth and folklore, the poems seem precious, the language stilted and artificially "poetic" and in all I am left cold.

View all my reviews

An uneven but worthy effort

domina Un/blued by Ruth Ellen Kocher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the anti-aesthetic shatter of the post-post-post, any art that is at all representational, any language that is at all eloquent, any verse that is at all unified is at best suspect, and at worst disrespected.

In the best poems in this collection, Kocher makes good use of the shatter to unveil the slave/dominant relationship, whether individual or societal. Perhaps despite herself, some lines approach a kind of eloquence.

Then there are “Un/blued” which repeats E/empire empire Empire over and over in three columns. I get it. I get it. I get it.

The extravagant use of white space mostly works to convey the shatter as well. Such use can be mere laziness, but that does not seem so here. The theme of domination/slavery also mostly works, approaching a versified “Fifty Shades” but not falling into it. Sometimes the fragmentation of dialogue conveys the shatter. Other times it seems pseudo-Wasteland.

All in all, I would argue that readers of poetry should spend one trip though this collection. It is very much worth one reading. Some poems merit rereading, such as:

“Near Torre Argentina”
“Exercise 17”
“D/domina: Daughter”
“D/domina: Forgetting the Tree”

and especially “D/domina: Issues Involving Interpretation”






View all my reviews

An uneven but worth effort

domina Un/blued by Ruth Ellen Kocher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the anti-aesthetic shatter of the post-post-post, any art that is at all representational, any language that is at all eloquent, any verse that is at all unified is at best suspect, and at worst disrespected.

In the best poems in this collection, Kocher makes good use of the shatter to unveil the slave/dominant relationship, whether individual or societal. Perhaps despite herself, some lines approach a kind of eloquence.

Then there are “Un/blued” which repeats E/empire empire Empire over and over in three columns. I get it. I get it. I get it.

The extravagant use of white space mostly works to convey the shatter as well. Such use can be mere laziness, but that does not seem so here. The theme of domination/slavery also mostly works, approaching a versified “Fifty Shades” but not falling into it. Sometimes the fragmentation of dialogue conveys the shatter. Other times it seems pseudo-Wasteland.

All in all, I would argue that readers of poetry should spend one trip though this collection. It is very much worth one reading. Some poems merit rereading, such as:

“Near Torre Argentina”
“Exercise 17”
“D/domina: Daughter”
“D/domina: Forgetting the Tree”

and especially “D/domina: Issues Involving Interpretation”






View all my reviews

New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry

New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wendell Berry is one of the more under-rated poets of the last 50 years. His new collection of his best over that time demonstrates time and again his deep connection with the land, his profound but complex religious faith, and his lyrical ear. His poems can be read and appreciated by those who regularly read verse and those who seldom do.

That accessibility and his impatience with artifice in poetry or politics may suggest why some in the academic world ignore or disparage his writing.

The later collections are not as strong as those from 1994 and before. His elegies, especially the one for his grandfather, are haunting and universal. I highly recommend living with this collection for a while.

View all my reviews

Labor Day Book Sale

Check here from August 30 to September 3 for specials on my books this weekend:

http://www.amazon.com/David-Sam/e/B00K82RUTY