David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 211

Watch for a "Labor Day Special" on my two books Aug 31 to Sept 5.

Watch for a "Labor Day Special" on my two books Aug 31 to Sept 5.

Check back at the following sites:

http://www.davidanthonysam.com/bookstore/

http://www.amazon.com/David-Sam/e/B00K82RUTY/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1408550476&sr=1-1

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/david-anthony-sam

http://www.indiebound.org/search/apachesolr_search?author_filter=Sam%2C+David+Anthony

A poem often requested

This poem, from Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves, is often requested when I do a public reading:

from the inertia of the flight               transferred from sky to silent tree                            this time, the rock flew certain,   the arm was true, the motion perfect.               There was a "thuk"–as if the rock                         had struck the branch alone.   The robin stumbled from the tree,               dropping feathers, losing its flight,                         abandoning its grace, its pulse of life.   The robin bounced three inches               from the red clay bared by a shovel                         beneath the silent locust tree.   The bird lay still. The tree no               longer moved. The boy stood, stunned                         by the anger of his unthought aim,   by the power of his arm to negate               the flight, the pulse of bird.                         There was no blood. The robin's eyes   were beady, but clear. The boy               backed away from the black feathers.                         The rock had disappeared,   transferring its stillness, its inertia               of silence and negation                         to deny the pulse, the life of bird.   The bird lay still, its eyes useless,               its wings folded against its breast,                         having spent its motion to the stone.
The rock flew on with the bird's               momentum–forever–in the boy's mind                           negating the wind, the sky, the just passed spring. 

Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

Mountain Interval by Robert Frost
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Frost is one of the few great poets who can write narrative verse, including conversation, and have it work both as story and as verse. This collection is held together by a theme of the relationship between humans, each other, and the natural world. There is cruelty, often unintentional or unknowing. But there is beauty in the intersection and the conflicts that result.

"The Road Not Taken" leaves its ambiguous ending hanging there: is it celebration, regret, or is it a facile narrator missing his own point? And in "Snow" the complexities of human feelings swirl with the storm that challenges Meserve to heroism or is it foolishness, or is it love for his wife?

Frost has often been underestimated, more by his fans than by some post-modernists who seem to loathe his writing. This collection bears rereading and savoring for its depths.

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Reading "Momentum" at the Raven's Nest July 11, 2014

You can watch my reading of  “Momentum” from “Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves” at Culpeper’s Raven’s Nest Cofffeehouse on July 11, 2014 on my website:

http://www.davidanthonysam.com/audio-video-photo/

or on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT_1NJmwGaI

Poetry Reading - Arts Center of Orange - September 2

My next poetry reading and book signing is scheduled for September 2, 2014 from 5:30pm at the Arts Center of Orange, VA.


Hope to see you there.

Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke --- Read it.

Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent collection by Laura Kasischke with many fine lines and poems. There are moments where the collection lags with a few uneven spots, but Kasischke always redeems the waiting on the next page or two.

Some of the parts that struck me, some for their elogquence, some for their simplicity:

"A girl in a bed trying to tune the AM radio to the voices of the dead."

"... the soldiers marching across some flowery field in France bear their own soft pottery in their arms—heart, lung, abdomen."

"as if the worship of a thing might be the thing that breaks it."

"The wind has toppled the telescope over onto the lawn: So much for stars. Your brief shot at the universe, gone."

"Bright splash of blood on the kitchen floor. Astonishing red. (All that brightness inside me?)"

"And my father ringing the bell for the nurse in the night, and then not even the bell. Ringing the quiet. Waiting in the silence"

"Believable, chronological, but so quickly erased that it only serves to prove that the universe is made of curving, warping space."

"When I built my luminous prison around you, you simply lay down at the center of it and died."

"Who knew those bees were making honey of our grief?"


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Reading at the Orange Rotary Club - August 5, 2014

I enjoyed reading at the Rotary Club of Orange VA for my fellow Rotarians.


And thanks to those who purchased copies of my two books, including Linda Miller, (pictured).

This was the poem I finished with today, from Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves :


“When you look too long into an abyss,the abyss looks into you.” – Nietzsche
I am becomehurricane,whirling manifestationof the abyssI too longlook into.I wear whorlsin my bloodstream.I hear windsin my earpulse.I am made of waterand wild air.In the end, Idissipate acrossthe wide plainsin rain,brief flashes,
and long echoes.

The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston

The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is wonderful to ready good writing that celebrates the natural world without romanticizing it. Beston describes the ocean and its waves with a clarity of understanding and expression I have seldom read. His connection with the natural world and especially with birds reveals the wonders there while neither refusing to see the violence inherent nor impose a human ethic on that living way.

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A video clip from my reading of "Fatherhood"

A video clip from my reading of "Fatherhood" at The Griffin is now available online.

From my website here:

http://www.davidanthonysam.com/audio-video-photo/

Or on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAyyGmE_Ymo

Review > Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography

Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography by Justin Kaplan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating biography of the two characters invented by their author: Samuel Clemens & Mark Twain---and the Jekyll and Hyde relationship between the two. Clemens/Twain was a great humorist and at his best in some of his writings or onstage, something Hal Holbrook seems to capture well. But he was a bitter and angry man, too. If you want to read behind the personae created by Twain, this is a good and deep exploration.

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