Magnapoets Essays

Family Language by Elisha Porat

translated by Alan Sacks

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A modern secular Jew ponders a startlingly real vision of his grandfather, who was a famous and revered rabbi.

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I had a vision one night of my grandfather, Rabbi Yosef Yoselevitch, my father's father who died in Poland before the war. He lay in his house by the window while outside, hundreds of Jews wrapped in black fur hats and dark coats gathered in the small planked yard awashed in mud left by the melting snow. With a bright face, he smiled and beckoned me closer. "Please, don't be afraid, my grandson-whom-I-did-not-deserve. Come to me, come to grandfather."
The windows were open, it was cold and dozens of grieving Jews thrust their heads into the room. "Pay no attention to them," grandfather said. "And don't be afraid. Come to me."

Wait a minute. What language did he speak to me?

Yes, I have this bad habit. I bring myself to a stop in the middle of reliving the dream. I have to know: What language did they actually speak in the dream?
For some reason, the language spoken in my dreams is very important to me. Even after waking up delirious, I make it a point to know what language I spoke? Did my grandfather speak Sepharadic Hebrew, for him a language for the future that he never knew? Or did he speak to me in Yiddish, which for me even then was a useless language of thepast? Or was it a picture language peculiar to dreams that was not Hebrew, Ashkenazic German or Yiddish? I don't know.
I just don't remember. Sometimes, something from my dreams finally comes to me weeks later. It's usually a trivial thing, of no importance. Yet that is what is stamped indelibly into my memory of dreams. I once read some book about the interpretation of dreams. the author claimed that it was precisely these small, seemingly meaningless details that must be grasped because they hold the key to explaining the dream. But I didn't ask any questions. And the questions I ask now have no connection to the dream. And so: What language did I speak with my grandfather, my father's father?
During the trip to Europa some years ago, I met my uncle, my mother's brother, for the first and last time. My uncle was already old and ill. His legs were nearly paralyzed and he moved about, with difficulty, with a walker. It is interesting that on the way from the hotel to his house, I wasn't concerned with which language we would speak. It all seemed so simple. The old uncle and his nephew from Israel were meeting. Was it conceivable that they would be unable to speak to one another? And in fact, the instant we met - after a few awkward moments - the flow of talk never ran dry. He asked questions, which I answered, and then he tried to answer my questions. We sat in the house with his family, his sickly wife and watchful son-in-law as his daughter fussed around us. My wife, who had come with me from the hotel, also sat with us. It's my feeling that we spoke the family language. I've saved it all inside me: the names, the dates, the family history that has come down to us. The siege, the rescue, the flight, everything. I even knew that he had grown tired of Judaism and was leading an assimilated life. But in his soul, he yearned to live a different kind of Jewish life.

On our ride back to the hotel that night, I asked my wife what language my uncle and I had spoken. I felt excited and quite confused. My question astonished her. Why, it was the family language, of course, the language revived from the past. "True, but what is the family language based on?" I persisted. My wife had noticed bits of Hebrew, fragments of French, she said, whole sentences spoken in Yiddish and a lot of English. I was amazed that night at how all those languages had melded inside me. They had been hiding, waiting for the right moment, and when they burst forth, had emerged a coherent, whole language: the family language.

And now we return to my paternal grandfather, to his last night in a small city in northeastern Poland on the Lithuanian border. The windows are open to the chilly, early spring evening. He signals me, calling me to him. I now know that he called me in the family language;indeed, we did not speak any common language. Actually, I still hadn't said anything. To tell the truth, that night, a night in the Hebrew month of Shevat in the year 1935. I still hadn't been born.

"There is no firm bottom to a dream. Everything is mixed together, swept around and I was sure I was close to drowning."

But that doesn't change the dream at all. My father, a young, zealous pioneer, had already been in the land of Israel for some years. But I distinctly remember that he was with us there, at the rabbi's bed. And when I probe my memory, I also recall the dear faces of the founders of our Kibbutz standing along the walls. Some of them are still shod in the high rubber boots they wore during our wet winters. Their boots are sopping with our reddish mud, the loam of the land of Israel, not the dark Polish forest mud whose exact color even I don't know. Through the open window comes the piercing cry of wailing. Some women mourning in the distant throng can no longer control themselves. Are the women allowed to enter the dying man's room? I don't know. I'm not an expert in religious law. All I know is what they let me see in my dream.

Women were there, definitely: relatives, neighbors who dearly loved the brilliant rabbi, tender young girls of the Hashomer Hatzair Zionist movement bound for Israel, all encircling the house. I heard some of them already bursting into tears. The men still restrained themselves.

Actually, they had lost control and were praying in pained, tormented voices: "May the rabbi live, amen. May the rabbi live, amen. Maytherabbiliveamen. Amenamenamen."

What prayer did they raise there below the open windows? I dove to the bottom of the dream to make sure I didn't fail. Only someone who has tried diving into a raging sea can begin to imagine what I went through.

There is no firm bottom to a dream. Everything is mixed together, swept around, and I was close to drowning. so close that I had already given up on my new watch and the American sunglasses that I'd left behind on the beach.

On my grandfather Rabbi Yosef Yoselevitch's last night, he appeared to me, the baby, his grandson not yet born. He smiled and invited me to play on his knees. But I could already detect beneath his yellow skin something that the jostling crowd on the wooden streets outside hadn't seen. Large white candles glowed in the room beside his head and someone put a damp towel on his brow. The murmur of prayer outside grew louder. Now you could hear the recurring words of the prayers like a solemn oath. "With the strength of your right hand's greatness, we beg thee. We beg thee, use your power.
Withestrengthofyourrighthand'sgreatness."

(1) If the language of my grandfather's terms of endearment had been hard for me, the language of the prayers was seven times harder. I couldn't tell at first if they were real words or just sounds that repeated themselves like the booms of distant drums: Webegtheewiththestrength, webegthee with the strength.

2). People were now weeping loudly in the little garden trampled beneath the street's leafless trees. Everyone was now stooping, bowing his head and wailing, the women in high, shrill voices, the men in dull ones. The language of the prayers outside was carried inside the room and surrounded the beloved rabbi on his death bed. "With the strength of your right hand's greatness, we beg thee. Preserve the life within him, let him sit again among the living. By your right hand so great and mighty, can you not return our dead to life?"

What did I know then of the world of yeshivas? What did I know then on the Lithuanian school? What did I know then of the geniuses of the Musar movement?

(3). Even in my wildest dreams, I couldn't guess that I would return someday to the schools in Jerusalem and read the heart-rending lamentations that the great rabbies of Israel and Diaspora had written over my grandfather.

Once, giving in to a pique of curiosity, I even went to see the world of the Lithuanian Yeshivas in Jerusalem. I met teachers and headmasters, some of whom remembered my grandfather and even gave me a measure of respect, or perhaps it only seemed to me that they did, because I was the grandson of the Lubitch. I chatted with them about the great achievements of those who had restored the world of the Lithuaninan Yeshivas, the giants of ethics, Abramsky and Grodzensky, the Meltzer rebbe and the Blazer rebbe. But inside, I felt that this was a lost world. I sat in their narrow, cramped offices up in the Romema quarter. I drank from their cups and ate a little from their tables. They exchanged words among themselves in an indecipherable language; all I understood was that they were intrigued to see what had become of the secular grandson of the master of Lubitsch.

"Pay no attention to them," My grandfather, the Lubtcsher,draws me to his bed ringed with candles. He chirps at me and showers me with sweet words of affection, hoping that I'll come out of the wall and take the form of a baby in the room, that I'll climb on his knees on this, his last night.
Yes, it seemed to me in the dream that I remember how he swung me up on his frail knees and hummed in my hair some forgotten melody that I, too, sometimes recall during the dream. Then I was snatched off his knees because the rabbi was very weak. He had to be put to bed at once and prepared for death. So many Jews crowded around his bed. The dark coats were steaming and I recoiled from the acrid stench of their boots.

"Pay no attention to them." My grandfather, my father's father, draws me to his ever paler face on the pillows. Outside, the women's wails are now rending the night air and the men are tearing their clothes.

At night, in my hospital bed across from the nurses' station, I grasp for my memory. Tenaciously, by sheer force, I struggle to remember every word of the prayer-oath "We beg you, with your strength."

If the Jews clustered by the dying rabbi's window had such unshakable faith in the words' magic powers, why shouldn't I believe in it, too? Why shouldn't its powers heal me, too? In every corner, they murmured, "May the rabbi live, may the rabbi live," even though his soul was already fluttering around the candles' flickering flames.

What is the power of this prayer? In the combination of its letters, in the charm of its syllables, in its ancient sources? I too join those in the crowd, whispering and hoping. I too put letters together, compose abbreviations and memorize obscure acronymus. Let it have an ancient source. Let it have a mistycal source. Let it even come from the imaginary world of the Kabbala. Just now, I don't care at all what the source of the prayer is. Just that it will work. That the secret combination will do the job. That the threat hanging over me in the hospital ward will be removed and shattered.

I know in my heart that my request hasn't been granted. The brilliant rabbi, the man of morals beloved by his people, was called to the Yeshiva of High and has not come back. Only in my cryptic dreams is he lying on his deathbed, propped up on his pillows. A sweet smile, a smile unlike any I have ever seen before, spreads over his face, its pallor calling to me.

The translator's note:
1. A Kabbalistic prayer of 42 words, the initials of which form the secret
42-letter Name of God.
2. According the Kabbalists, the prayer should be divided into phrases
of two words each.
3. A movement aimed toward concentrated study of ethical practices
according to Jewish tradition, especially in many Torah academies of
Lithuania, starting in the 19th century.

Long Haul (Elisha Porat)

translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks.
 
 

I find myself these days getting ready for the long haul. I am seized early each morning by a strange fever of activity, as if I had spent all the night making plans instead of sleeping. How does a man ready himself to go down this long road? Well, first off, I have to rid myself of non-essentials and chuck those things I've accumulated that are now merely dead weight. I root nervously through shelves of books, skipping over the few that I love. I pull them from the case, weigh them in my hand and hastily put them back. So be it. Fate is on your side. You are not a heavy burden. On the contrary, I would find it difficult to set out on this long road without you.

But I am heartless towards the others. Their hours of grace, in which they were allowed to remain on the shelf, have gone. I no longer need them. Better that they make their way to another place, and quickly, before I mourn them. Books, after all, are not expendable. They merely change residences all their lives. From my room, they are moving to the little library recently established at a remote kibbutz in the south. Fine. May they live their lives of boredom forever. I have no need for them just now and their pathetic lives do not appeal to me these days. I want to start on my path clean, free and empty, unsaddled with debts, leaving behind neither letters nor notes. I have seen jottings, forgotten after their authors set out on the long haul, put to ugly use. I have an urge to sweep the desk, emptying the drawers that keep filling themselves. What hope is there for this world? What hope is there for me, preparing myself to take leave of it?
 

Some days ago, I was visited by one of my few friends, an old man who had been a scintillating intellectual in his youth only to devote all his talents to building his kibbutz. Only now and then did biting verses fly from his barbed pen, as if he could not hold them in.

"Parochial work," I sadly offer him my opinion of the samples he has brought me. Pieces whose proper home is an in-house newsletter, the appropriate section of a regional newspaper or one of those local gazettes that recently have sprung up. They could be sent to a national paper as a reader's letter, or enclosed in a box, offered as a whimsy with apologies tendered in advance.The epigrammatic poems he has been writing lately drip with oppressive gloom. I sit across from him, his face encased in the stricken skin of an old man. His lively eyes implore me, don't be harsh, judge the work kindly, leave him hope that he is bequeathing works of taste. We say nothing of this aloud but we both well know what is at stake here. He is putting his writings in order before departing this world and embarking on the long haul. He asks my opinion, yet hints that these are the things he intends to leave behind, the ones he wants me to compile for his memorial book. He points again and again to the epigrams on one line. Afterwards, we look for the exact Hebrew equivalent of the foreign word "epitaph."

"Deep despair pervades what you've written," I tell him. "As though your whole life didn't amount to anything, neither the kibbutz you built with your own hands nor the long years you sacrificed when you could have been living a scholar's life. What consolation are you offering me or leaving your readers? What comfort is there for you before you set out on the long haul?"

He points to a short poem scrawled in his own hand. I notice at once that some vowels are missing, others wrong. He apologizes for giving too little study to Hebrew and Judaism. Buber, old Martin Buber, had inspired him to immigrate as a boy. He did the rest on his own but never had the time to finish his required subjects. What were these minor vowel errors compared to what he had built? What were rebellious Hebrew words defying his aged hand compared to the orchards he had planted? To his surprise, his native language, in all its riotous vitality, had recently come back to him. He hungered for translations, made the trip to the library and then, after a period of many years, again read translations of the great poets he had loved as a boy.

In all of them, he had no trouble seeing the line that divided their poems. He wondered if it matched the line that divided their lives.  As though from a point where they had stopped for a moment in their course, they suddenly noticed another side of their lives, a fateful crossroads. Until then, they had made steady progress, modest but constant. In the period's final years, this progress leveled off. There are moments when you mistakenly believe that things will go on like this forever and ever. But no, you have made a small mistake, an optical illusion it seems to you at first. Later, when you sharpen your gaze, you can see what it really is: it's no optical illusion. Here is where the inevitable decline begins. The slope, like any slope, keeps getting steeper. It has its own gravity, which the first glance sometimes fails to reveal.

Here is where the difference appears between those who, yielding to the flow, race to the end unhindered, and those who believe that their lives are still in their hands, who delay their submission without realizing what is happening around them or understanding who is pulling them down on the long haul.
 

The translators, though diligent and skilled, simply missed this dividing line. This, one may say, is his private discovery. But he takes almost no pride in it, which is a pity, since it could completely change the meaning of the poems. Is it possible that they were so blind? Is it possible that they impatiently rushed to the end of the poems without realizing where the crossroads veered, the turning point of the poets' own lives? But he saw it, an old, old man whose keen mind's eye has not disappointed him. Not a single twisting curve has escaped him. No dust has gathered under him. Just as he did as a boy, he sat at his desk and squeezed some moments of illuminating translation out of his work time. It's nothing. Instead of ending his time writing tiresome letters to newspaper editors, he can produce fresh translations of the classic poetry that was the beacon of his youth before he immigrated. "You can't translate when you're young," he said with a weary smile. "You don't have the poet's broad view of life."
 

I find his words very depressing. They fuse unseen into my urge to throw things out. That is, even the books that I've loved and faithfully kept over all the years are destined for a second reading. Over them, too, hovers the danger of removal from the shelf. I'll need to pull out my drawers again and burn unimportant letters I have no interest in leaving behind. I'll need to go to the trouble again of depositing the few letters I value in the archives in Tel Aviv. But I'll have to be quick about it, or I'll change my mind and destroy those, too. The can I've set up in the garden for my bonfire is still there. My wife has often complained about the suffocating smoke filling our little room and the bits of ash which, carried by the wind, cover the lawn around our home, settle on the bushes and blacken the porch. One young man, a diligent worker at the factory who flew past my bonfire on his bike, said that I shouldn't use fire like a caveman. "Thank God we have much more modern equipment for getting rid of documents," he said. "Haven't you heard of high speed paper shredders? "

I return to the old translator. His fingers twist without rest. He has mixed up the folders placed before me. From the file marked "translations," I draw out occasional poems and epigrams that he published in the newspapers. From the file inscribed "miscellaneous," I take out impassioned translations of classical verse. I switch the files when he isn't looking. It would be a sin to embarrass him. He traveled a long, tiring road before reaching me and is getting ready for a trip much longer even than that. I have no right to disturb his plans even though his trembling hands and the skin peeling off his face make me want to cry out in protest, "Haven't you heard of a high speed shredder, gramps? Don't you hold out any hope? What will you tell your grandchildren when they ask?"

"Yes, that is my one hope," he answers me. "The babies, the little grandchildren. By all means, peek at the poems and see for yourself. They are my sole comfort, my last hope. They are just beginning the journey I am about to finish. My meager experience will go into the travel bag they'll sling over their backs. That is, indeed, my one consolation. A desperate, unflagging attempt to create a new man." Tears well up in his glowing eyes. Memories of his grandchildren come to him. He knew in his heart that the image of his grandchildren would go with him no matter how well he prepared himself for the long haul. It won't be easy to let go of them.

They are the sole comfort of his pitiful life, his one hope before he goes down the road of no return.
 

Their sweet voices anchor him to the spot. Their darling squeals leave him mute with happiness. Their laughter turns his legs to lead. Each memory of them adds an unforeseen weight to his body.
 

He sits silently before me. His hands, spread on the desk, have stopped their trembling. I, too, say nothing. I see that firm decisions are slowly dissolving. It seems that I still don't know everything. Even my own decision to ready myself to make the long haul may yet be changed.

(c) All rights reserved.

Between Arrival and Departure (Danny C. Sillada)

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

- Anais Nin

That gnawing, remote feeling of parting from someone close is more intense and haunting than the romantic encounter between two people. It is this lingering convulsion of loss when one begins to ruminate how a cherished encounter winds up to a rancorous end. Perhaps, if one had the capability to change the course of time, he or she would go back to the path where all the extraordinary encounters converge and happen.

But no one had the power to revert the irreversible certainty of departure from arrival and neither one could change or alter the inevitable processes and forces of nature.

Everything arrives and departs at a particular time and space of its respective existence. The rising and setting of the sun, for instance, paves the way for the coming of nightfall in the same manner, as dawn departs at the bursting of morning light from the eastern horizon.

 

Everything is subject to the tedious rhythms of coming and leaving, of entrance and exit, of birthing and dying, of hello and good bye... But in between these invincible rhythms, something ineffable takes place, something transcendent and indispensable than the reality of arrival and departure.

If only one could seize and live that ineffable in-between, then all arrivals and departures would conflate into a single entity of all that there is and what is to come. Everything becomes a defining moment of all encounters where beginning and ending are no longer consequential.

Departure becomes an encounter and arrival becomes the completion of a particular departure. One can find joy even in sadness, victory in defeat, kindness in ruthlessness, love in hatred, and so on and so forth...

And when that happens, utopia or heaven is no longer a distant aspiration to be dreamt and cherished, but an inch away from the human touch!

© Danny C. Sillada

"kofko in my hand" (Elisha Porat)

translated to the English by Alan Sacks

This morning, much to my surprise, I felt some of my strength of old return. The slight blurring of my vision, the side effect of a disorienting dizziness, eased as my medication relaxed its grip on me. Reinvigorated, Iapproached the bookcase, pulled out some of the tightly packed volumes and blew the dust from them. At last, exhausted, I held Kafka in my hands. Though it had been quite some time since I had turned to his works, he hadoften come to mind these past weeks. Now he was in my hands again, a small, hard-bound edition, with the Hebrew letters set in the old-fashioned type of Yeshuron Keshet and printed by Belet Gavshushi. Just a few days earlier, I heard the famous Czech poet,the one who would visit Israel one day, pronounce Kafka's name. Kafko, he said, and then again, Kafko. Suddenly, this alien ronunciation seemed to me just right, seven times better and a thousand times more faithful. It was, indeed, a significant change. I close my eyes and echo his voice for myself. Kafko or Kafka, Kafka versus Kafko. When the Czech poet intoned the name in his Slavic accented language, it sounded like Yosefko. Really, Yosefko, Yosko, Yoshko, Yoskof.

The name was terribly familiar to me, something I had known years ago, as though it had been printed on the kibbutz work roster of giant Bristol pages that could not be folded, pages so heavy they pulled out the tiny tacks holding them to the perforated wooden board. Yosek. K. Yoshko K. How easy it was to pronounce the name. I already liked Kofko, the new editions should print it Kafkoh and no other way. That is, the final vowel had to be embedded in the last consonant, but it was important that the suffix appear Hebrew and not western Slavic. Kahfkoh, which you could read as Kafkah or hear as Kafko, however the spirit moved you. A crackling good name that worked either way, two names suddenly merging, until I make a mistake and say, Yosef Kafka, thinking of his protagonist by that strange name instead of little Franz, which has simply escaped my memory.

There I stand at my bookcase, which exudes the aroma of damp wood. Kafko in my hand, I compose in my mind a letter to father. No version of this letter will ever be published. Kofko's writing, bewildering topic-switching prose, sets my teeth on edge. It sometimes resembles the fitful flight of some insect cautiously weaving 70 circles around an open flower. A lyrical turn occasionally flashes past in fear of an impending withdrawal. This is indeed timid writing, the sort that fears the direct approach. Here and there, a quick, direct sentence plucks up its courage and escapes. I fully expect that in the wake of this breach (on a small scale, of course, for he knows nothing of all-out attacks on his pages), occupation divisions will tramp forward to exploit the breakthrough, clean out the remaining outposts and establish a bridgehead.

But no. That is not for him. He instantly retreats to the safe shelter of the previous sentence. From there, he may sally forth in secret and once more try to reach his goal. His prose is self-defeating. Sentences imprison themselves within a multitude of bonds and bounds. It comes close to what they taught me in the army years and years ago. One foot on the ground and one in the air. While the pinning force seizes the commanding high ground, the assault unit scouts the enemy to surprise him in his trenches. Perhaps even this definition is not truly accurate. But what has accuracy to do with literature? One step forward and two steps back, that is how he fashions his advance. I pace before the book shelves, Kofko's book in my hand now open to the eye. We are writing the letter to father. Sentences race ahead, terrified, stooped, seeking shelter. With inexplicable courage, bold passages suddenly surge forth and whole columns are swept forward. The whole manuscript advances, an essay of black letters striking violently across the front until my heart skips a beat with some strange fear of sinking into a black morass. But I have nothing to fear. The first step forward has already been made. Now everything has come to a halt, pausing, scanning the terrain. It is as though Kafko himself has leapt from the page, taking the lie of the land and telling himself, whoa, too fast; the assault columns must be stopped. He is already planning his next move, a double step back. Once again, I am thrown far from the open heart of the wound.

Good, after the advances, we seat ourselves, the two of us, before father. There is a certain obscurity here, but I am in no rush to clear it up. Whose father is it before whom we sit? Little, scared Franzy, who slips the letter into the post box and takes to his heels - is it his father? Or does each of us face his own father, handing him the letter in person?

I remembered his stern face when I finished my days of punishment and was allowed back into the house. I was very sorry when he passed on and mourned him for a long time. I wondered how Kofko, writing his letter, would conduct himself, whether he would need to read an original, heartfelt eulogy while his father's coffin was lowered into the grave.

Prague, the city masked in Kofko's stories, was not destroyed in the great war. The house stands where it has always stood. The river flows past, the old bridges still. It all suddenly becomes clear. His mysteries are solved. Young, energetic Kafka, destined to grow as old as Methusaleh, was in the habit of plunging into the chilly waters of the river. According to his friends, who remembered what they saw there, he swam the river in swift strokes. In the evening, returning refreshed and bursting with vitality, he would mobilize his paper heroes for the astounding strategy he had devised. One step forward and two steps back.

Can the lead sentence deny all the sentences to follow? How is it possible that a single clause can open or bar seven gates? Where can he hide, the trembling boy seeking refuge from his father's wrath? I am reminded of a boy, a childhood friend, who once accidentally broke the key to his parents' apartment. That was in the new neighborhood. The chain fell to the floor while the broken key remained stuck in the hole. Sweating from head to toe in fright, he tried to draw the broken part from the door. When he finally succeeded, his whole body was shaking. He laid the broken key at the base of the door, as though it had fallen of itself and shattered on the floor. Even the crack he had tried to patch with spit could not be seen. He crawled into the garden on the slope of the lawn and crouched in the dark of the bushes until his parents returned from work. Only in the black of night did he dare to come out and present himself as someone who had traveled a great distance. In his absence, the mangled corpse of the key had been found on the porch. The air was thick with suspicion.

Of course, I am no seer when I dip into my memories. There is no limit to fear of a father's wrath. Even on a little kibbutz, a boy dreads the rage of an angry father returning home after a long day of work. He kicks the broken key and upbraids his wife who, as we recall from Kofko, is the beloved mother. "Ptui, ptui, ptui," he spits out. "Why, tell me why he has abused your precious `jewelry' again. Would it help to throw him out of the house for a few days? Maybe this time he'll learn how to behave?"

In my bed at the hospital, I drafted countless letters to father. What attracted me was the detached, remote nature of it, the opportunity to hide behind the other side of the composition, quite unlike the stories and poems I have written over the years. It is the yearnings laid bare and base desires that make a name for a piece. One can feel pain, even regret. In every important stage of my life, at every juncture, I have found myself facing him, composing my thoughts for him on a sheet of paper. On the one hand, I am glad he did not go through the terrible wars, worried sick for the safety of his children. On the other, I regret that he did not read my works or see his children grow up. I remember his final illness and my last visit to the hospital. It all comes back to me unexpectedly, the acrid odors, the hushed fears and panic-stricken voices.

"Give me another 10 years," I begged. "At least let me live as long as he did." I bargained passionately with the giver of life and death. I was not ashamed to mix in some tears.

Of course, I am no seer when I dip into my memories. There is no limit to fear of a father's wrath. Even on a little kibbutz, a boy dreads the rage of an angry father returning home after a long day of work. He kicks the broken key and upbraids his wife who, as we recall from... Who, Kofko? In his own demented way, he would throw a wild party one evening to free the household of a tyrannical father's yoke. It may be that as he steps forward, he breaks out in a drunken monologue of which the principal subject is the purpose of going forth in liberty. But little Franz instantly comes to and loses his nerve. With two steps back, he flings himself, wracked with longing, on the memory of the dearly departed, on the happy days of his childhood with his father and the simple, quiet pleasure of their home warm against the cold and rain of a European winter.

In the end, in that twisted way of his, he would spit, "ptui, ptui, ptui," berating his mother and sister so these slow-witted women, these stupid loved ones, would grasp at last just who it was they were bound to serve from then to the end of their days.

Manifesto of Love or How To Become A Poet (Asimina Hasandra)

"Αh! The simple things mean the most. Like a circle meaning a rectangle and falling in love. And if I wait a lifetime, will you come?"
Yiannis Antiochou

To Ria anyway…

IF YOU WANT TO KILL YOURSELF here’s a good idea for a suicide hang by the words. If at some point the vision of a poetry was proven this phenomenologically corresponds to the emotion and not the tangibility of matters. A body speaks! And the speech is thoroughly transcribed in the texts the poetry that confesses is no other than the importance of the existence of a deep blue ach..on the verge of boredom and so be it.

Our issue is the reconstruction or how to interpret poetry in the so-called material world Universe since love is the motive power. Let it be the only one who needs its disability and its tied-up dream in the eyes straight as you teach a child to read, the poet of "chaos". If for example we told how is fulfilled a dream tied at the waterfront with a little whitewash darkness falls and always always slowly moves the hand betrayed in front of the telephone.

Affection is love and love is the autumn at the just vacated fingers of a woman or a man, with the eyes straight to the waves. I mean to say that sometimes you reach the significant from far away but what happiness when next to your bed sheets awakes your second life. And then you realize how precious is the breath of a poet in love, in the summers of his life.

When I read the poems I feel like washing my face with clear sky water, like visiting a sick body and yes!.. to recover you have to be sick first..

The sickness of love is a little church in a storm, is the storm of a date of seven a.m. at the torn canvas, is what your intuition tells you or else your instinct under the sea.. Truly I never felt such strong pain in the viscera the guts and in fact the aortic arch but only when I fell in love with that smile. And I wasted days and nights of my life trying if possible to trap it in an image a poem a word the vowel of love. So be it..

In how much danger was I and was it real? The minefield of darkness corresponds to an existence which if we want to name its name would be none other than amity. Yes amity and aurora borealis! Wobbling the traces of the body on the waterside and the cells of midnight we face creases speaking another language the language of heartthrobs…The branches of the arc and the breaths interpreting the atmosphere are on the other hand the only thematic part due us. And from above the palm trees make an impression otherwise. The traumatotropes are a music to the just permitted. And imagine that they do nothing else than what their heart dictates. I mean to say that stirring the minefield we discover our passions and our love that explode in the depths of the horizons…And so be it!

The movies are my life and if there was still an islet where Saint Symeon has tread with the outside world I would have no azure thought. And yet everything is the great Wisdom from the moment you temporalize the pit of the flowers, and be it a dream. You watch it and wake from the torpor of the seven days and nights of your work. Time runs in circles and loses complexes of checkered rock formations. From your neck hangs nostalgia in open space and love armed and ready. I man to say that all the magic of lightning rod love consists in exactly its noons and in fact the most secret phosphorous consumables. When you held me in your arms the birdies between the pavement were eating my memory and dying automatically Imbecilic associations were operating besides…

This was the reason I loved you!

But once more the natural phenomena with the painting of always say it is the most momentous "the sorrow that mellows you". And it is not only this it is also love which never and nowhere lets off if it is to be born it leads you tenderly to the sheets and the hypodermic feelings. How can you go around in the landscape if you are to be drowned every so often in the most archaic building even if it protects you from a war. I mean to say that if you are to duel in all in the powers of the sea in the bodies that are given you you write and write about your crease which is not seen. If only those that get angry could understand you even if here is the problem…But usually the problem is not here but only in the words of Elytis "I have no relatives, from all mylife I tried to make a stony youth. I filled love with crosses." And no hope.

To smell the excellent…The juvenile caresses reach the place of poetry and the words that if nothing else charm lost are found in the look and you follow me if possible to the guardhouse of love. Everything talks to me however even the docile rectangular horizontal and vertical of the body that weaves a story a memory a past delaying the enchantment!

I mean to say that one thing is affection and another is love, love endures like a solstice in the middle of the Nile leaning flirtatiously the female body on its moonshore and love always encloses the significant without the fall from the deep blue waters of Niagara being feasible. Suffice to say and say forthright in the blue of the breath as slow burning as it is.

I burn for a truth the truth hovering over the crimson cover of a book. The river flows and whispers are heard the bodies darken and screams are heard, it is the time I have to see you in my dream have to conquer Mesagros and the ray of the precise. A feeling overwhelms me and I cannot sleep, the hours wrestle with the shipwrecked sheets, Spring finally came, the words will flower again...

My agony is poetry and the magic that the verse in the viscera respires, the bowels explode and I learn to watch my vision, a rocky shadow that hollows to rceive a wave the sea eating up the body with its saltiness and the spluttering of the moon in dreams. Death is no more!
To dine poetry and love need the human body, to get drunk they want the poet and thus the transparent reflected word upon the verse is the truth jeopardized in the city without mind and intellect scrapings dark like a ray of sun even if under a magnifying glass.

And if I sensually ask you for the overt lip of the Universe, will you kiss me?

I have to say that the magnitude of the calamity seems to be completely recompensed by respectable meetings of if I want something I want it now and so on. The jugglery of love never renders you reach. It so happens that the innocence of poetry seduces and thus you write how else? To become a poet or not is a state you verify in your inmost dreams, you wake up and you know that to fall in love you have to write poems and vice versa. The most priceless I ever received was an avalanche of affinities of souls and bodies. Fateful was the snapshot of empty wine glasses, with a collar round the table of our desires. And then came the thrill…

Extremely we completely comprehend the body of imagination and choice if it is known beforehand but then again. We have to spend ourselves on the back of the palm tree and the erotic banquet when the girl falls in love with a man and the reverse, without incrimination and totally lackadaisically different. Love has to drown and resurrect the bodies by a flame like the one of the Roman yellow candles in the background. The room shines and silence hovers and I want to touch you to smell you and poetry is late but comes with the look of a girl on the floor because there the heart lies in the bottom of the fog, from there I speak to you! It seems that the fingers resemble serenades of an orchestral ensemble in the midst of the stage playing the piano or preferably the violin at the tracks of a fibrous heart about a decade ago and let it be…

The truth is found inside you and it is important that the questions of writing to be solved endoscopically like love nevertheless is resolved…

Even if it is not in vain!

The misspelling of love…

What's In Your Inbox? (Aurora Antonovic)

One of the best – and potentially worst – things about the internet is the feedback we writers get on our work. Every writer likes to know that he/she is being read and appreciated, and many of us realize that our work cannot appeal to everyone all the time.  That said, there are times when feedback is not all it’s cracked up to be.

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Prior to easy internet advancement, a stamp and postal address were needed in order for letters to reach a writer’s desk. It took more than a push of a button for contact, so only serious readers usually took the time to respond. Today, in this age of instant accessibility, anyone – and often everyone – decides to drop a line now and then.

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I’ve done my share of controversial political articles, and as a result, have received a plethora of threatening letters, harsh criticism, and calls for my head on a silver platter. None of that prepared me for the responses I would receive via the internet to my poetry.

Yes, poetry, something that is supposed to uplift the soul and tickle the senses, a few verses here and there to make the world a better place, right? Yet poetry is often the very thing that garners the worst responses.

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For example, one time I wrote a tongue-in-cheek poem entitled “Femme Fatale”, based on an over-heard conversation. It was quickly snatched up for publication, and the editor seemed happy with it, I was happy, and the readers…..? Well let’s just say I’ve never received as much hate mail as I have from that one poem.  Men and women wrote in droves to tell me that my poem was not appreciated, and I was called all kinds of names, many that I can’t print here. And to further the suggestion that some readers have problems separating fantasy from reality, let’s just explore what happened when I switched poetic writing partners.

You see, I enjoy collaborating with fellow writers from time to time for inspiration, and just plain fun. It’s great to work off of another writer, using their words to fuel your own, or to take your poetry in a direction it’s not been before. I have never been romantically involved with any of my writing partners, yet many readers assume that I am playing tonsil hockey with whomever my writing partner du jour happens to be.

When I completed a writing project with my very good friend, Christopher John Horne, and wrote a few poems with a new partner, my inbox was filled with angry responses. One of my favourites began, “arora u r a slut” (spelling errors in the original). I was asked repeatedly why I dumped that “nice young man” for an older, ugly one, and insults flew left right and center.  I tried to explain the situation a few times, but later resigned myself to some chuckles over the unfortunate misunderstanding.

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And then there are those who are angry with writers when we are unable to play pen pals. Yes indeed, many people don’t realize that we cannot take time to write to “a lonely man who is in a new town and doesn’t have anyone to talk to”, nor do we want to meet up with someone who just “happens to be planning a trip” to our town and wants to see the sites. Yes folks, we writers are busy writing our articles and stories and verse because that’s what we do.  Our publications are not dating services, and no, we don’t really want to reach out and touch you quite that closely,so if you like what you read, please keep reading, and if not, send some constructive criticism our way, but please don’t try to do it over drinks and candlelit dinners for two.

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Now I’ve only discussed unwanted messages, and have yet to touch upon the very best part of writer feedback, and that is letters from appreciative readers, particularly young ones wanting to start out in the field. I cannot begin to tell you what it means to receive these letters, many of which include mind-blowing poetry that, if any indication, means the world will not be at loss for dynamic writers in the future.

And then there are those readers who take time out of their busy schedules to let us know our work has touched them in some way, or the editors who have constructive criticism to offer, or fellow writers who would like to gift us with copies of their latest books. Those are the most humbling kinds of feedback.

So if you read something we write, and you like it, it’s a kind gesture to let us know. If you think we can improve our craft, please show us how. But for all other inquiries, may I direct you to my colleague ….

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previously published in Dana

Of Chance and the Poets We Read, Establishments, and Other Things (David Matthews)

Those familiar with me only through a few interviews and essays may well wonder if I have read anyone of more recent vintage than the Beats. In truth no one since the Beats has made a comparable impact. I was struck by Camille Paglia's remark, at her appearance at Powell's in Portland back in the spring of 2005, that while researching Break, Blow, Burn she found no great poetry written in the second half of the twentieth century, even among poets she likes. There is much that is well-crafted, clever, ironic, but little that touches us deeply. Maybe ours is a time of minimal poetry, or maybe it is that the great themes tend not to be tackled by the poets with the greatest visibility, the ones who win the awards and ensconce themselves as professors of poetry and conductors of writing workshops and are published by the university presses of the nation.

I imagine there are a number of poets writing today I would enjoy if I came upon them, but there is such an incredible proliferation of poets, small press publishers, and magazines, both in print and online, that even the most dedicated reader would be hard-pressed to take in more than a smattering of them. For someone still working his way through the tradition, it is an especially daunting task. As Harold Bloom is fond of pointing out, at this late date there is simply not time to read everything we want to read, not to mention that the really good stuff is worth reading slowly and carefully and several, if not many, times over. We will never catch up.

So much of it comes down to Fortuna's roll of the dice. Most of us first encountered the poets of the Anglo-American tradition in school. As for the others, you meet a poet in a bar who is smitten with Berryman and has large chunks of Dreamsongs committed to memory. So you come to Berryman. Another time, you are taken with a young woman who recommends Vallejo. So of course you check him out, and not just for the sake of the poetry. Someone asks if you have ever read Rilke. No. You should. An old college pal tells you about Bukowski. It happens like that.

It all goes back to when Mom took a job as secretary at the local high school, where she became close friends with the principal's wife, which is how I met my buddy Phil. I was about twelve at the time. This would have been in the mid 1960s. Phil had a short-wave radio on which he listened to English-language broadcasts from Radio Havana and Radio Peking, as what we now call "Beijing" was transliterated in those days. He corresponded with the commies, and they sent him all sorts of cool stuff, propaganda, posters, a Cuban flag. There is no question that exposure to these other perspectives, however slanted, as I knew even then they were, along with the Civil Rights movement and my personal witness of racial prejudice and discrimination, led to an openness to question the official U.S. version of things, for instance, the deepening military involvement in Southeast Asia, of which I was just beginning to be aware. These seminal influences remain with me.

A few years later Phil and I would drive into Columbia on Saturday afternoons to hit the Richland Country Public Library. Science fiction was our focus, but we had a taste for science, history, biography, and politics as well. One afternoon in 1968 or '69 our young eyes were struck by a book on the new arrivals shelf with a wild cover and a title we did not know what to make of: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. What in the wide world could that be about? The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test led to Ken Kesey and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. From there I picked up on Jack Kerouac when his name kept popping up in articles about Kesey in magazines like Rolling Stone and Time. Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, with whom I was already familiar, led to the other Beats, who in writings and interviews dropped names like Rimbaud and Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Mayakovsky, names that led to the French Surrealists and, more generally, international poetry of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. This was the poetry that drew me to poetry.

Ginsberg and Kerouac reacted against an establishment that entrenched itself in the 1930s, described by Kenneth Rexroth in a 1969 interview:

Between the wars, an extraordinary combination of Ku Kluxers and bankrupt Trotskyites in New York dominated American literature, and made it totally provincial. American literature was back where it was before the Revolutionary War. It was a provincial imitation of English baroque literature.... It had no connection.

Since most of the people, except the Southern Agrarians, had been one-time Stalinists, they just took over all the techniques of Stalinism...you know, hatchet reviews and logrolling and wire-pulling and controls of foundations and academic jobs and so forth...they had the thing absolutely by the balls, just like the Commies had had it just before them. If you got in the Partisan Review you could put up your little pattie and get a job on any English faculty in the U.S.A.

We fought these people continuously...a lot of them had been taking exercises so that they could keep fit when they were put in the prisons during the coming war, the Imperialist War, and what happened? They were all in the OSS and now the CIA. They all were! Every single...one of them was! Name anyone that wasn't! I know all of these people. They were all chairborne [sic] on a gravy train of human blood.... Once I pinned the name "Pillowcase Head Press School of Literature" on Red [Robert Penn] Warren and Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom, it stuck! You have no idea the domination of these people.

Today we have a different establishment. In a development analogous to what Rexroth describes between the wars, many infantile leftists of the 1960s have become the infantile rightists of the new century. Rexroth says elsewhere in the same interview, "You go to any university today and you are up to your ass in poets." This was 1969. Nowadays the M.F.A. programs and the writing workshop racket churn out poets who write with perfect competence without having anything to say, and they have the contacts, the connections, the networking, to land the teaching jobs, score the grants, and have their books published. This is not to argue that one cannot work in the university and write meaningful poetry, only that few do. Meantime, people committed to learning, teaching, and the intellectual adventure, devoted to the musty old ideal of a liberal education, face an uphill struggle against careerists, mediocrities, budget pressures, and those who push for universities to be little more than glorified trade schools whose mission is to churn out a docile corporate workforce according to the dictates of the economic order.

Across the grim divide the new generation of holy barbarians rages in its turn, Ginsbergians, Bukowskians, poetry slammers, young and full of piss and vinegar, passionate, caring, but many with a ways yet to go on the poetry end of it. Discouraged as I sometimes get, I take heart because I know that among their number and in the schools, too, are those who read Dylan Thomas and Edna St. Vincent Millay, Vallejo and Neruda, who go back to Shakespeare and Milton, and know who Diane di Prima and Bob Kaufman are. I see them reading The Idiot on the bus and lining up for the NW Film Center's Pedro Almodóvar retrospective. I have to believe this counts for something. Hope springs infernal.

This is a slightly revised version of an essay that originally appeared on my blog Memo from the Fringes 26 June 2005.

Sharks In The Waters (Joseph Armstead)

Sharks In The Waters

"Wow.   You write some really dark stuff.   Why are your poems so harsh and gloomy?  I mean, it's poetry, right?   Shouldn't it leave me feeling all happy and hopeful?"

Incredibly, at least it's incredible to ME, I get asked that question -- a lot.  Inevitably I then think about or even re-read some poem I've posted or had published and I examine it looking for telltale signs of misanthropy, cynicism, agnostic heresy, or wiseass nihilism.   And just as inevitably I see only that I've created a poem with subject matter that is part and parcel of the Real World in which we live.

I guess I'm not supposed to do that.   It's not polite.

What irks me most is that the aforementioned question is often asked by fellow poets.

I’ll start by stating the obvious: there’s a lot of craziness and viciousness loose in the world today – words are weapons and there are a glut of assassinations every hour.   We all know this.   Anyone who has ever watched the evening news or read the daily newspapers knows this.   Anyone who has ever stood at a bus stop or in front of a movie theater where cocky, impudent, mean-spirited urban teenagers have gathered knows this.   Sarcasm rules.  The art of verbal assassination is ascendant.  The endless proliferation of shock-jock Morning Shows saturating the radio airwaves are full of examples of ambush (so-called) “journalism”.   Even our multimedia advertising, like television commercials for instance, reflect the wiseacre nature of modern existence.  Sales pitches are slanted towards Mad Magazine/Saturday Night Live comedy skits lampooning our suburbanized and homogenized, upwardly-mobile sacred cows.

Many believe that Meanness has been elevated to an art form.   Many authors and media critics believe that to publicly acknowledge the rough edges, sharp fangs and ferocious intolerance implicit in human nature is tantamount to beknighting its existence.   If you admit its existence you give it undue legitimacy.

And yet, in modern popular literature, which supposedly, at its best, holds up a mirror reflecting the social mores of the times, there seems to be an unspoken collective decision amongst authors and publishers to stay away from those sharp-edged and angry shores.   No one wants to be washed up shipwrecked on the beach of anger.   Nowhere is this head-in-the-sand, fingers-in-the-ears-la-la-la refusal to see and speak of the unpleasant more visible than in poetry.

Everyone wants to ignore the fact that there are SUPPOSED to be sharks in the waters…

It’s a denial of evolution.   It’s a denial of the duality of human nature and human existence.

Poets, listen up: you can’t have the Light without the Dark.

No, don’t over-think it.  Don’t neuter that realization with intellectualized vagaries that blunt the sharp edges and detoxify the venom inherent to the subject.   Don’t bore us ad nauseam with bloodless historical citations of classicist examples of irony and weak-kneed, gentile satire.

Yin.  Yang.   Deal with it.

Get your hands dirty.   Dip your pens in freshly spilled blood.   Look the animal you’re going to kill right in the eyes and don’t mask your intentions.   Draw the knife.   Make the cut and make it deep.

Hurt something.  Then tell everyone that you did it.

It’s not an academic exercise.   It’s not a fit of pique.  It’s a responsibility.   It’s a Holy Calling.

As a poet, you have the responsibility to occasionally Say Something (capitol letters intentional) that slaps the reader across the face and reminds them that the unpleasant sting they just felt is a gift: a reminder that Beauty is a bouquet adorned with thorns and that’s the way Nature intended it.

It promotes growth, spiritual, intellectual, artistic, moral and societal growth.   Without it, that sharp sting, that anxiety-inducing unease, that sensibility-offending stench temporarily polluting the air, we would, as a culture, become little more than dandified, perfumed, overly-polite, politically-correct cattle --- eunuchs at the orgy.  We would be at an evolutionary dead end.

Allow yourself and your poetry to hold up that mirror to the Dark Places and let that reflection be its own illumination of the things hiding in those shadows.

Stop being so damn polite.   Really.

How many ways are there to say “I Love You” without the phrase becoming trite and losing meaning altogether?   How many odes to the nostalgia of fleeting youth can you craft before those writes become little more than the automatic writing of a trance medium at a carny show?   How many times can you suppress your own inner outrage while in the midst of crafting a paen to a passion between fictional lovers whom you know will interest no one other than some snobbish, reactionary literary critic at a magazine no one has ever heard of?

What exactly are you accomplishing?   Is this poetry for poetry’s sake, a work of fleeting poesy?  Don't you think that is odd?   I mean, come on, YOU'VE been In Love...  Has it always been postcard sunsets, flowers, candlelight dinners and sweet bird songs for you?  And when the inevitable has happened and the affair has ended, when the love has drained away and all that has been left is memory and familiarity and weary politeness, has it always had the golden-glow feel of sweet nostalgia?   No anger?   No bitter regret?   No hot tears of frustration?  No urge to break something as you watch them walk out the door for that final time (or as YOU walk out the door for the last time)?

We both know the answer to that.  And if you deny that in your writing, then you're cheating.   Cheating yourself and cheating your readers.

Worse, you've become stunted.   You've rejected the onset of maturity.   You've stopped evolving.

Grow.   Let the lumps and bumps and gawky angles misshape your Raphaelian/Botticellian loveliness and become a work of art that challenges the perceptions of beauty.  Grow and evolve.   Stop writing the same technically proficient-but-unmemorable pap over and over.

Remember that, regardless of how lovely and tranquil the beach and how serene and inviting the ocean's azure waters may be, there are SUPPOSED to be sharks in the waters…

It’s the natural order.  You can’t have the Light without the Dark.

So occasionally, write some dark stuff.   Unapologetically.   Unrepentently.  Rant and rail and blaspheme.  And no, it doesn't have to be "pretty".   Pretty is very over-rated.  Just write it well.  Just infuse it with honesty and intelligence.

Revel in your Sharkiness.  Hurt something.

Yin.  Yang.   Deal with it.

"Wow.   You write some really dark stuff."

Yes.   Yes I do.

This has been a public service announcement.

Televised Lithium (Joseph Armstead)

TELEVISED LITHIUM

Communication within the Arena of the Digital Culture.

(The opinions expressed within this article do not reflect the opinions of the Management.  They do not reflect anything at all.  This is not a scholarly treatise.  This is not a rehash of all those countless, dry articles written by well-meaning experts on Visual Anthropology.  This is written by a man with a headache.  So relax.  Watch a commercial.   Have some chips.  Buy a new car.)

Word: jour·nal·ism
Pronunciation: jûr'nuh-liz'-um
Function: noun
a : The collecting, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles in newspapers and magazines and in radio and television broadcasts; b : products of the public press, "the fifth estate"; c : writing, recorded media or electronic visual media characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation...

I watch the flickering electronic eye... I think the eye watches back.

Watching the televised talking heads on CNN and MSNBC run through the gamut of daily news, political, economic, medical and industrial, is often a surreal experience, a dance at the door to "trans-reality" where the true news stories are obfuscated, turned inside-out, and insignificant stories become overblown, hyped-up docu-drama.

No Trailer Park So Fierce --- There's the story about the dead celebrity super-model and the legitimacy of her love-child's claim on a disputed family fortune.  A neurotic junkie who danced naked on tabletops had a baby with a rich old codger who died...and then, after working very hard to re-create herself as a guilty pleasure-of-a-trashy-public spectacle, she herself died. The vultures circled.  Why anyone should care is a topic never broached, a glimmer of thought that dies stillborn.

Damaged and Loving It --- There's the musical popstar who may or may not be a pederast.   Or the rock star whose supposedly private sex tapes have wound up on the internet ?  Or is this the story of the actor who publically humiliates his children?  Or is this the one about all the cadaverous fashionistas denying they have eating disorders?  Or is this the tale of the billionaire talk show host and her undeclared religious cult of American suburban housewives?  Or is this about the megalomaniacal real estate tycoon who has decided to become a reality television star and his verbal "feud" with an unfunny, lesbian comedianne-turned-political commentator ?

Penguins in the Rainforest --- There's the anti-debate and blame-laying in the highest corridors of science and industry about the warming of the planet and the dangers thereof.  Someone films a rambling discussion about an inconvenient truth and corporate America desperately seeks a gag order while everyone else turns a earnest, quiet man into a prophet of ecological doom.

Jesus Loves His Kalashnikov --- There's the war against terror, the axis of evil, and the debate as to whether anyone truly understands the web of intrigue, the global sociological implications of and the labyrinth of religious intolerance in the countries of the Middle East.  The history of a region is ignored, the struggles of a civilization at war with itself are marginalized, facts are fabricated, rumors become truth, the truth gets buried out beyond the borders of the propaganda graveyard.

MTV In My Pants --- It's all for the children, everything we do is for the children.  Indeed.   The music, the fashions, the cinema, the video games, the sexual mores, all for the children.  It takes a paranoid, global electronic village to raise an alienated, egocentric, materialistic, violence-addicted child.  And the child hates us for the effort.

Greed is the New Black --- Do you want it, whatever that may be, do you really, really want it?  And how badly?   What are you willing to do to get it?   How far will you debase yourself ... and are you willing to do that, participate in your own denigration, for 13-weeks with like-minded contestants on television?

Infotainment and High Finance, giving the public more bang for their buck.

Everyone seems to dance around the crux of the matter, as if getting to the point is tantamount to a criminal act or, at very least, a sin of heresy.  In a world where "sin" is loosely-defined and mostly situational and interpretive, no one dares call it by its true name...

Ignorance.  Welcome to the Church of the Candid Camera Confessional.

It is frequently presented as a break in scheduled programming, which (said programmed television shows), in themselves, are by definition, a break between attempts to sell you something.   Gotta sell those hemorrhoid medications, gotta sell those automobiles, gotta remind you to buy empty-calorie food that isn't good for you.  Look better, smell better, have better sex through pharmaceutical chemistry.   It, the news, is often presented as Truth.   It masquerades as knowledge.

Hallelujah and pass the Visine: you just can't stop watching.

The electronic eye is no longer a friendly technological innovation bringing news and entertainment into our lives, linking us together as one great multicultural community.  It glares at us with undisguised distaste and disdain and we realize, belatedly, that each night when we shut it off, we see the blank screen has more and more come to resemble the dark tunnel in the barrel of a gun.

We are all in the crosshairs... and there's a disgruntled Ad-man on the grassy knoll.

Breaking Writer's Block (Aurora Antonovic)

Breaking Writer’s Block
or
How To Be The Sparkling Creative Genius You Always Knew You Could Be

There’s nothing like a looming deadline, and a pocket empty but for a sourball and lint, to make those who earn their living by the written word, scramble to break writer’s block when it hits.   Although writer’s block is a common affliction that happens from time to time to even the most seasoned writers, there are a few tricks of the trade that will help writer’s block dissipate when it’s your turn to suffer.

One of the reasons for writer’s block is over-commitment. You have too many different projects going on, and the last thing you seem to be able to do is get your mind off the endless list of things-to-do. Although it is tempting to chain yourself to the computer during these times, and just plough through the workload, such a method is actually counter-productive. Something mindless is often just the trick to release pent up creative juices. A quick walk in the park, a methodical scrubbing of the tub or raking of the leaves, some gardening, or jumping rope can do wonders for stimulating the part of the brain that needs to get busy producing some brilliant poetry.  I’ve been found on my office floor close to deadline, doing Pilates. While to an outsider, it might not look like I’m working, I’m actually writing poetry as I stretch.

Music is something else that inspires verse. I have my tried and true CD’s nearby at all times, but I have also found that listening to something fresh often helps me think in a different direction. Scouring the internet for new bands, or raiding your friends’ CD collections, just might help you find what you’re looking for. Another trick I abide by, is listening to classical music, particularly if I’m working on a rhyming piece.   Even if I don’t like the composition playing at the moment, it seems to put my brain into metrical gear. Also, once you’ve got the music resounding, be sure to enjoy the moment. Take a spin around the room, or pretend you’re a member of a famous ballet company. You might be surprised at the kind of poetry that comes to you after five minutes of imagining yourself to be a dying swan, or Camille.

Art is another feature I like to keep all around my writing area, and I change it often. An inexpensive way to do this is via the computer, by Googling for images. When writing haiku or tanka, I like to look at nature scenes, and if I’m writing about something seasonal, I find appropriate images for that, as well. And if you have the ability to paint, get out the watercolours and work on something with your hands while your mind drifts off somewhere else, and comes back to you with a delightful piece of rhyme.

Sometimes writer’s block is because of burn-out: you’ve used up all your ideas over and over again, and bled your brain dry in the process. This is when it’s time to sap someone else’s strength! What are other poets for? Pick the brain of your writer friends, find out what they’re currently working on, or ask them to look at the few scraps of words you might have scribbled, and see if they can give you ideas. Ask someone to collaborate with you – sometimes working with others provides the necessary stimulation to complete a poem. Don’t limit yourself to always working with the same sex, same few poets, or bind yourself to one style only. Open yourself up to new and creative ideas. Don’t forget to allow the tried-and-true classic poets to inspire you as well. There are lots of great poetry collections, and I’ve been known to turn to Shakespeare or Shelley for inspiration when my poetic well runs dry. Sometimes reading nothing but poetry for an entire hour or two makes me come up with a few gems of my own.

And who says your work has to always be autobiographical? Most of my poetry, personally, is not, and hasn’t been since I was a teenager.  Writers are an inventive lot, so make something up!  Or take other people’s stories, and turn those into poetry. I have been known to take snatches of conversation and make them into something presentable, or to borrow a great line from someone’s tale(with permission, of course), and build a poem around it. 

The opposite is true as well: look at everyday occurrences as poetic opportunities. That incident in the mall, or the argument with your best friend (hi, Marc!) just might provide the impetus for a great piece of verse.

If you know more than one language, write in that, even if you’re not very good at it. Think of it as a mental exercise. Translate the poem back then into your mother tongue. It just might give you a different perspective on the same theme.

Switch forms: take a previously written piece of yours, and write it in a different style. I’ve taken haiku and turned them into tanka, or turned sonnets into haiku, and free verse into rhyme. Sometimes I also simply write what I want the poem to say, and then turn that subject matter into form later.

Keep snatches of verse stored in one area. What might be a great line or phrase now, can be the inspiration at a later date for a really great poem. Open these files up from time to time and read through them – you never know when a poem will be born.

Eat. Nothing keeps a writer from passionately partaking of art like a growling stomach. I like to keep healthy snacks near my writing area as well as lots of water so that I won’t be tempted to leave my space needlessly. Sometimes poetry can even be built around food! I have written several about dinners with friends, with lots of metaphors going on, that were quite fun to write, and well received.  You never know when that baloney sandwich is going to turn into publishable material, and don’t laugh – I’ve done it.

Relax. Nothing kills poetry like forced language. If poetry isn’t coming to you, begging to be captured on paper, maybe it’s time to pull out the bath salts, your favourite magazine, and take a long hot soak. Or get someone to give you a massage – that ought to be good for at least half a dozen poems!

Above all, don’t beat yourself up. I know from personal experience that banging one’s head against a desk is counter-productive to poetic health. Everyone suffers writer’s block at some time or other. And in trying some of these ideas, you might come up with a few of your own. If you do, don’t forget to send them to me at three in the morning, when I’ve scarfed down my last bag of Doritos, as I’m looking forlornly at a blank page, quietly sobbing.  And if you base it on anything I’ve written here, just remember – I want collaborative rights.

published in Poetic Voices and Dana Literary Publishing