Thursday 1 December 2016


Sister Publication to Poetry Life & Times

Issue of December 2016

    

 Customer Survey. A Poem by M. A. Schaffner

Death is another possible market —
laughing at death, playing at death, dying
slowly and courageously like in movies.


Death as a costume party with vampires;
unlife as a zombie jonesing for brains,
crashing funerals, pretending to care.


Death as a product sells better firearms,
more lurid fantasies with the heroes
shaped by algorithms to buyers’ needs.


For needs read desires; for death, denial
in its most comic form. There will be sex,
of course, and thin pale girls with sincere teeth,


and over the far horizon the real deal
waits confident as a dealer whose marks
laugh behind his back until they need him.



Escape. A Poem by M. A. Schaffner
Posted on November 28, 2016 by


Back to its roots the goose rambles
through the brambles to the golf course
and beyond. A green pond beckons
with an iridescent sheen it can smell.


It moves past. A twisting wooded road
goes up and down between the farms
that surround the camps and lodges
and empty lots where someone planned
to spend a life and then forgot.


Mottled with bottles the pond lies
forlorn between the secret parties
that every teen knows all about
and the goose waddles through, sensing
a river past barbed wire fencing
where the rest of the flock awaits —


the ghosts of a past predating
the clipped wings and special diets,
the tube between its liver and its mouth.
Its final dream is flying south.


M. A. Schaffner has had poems published in Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Agni, and elsewhere — most recently in Former People, Raintown Review, and Rock River Review. Long-ago-published books include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels and the novel War Boys. Schaffner spends most days in Arlington, Virginia juggling a laptop, smart phone, percussion caps, pugs, and a Gillott 404.


             

FUD. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop



Fud helped temper attacks
trump a three-word promise longer than ever before
the up ones sleeve trump card
trump up trick, as Day of Judgement
raised the dead on intestinal gas through the anus
to expel hopping into an atom splitting fission
similar referendum wins multiple atoms to split
exponential increase in atoms splitting into right wing populism
the number of some which will awaken destruction
to take war to Europe
and based on history applaud the great victory
to win back control from now fractured EU.

The final trumpet that taps into a seething and of course many
but based on history
the Christening of them leads to nothing happening
but Utopia argumentum ad metum
– not ace in the hole card period of time –
compare trombone at dawn by several commentators
that Brexit, a trick with a trump is not caused by
split geyser of anti-immigrant sentiment suggestions
and ascent in part we are entering one moral due to another
according to the belief of thousands within an extremely short period
on a very broad scale.

Possible scenarios are infinite
to build a wall has many awful faults prevented
hit the economy with a strong force of natural selection trump
which might represent to trump up a convincing EU
as well as also one major wave of inward-facing
and they in turn causing all the indicators
that were in case against the last EU for all its UK causes
automatically honour targeting frail people
in their many moving parts
as their combined energy weakens.
Fear uncertainty doubt FUD call force in suppressing
in the face of won overnight
by those who due to the massive complexity
by the hundreds of splits causing multiple moral Utopia
argumentum ad impact
of the first atom of all ages and killing. Of all ages and killing.


Robin Ouzman Hislop, born UK, a reader in philosophy & religions, has traveled extensively throughout his lifetime but now lives in semi- retirement as a TEFL teacher and translator in Spain & the UK.

Robin was editor of the 12 year running on-line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. In 2013 he joined with Dave Jackson as co-editor at Artvilla.com, where he presently edits Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla.com, Motherbird.com.

He’s been previously published in a variety of international magazines, later publications including Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Poetic Bond Volumes (thepoeticbond.com) and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (a recently published international Anthology of Sonnets). His last publication is a volume of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk available at all main online tributaries.




Dreaming in Hi-Def, Ozymandias Streamed Dynamic Data. A Poem by Joseph Armstead

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The sound of ten million voices raised in confusion,
raised in wonder, raised in anger, raised in prayer,
scatter
like beads of fallen mercury
to roll across the desert sands,
pathways to Giza, Luxor, Cairo,
and Alexandria,
home to antiquity and myth, kingdom of the pharoahs,
pyramidal necropolii dotting an arid landscape,
baking under the fiery glare
of an unblinking solar eye,
next-generation optical disc,
waiting for the Summoning,
for the Call,
waiting for the Sacred, for a Benediction
from a polytheistic overworld
of New non-secular Gods,
the pantheon of the IMF, BASF,
Microsoft, Apple, Oracle,
Exxon-Mobile, CitiBank,
Daimler-Chrysler, Sony,
and McDonald’s,
waiting
as the orchestra of voices gather,
venting their passions, like Opera,
“Look, Ye Unworthy, upon my works, and know
this high-definition storage media format
will spread the glory of the blue-violet laser
across the face of Heaven,
an interstitial data sector
striped across the disk-array
of a Cloud-based
Application Server Farm,
where the tears of the Mighty
fall like acid rain!”
The sound of ten million voices
raised in confusion, raised in wonder,
raised in anger, raised in prayer,
scatter
across a boundless arid plain,
an ocean of charred and barren grit
stretching into a Future where
the Kalashnikov assault rifle
is the scepter of Paradise.

BIO

Joseph Armstead is a suspense-thriller and horror author living in the United States’ San Francisco Bay Area. Author of a dozen short stories and ten novels, his poetry has been published in a wide range of online journals, webzines and print magazines. A mathematician, Futurist and computer technologist, Mr. Armstead’s poetry often defies easy description, but frequently includes neo-classical imagery, surrealist viewpoints and post-modern themes.




Through the Grinder. A Poem by A.J. Huffman

 
 
Body language indicated frustration,
trying to get back
to normal, and I
looked down at empty.
Hands gave back everything,
thanked me as I had to move on
for their sake. An integrity procedure—
like seals on storebought bottles—
I moved closer
to the edge. Contained,
I believed I would not have known the difference.
I came apart freely and without
damaging the sky, dissolved
into the ether and afterthought.




A.J. Huffman has published thirteen full-length poetry collections, thirteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses. Her most recent releases, The Pyre On Which Tomorrow Burns (Scars Publications), Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink), A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press), and Familiar Illusions (Flutter Press) are now available from their respective publishers. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2600 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, The Bookends Review, Bone Orchard, Corvus Review, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com.




GAS STATION. A Poem by John Grey

plt
 
Straw hat’s busted
and the blue and red flag’s dragging on its pole.
The road’s as narrow as a plumb line
and the sides are baked brick hard.
Rusty gas pump only offers regular.
In the window, brown and speckled eggs,
soda bottles, a can of oil.
Unshaven Ed flops in his chair out front
Straw hat can’t keep back July,
cakes his brow a stinky yellow.
A car creeps by but doesn’t stop.
Maybe can’t read the price of gas.
Ed’s handwriting’s shaky
as his mortgage payments.
May’s quilting, the only thing
her fingers know to do.
Despite the heat, her handiwork
rolls up to her wrinkled chin, almost smothers her.
And here comes Vernon,
just who Ed don’t want to hear.
So Dewey’s got a new computer.
Tell that to the chamber of commerce.
Another car rolls by. And another.
Someone even waves.
Straw hat’s raised in answer, in anger,
then flopped down sideways on Ed’s head.
Go help your grandmother, Ed says.
Steam rises from the swamps,
raccoon pans the trash for food,
wood-stork chatters from a cypress branch.
Vernon creeps reluctantly indoors.
May stops her quilting for a kiss,
struggles to remember who exactly is this boy.
Along comes Temple to complain
about the weather and business and his wife.
Ed listens but his ear is cocked for cars the more.
He straightens his straw hat.
Brim holds by a thread.
How long you had that thing? asks Temple.
Forty years, says Ed. It brings me luck.
 
 
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review.




Barbara Crooker Selected Poems / 2015 available on amazon.com

by Barbara Crooker

https://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Crooker-Selected-Poems/dp/1938853709?ie=UTF8&tag=barbaracrooke-20

This collection brings together 102 poems from Barbara Crooker’s previous ten chapbooks of poetry, two of which won national prizes, with a handful of uncollected poems at the end. Of Crooker’s work, William Matthews has written, “Barbara Crooker’s poems have been written with a deft touch and with that affection for their textures and pacings that we’re accustomed to call, a little dryly, ‘technical skill.’ It’s a form of love, actually, and since she’s expended it on her poems, we can, too.” Janet McCann, writing in the Foreword, says, “The poems in this collection come mostly from chapbooks, collections which cluster around a theme, such as loss of a parent or friend, raising a child with autism, travel, art. Crooker’s collections are remarkable for their unity; their poems, epigraphs, even covers have a thematic thrust that collects and directs the work, making each a coherent work of art.... Reading the work from beginning to end provides an experience of Crooker’s world, that place of work and sadness balanced by art and love. It also provides vignettes of growing up in the fifties and sixties and shows what it was like to come of age as a woman in those years—the expectations, the hopes, the barriers that had to be overcome. Even in poems of loss, the energy persists, giving us the sense that Crooker is truly in the current of life, feeling its verve—what Wallace Stevens called ‘the intensity of love’ that he identified with ‘the verve of earth.’”

 

 

All the Babble of the Souk
by
Robin Ouzman Hislop


Click book image to visit the Amazon page

Poet Robin Ouzman Hislop’s first full-length collection, All the Babble of the Souk, is appropriately titled. With a remarkably consistent ear for the market’s noise, for “[t]he broken lights of the bazaar/spangled] with glistening promise/in the eyes of the dusky beggar …” (Laminations in Lacquer ) Hislop’s poems, many of them cinematic-style montages of sounds and images, show us the metaphoric souk of the world, on the beach or in the street, its glitter, its sadness, its ragtag glory:

“pets, flower pots framed captive in a moment 
outside the house of the painter, a robot
in chains with an alms bowl”
(“Departures”) ...Read more of this review by poet Miriam C. Jacobs

More Reviews for this book:

 Aquillrelle. Press Release. All the Babble of the Souk

Richard Vallance Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Reviewed by Marie Marshall All the Babble of the Souk

Richard Lloyd Cederberg Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Adam Levon Brown Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Further comments and reviews on Motherbird

 

 

 FEATURED VIDEOS



Take Us (With an intro to The Blacksocks)
from artvilla.com - more info on The Blacksocks:

http://www.theblacksocks.uk/

 

The Minimalists - A grimly Spartan Christmas poem by Sara L Russell
aka @pinkyandrexa on Twitter



 


Janet P. Caldwell - Dancing Toward the Light
in affectionate memory of Janet P. Caldwell




Misery: New Orleans Gun Violence & Other Crimes / Nordette Adams


 

 A Merry Christmas to all our readers...
any comments?
You can use your Facebook ID to login and comment in the space below.

 

Monday 31 October 2016

Sister Publication to Poetry Life & Times

Issue of November 2016

  

 

  NAMING THE BEETLES
A Poem by David Chorlton


A dozen beetles suddenly
are clustered on a leaf,
black with red designs
on their glistening backs

with six more farther
down the stem.
What can we say
we are seeing? Drops

of poison or a sweet
confection from
the spirit world? Pinpricks
on a lacquered base

or the blood
from an animal so long extinct
it has to bleed from
an adopted skin?

They shine in a manner
almost sinister, yet
the way they cling
to each other

suggests they have arrived
as a message conveyed
through space and time
as a warning to act

in the common interest
before it disappears.
Soon enough
they leave us wondering

what was here
with a gloss and such
delicate legs they must
have walked on light

to wherever they went.



David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications on- and off-line, and reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His most recent book, A Field Guide to Fire, was his contribution to the Fires of Change exhibition shown in Flagstaff and Tucson in Arizona.
  

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In Loving Memory of Janet P. Caldwell February 1959 ~ 20 September 2016.
William S. Peters, Sr.


weep not for me

weep not for me,
nor despair, nor lament,
on my crossing the waters,
for my life has been full,
for i had you

i go to a better place,
where i shall make a bed for you
as i longingly await your arrival,
for we are eternally betrothed

i shall have the angels sing
a song of welcome . . .
and the flowers of the field
shall dance gleefully
in the embrace of brother wind

the sun always shines here
acknowledging our mutual brightness
where the night-ness
is no more

so i ask of thee
to weep not for me
nor despair, nor lament
on my crossing the waters,
for my life has been full,
for i had you





Bill is an avid Writer / Poet who has been committed to this path since 1966. He currently has to his credit over 70 Published Books as well as a myriad of Newspaper and Magazine Articles. Bill supports the venue of Creative Expression regardless of form. He also is an activist for the progression and evolution of Humanity and its Love of each other.

Recently (September 2015) Bill was honored to be named the Poet Laureate at the Kosovo International Poetry Festival where his book The Vine Keeper was showcased. He was also awarded The Golden Grape Award.

Bill currently serves as the CEO of Inner Child Enterprises, ltd., Managing Director of Inner Child Press, Executive Producer of Inner Child Radio and Executive Editor of Inner Child Magazine. His life partner Janet P. Caldwell stands by his side in support of the Inner Child vision

For more of Bill, visit his personal web Site at :

www.iamjustbill.com

 

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Loop.
A Poem by Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi



It was a play,
A simple manipulation,
When your fingers ran parallel-
Crosswise
Or lengthwise,
And you created a loop.

But it was not a play,
Only a manipulation,
When your fingers ran parallel-
Crosswise
And lengthwise
And you suspended yourself
Into that loop.

As a child, I know mother that-
Now

      you
Are                         Not
living.

 



Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi is assistant professor of linguistics at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, India. His research interests include language documentation, writing descriptive grammars, and the preservation of rare and endangered languages in South Asia. He has contributed articles to many Science Citation Index journals.
His most recent books are A Grammar of Hadoti (Lincom: Munich, 2012), A Grammar of Bhadarwahi (Lincom: Munich, 2013), and a poetry collection titled Chinaar kaa Sukhaa Pattaa (2015) in Hindi.
As a poet, he has published more than 100 poems in different anthologies, journals and magazines worldwide. Until recently, his poem “Mother” has been published as a prologue to Motherhood and War: International Perspectives (Eds.), Palgrave Macmillan Press. 2014.

 

 

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Enduring the anguish of thinking… A Poem by Richard Lloyd Cederberg

“There was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy.” (IN MEMORY)

(I)

How silently
And stern these
Straining days pass,
Where, at times, in open tyranny,
Scattered thoughts scramble
For measured application…

O dismay,
Each day
Embracing (the
Great word ‘WAIT’),
This (at times) tragic fate
Impelling the mind to reengage
With something other than
A wearied wide road
Worn smooth…
Another fluster putting glory on
[Hoping] to rediscover where
Newness is apparent, and where honest
Happiness is more than a shadow of things past…

Throughout life
(I’ve) known thinking
That piled-up (at times)
Like a day’s dead sanctities;
Thought-quakes pricked with panic –
Like vexed birds flailing on windowpanes –
Thoughts – in rising currents wild with leaves –
Trembling in trepidation at the tumults of the day,
But clinging to where Earth and Heaven meet crying:
O Burning Lion – Creator, from whom flows
The substance of all fresh thinking;
Help me bear this anguish…

(II) AN APPEAL…

O breath of life…
Breathe on this mind that broods
(At times) so helpless and unnerved…

…From the utmost corners,
O divine breath,
Command my lassitude
To drift from me like a whisper

Preserve me from these penumbras
Where despair shrieks in the belly of clouds;

And, where from all dark-lipped furrows,
Hubris strolls in chatoyant silk

…From the four winds come,
O breath,
To breathe upon
These outworn motivations,
That this slain heart could rise up
To write rather of life than of death

… From the uttermost parts,
O breath of life,
Breathe on me that I might suspire
As an Eagle stirring its nest;
Hovering over its young;
Spreading forth its majestic wings
To carry each of them up to the high-places;
For it is your breath (alone) O God that sustains me…

richard lloyd cederberg

10/16

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7

 


 BIOGRAPHY – Richard Lloyd Cederberg

Briefly… concerning published books, books being written, poetry, poetic/prose, and creative-writing: Richards written work has been featured in Poetry Life and Times – Artvilla, Motherbird, Taj Majal Review, Authors Den (page includes Poetry ~ Short Stories ~Articles) Christian Story Teller, the Mississippi Crow Magazine, the Path Magazine, Hardy Alpha 1, The Journal of Contemporary Haibun, and a variety of anthologies, compendiums, and e-zines. Richard was nominated twice for the PUSHCART PRIZE. 2007 BEST NEW FICTION at Christian Story Teller. 2006 WRITER OF THE YEAR @thewritingforum.net (sadly defunct)…

Books include: The MONUMENTAL JOURNEY SERIES (adventure/mystery/historical fiction): 1. A MONUMENTAL JOURNEY… 2. IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST TRIBE… 3. THE UNDERGROUND RIVER… 4. BEYOND UNDERSTANDING. A new adventure/thriller, BETWEEN THE CRACKS is also available. A new eschatological drama – AFTER WE WERE HUMAN – is being written. Follow the lives of several friends as a new race of ageless multi-dimensional humans comes back to Earth with their Creator to rule and reign for 1000 years.

www.authorsden.com/richardlloydcederberg

 

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Slither. Sonnet Poem
by Norman Ball

Accomplicing that plot device, surprise,
the day shone royal blue. Our Sunday walk
assumed pedestrian guise until her lies
constricted near Unending Books. In mock-
submissive tone, she sighed: “Please let me be
right here, outside our favorite used-book store.
It’s where we met. All circles close a door.
That’s symmetry — the poetess in me.”
I pondered the reflection of my self
on Austen, half-price-off; then for a song,
the poets, ancient children, on a shelf
set up on crumpled velvet. All along,
this princess had availed a serpent-guide.
I was the frog to her formaldehyde.

 

NORMAN BALL (BA Political Science/Econ, Washington & Lee University; MBA, George Washington University) is a well-travelled Scots-American businessman, author and poet whose essays have appeared in Counterpunch, The Western Muslim and elsewhere. His new book “Between River and Rock: How I Resolved Television in Six Easy Payments” is available here. Two essay collections, “How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable?” and “The Frantic Force” are spoken of here and here. His recent collection of poetry “Serpentrope” is published from White Violet Press. He can be reached at returntoone@hotmail.com.

Read full bio at Poetry Life & Times
 

 

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Eyes | Poem by Janet Kuypers

eyes

Janet Kuypers
started 4/4/15, finished 4/6/15

Growing up,
boys didn’t like me,
kids made fun of me.
I was raised to think
that I was a plain girl,
easily overlooked.
I’d look at my eyes,
the same eyes my dad
thought made me

always look sad,
and wanted to think
that the song

“Brown Eyed Girl”
could have been
about me.

How silly of me.
I should know better.
And maybe that is why

I’ve always loved
blue eyes.
Eyes not like mine.

#

The eye is a fascinating thing,
it’s beautiful to study,
especially yours…

If I were a biologist,
I’d take high-res photos
of that eye of yours,

maybe magnify it as large
as I could, so I could study it
like a slide under a microscope.

I would search for meaning
in those mesmerizing patches
and shades of that unique blue.

#

They say science
can explain all,
so maybe it can explain

why I’m so in love
with your eyes, or why
I’m so in love with you.

#

Eyes are our windows
to the outside world, but
they’re also portals inward,

giving us mere mortals
fleeting glimpses
to who you are inside.

I think our colored irises
floating on an ocean of white,
punctuated with a pupil

were designed that way
so we could follow
each other’s gazes closely.

I’m watching you.
You probably see that.

I hope you’ll watch me too.

Because scientists
have studied the crypts,
pigment dots and furrows

of the eye, and scientists
are now figuring out
that the eye really is

the window to the soul.

So, maybe I was
on the right track

by loving your eyes,
and never wanting
to lose sight of them again.

Eyes © 2016. First published at Scars.tv  Eyes Poem
Visit Artvilla.com to hear an mp3 of this poem read by Michael Lee Johnson
with music by Dave Jackson

 

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Key of Mist by Guadalupe Grande

Streets, courtyards, squares, cages, a microcosm of urban power...
Key of Mist 


Spread the Word
Listed UnderTags:
* Poetry
Industry:
* Publishing
Location:
* Brussels - Brussels - Belgium
Subject:
* Products
BRUSSELS, Belgium - Oct. 11, 2016 - PRLog -- ...the text of the city inhabited by the signs of the artefact and chaos of Babel, the personification of the labyrinth, a moral monster with a fortress-house for a body and a shelter for the desolation of shipwrecked as a head. Here, Guadalupe Grande's Key of Mist (La llave de niebla, translated to English by Amparo Arróspide and Robin Ouzman Hislop) maps the city soul, where linguistic chaos rearranges the poems' voices.

The city, the other civilization, the greatness and the spectrum of its intrinsic ruin, a memento mori for the urban castaway on the waves of asphalt. (...) Such is the ethical landscape in which Guadalupe Grande displays the moral alphabet of her poetic truth, recognizing the city as a hyperspace, where the epic idea of homeland, the country´s ideological circumstances, the historical concept of nation are devastated by the innocent look of someone who does not understand the rush, does not accept the urgency of sacrifice imposed each morning by the necessity of work, the laws of domination, the salary of loneliness.

~Juan Carlos Mestre

EN RELATIVO

Que el mundo es imposible. Que las calles no pueden cabernos en el pecho. Que nada cabe en el hueco que le está destinado y así nos van las cosas. Que las hojas de los árboles siguen cayendo y el mar sigue diciendo una palabra que no podemos descifrar: una palabra en movimiento, una palabra en la que cabe el tiempo. Que estamos hechos de tiempo, pero no de mar. Que llevamos la cuenta del tiempo que vivimos, mareados, como si pudiéramos llevar las cuentas del mar. Que contamos la lluvia de los días y los pasos tartamudos de las horas. Que hacemos balance de minucias. Que se nos caen las palabras de la boca, sin entenderlas, como la nieve se aturde en el asfalto. Que confundimos la nieve con la sal, los relojes con la sangre, el pecho con un garaje, y nos consolamos creyendo que todo es relativo, como este pronombre.

WITH A RELATIVE PRONOUN

That the world is impossible. That streets won't fit in our chest. That nothing fits in the niche for which it's intended and that's how things are. That the leaves of trees go on falling and the sea goes on saying one word we can't decipher: a word in movement, a word that fits time in. That we are made of time, but not made of sea. That we count the time we live as dizzy, as dizzily as if we could count the sea. That we count the rain of days and the stammering steps of hours. That we make fuss about trifles. That words drop from our mouth, without understanding them, like stunned snow on a pavement. That we confuse snow with salt, clocks with blood, the chest with a garage, and we console ourselves with thinking that everything is relative, like this pronoun.

POSTAL I
(Vista del horizonte desde la Costanilla del Farol)

Nada hay como estar lejos
y no saber dónde meternos;
contar los pájaros que emigran,
buscar la arena en el asfalto
y acurrucarnos bajo una farola
con espigado espíritu de álamo
mientras el tráfico de la noche
dice su palabra de río
que no llegará nunca al mar.

Una ciudad, hoy, es estar lejos.

POSTCARD I
(View of the horizon from the Alley of the Street Lamp)

There's nothing like being far away
not knowing where to get into;
counting the migrating birds,
searching for sand on the pavement
curling up under a street lamp
with the slender spirit of a poplar
while the night traffic
utters its river's word
that will never reach the sea.

A city, today, exists to be far away.


To order: http://www.lulu.com/shop/guadalupe-grande/key-of-mist/pap...


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Barbara Crooker Selected Poems / 2015 available on amazon.com

by Barbara Crooker

https://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Crooker-Selected-Poems/dp/1938853709?ie=UTF8&tag=barbaracrooke-20

This collection brings together 102 poems from Barbara Crooker’s previous ten chapbooks of poetry, two of which won national prizes, with a handful of uncollected poems at the end. Of Crooker’s work, William Matthews has written, “Barbara Crooker’s poems have been written with a deft touch and with that affection for their textures and pacings that we’re accustomed to call, a little dryly, ‘technical skill.’ It’s a form of love, actually, and since she’s expended it on her poems, we can, too.” Janet McCann, writing in the Foreword, says, “The poems in this collection come mostly from chapbooks, collections which cluster around a theme, such as loss of a parent or friend, raising a child with autism, travel, art. Crooker’s collections are remarkable for their unity; their poems, epigraphs, even covers have a thematic thrust that collects and directs the work, making each a coherent work of art.... Reading the work from beginning to end provides an experience of Crooker’s world, that place of work and sadness balanced by art and love. It also provides vignettes of growing up in the fifties and sixties and shows what it was like to come of age as a woman in those years—the expectations, the hopes, the barriers that had to be overcome. Even in poems of loss, the energy persists, giving us the sense that Crooker is truly in the current of life, feeling its verve—what Wallace Stevens called ‘the intensity of love’ that he identified with ‘the verve of earth.’”

 

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All the Babble of the Souk
by
Robin Ouzman Hislop


Click book image to visit the Amazon page

Poet Robin Ouzman Hislop’s first full-length collection, All the Babble of the Souk, is appropriately titled. With a remarkably consistent ear for the market’s noise, for “[t]he broken lights of the bazaar/spangled] with glistening promise/in the eyes of the dusky beggar …” (Laminations in Lacquer ) Hislop’s poems, many of them cinematic-style montages of sounds and images, show us the metaphoric souk of the world, on the beach or in the street, its glitter, its sadness, its ragtag glory:

“pets, flower pots framed captive in a moment 
outside the house of the painter, a robot
in chains with an alms bowl”
(“Departures”) ...Read more of this review by poet Miriam C. Jacobs

More Reviews for this book:

 Aquillrelle. Press Release. All the Babble of the Souk

Richard Vallance Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Reviewed by Marie Marshall All the Babble of the Souk

Richard Lloyd Cederberg Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Adam Levon Brown Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Further comments and reviews on Motherbird

 

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 FEATURED VIDEOS



 Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek - For Jim Morrison 

 

 

Janet Caldwell - Dancing Toward the Light

 

 

 
Nordette Adams - The Green Green Grass

 

 


 Sara Russell - The Obsessive Parts 1 and 2

 

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