Monday 30 January 2017

Sister Publication to Poetry Life & Times

Issue of February 2017


Welcome back
Jan Sand; poet, cartoonist & satirist



Originally a New Yorker, Jan Sand now lives in Helsinki, Finland. Jan was one of the first poets ever to appear in Poetry Life & Times, after its founder, Sara Russell, discovered his poetry on a newsgroup called alt.arts.poetry.comments.  He became a regular contributor during the first years of Poetry Life & Times, including poetry and cartoons. He sent us a data stick of his more recent work in December 2016, rich with poetry and artwork, so now we are delighted to be able to introduce Jan's works to a new generation of readers.


   RECIPE FOR A WORLD

Let there be light, of course.
But darkness too,
Where the planet's shoulder
Shrugs away the fury of the Sun
To permit the Moon's cool eye
To hold court over her coterie of stars.
The world itself, a ball of rock
Holding in its tight fist
A nugget of molten nickel iron
Must wear a simple veil of seas.
Galaxies of shining fish
Should swirl through this salty soup
And, lightly sown throughout its blue ambience,
Monsters of tentacles and teeth must roam
To teach death to life and give it value.
Across dry land multitudes of green eyes
Must drink the sun
And give its lessons to the air,
To the water and the soil
That they also may learn to feel time and life.
Within the tangle of the trees,
Through the mesh of roots.
Above, the luxury of the plants,
The empire of the animals
Must consume, conflict, conquer and cooperate
With wonders of terror, understanding and delight.
All this turmoil must act and react
To confront, oppose, cancel and,
In finality,
Reach the balance of equilibrium.


Eve and the Snake, by Jan Sand



RAGGED MAGIC  

He appeared
Tall and thin.
Tall and thin with a grin.
An ironic smile, with guile
To permit an opening. Friendly enough
So that approach might coach
In anticipation a reciprocal
Appreciation. 

I saw him in the subway station.
No one else about.
In this city late at night he might,
Considering his dress
Evoke panic, shouts, distress.
But no.
He seemed harmless enough
Made of funny friendly stuff. 

Hello, he said. Shook his head.
“Sorry about those.” Indicated ragged clothes.
“I am, in this moment, at these dates,
In dire financial straits.”
“I am”, one eyebrow rose, “a magic man.”
He pinched his nose. “I can produce wonders.”
He curled his thumb, touched his chin
To indicate he would begin.
I heard distant thunders. 

“Watch!”, he said, and a red
Balloon popped out from his palm.
Without a qualm he twitched his nose.
The balloon arose.
But on his toes he poked the thing.
It sprouted, first, one wing, then another.
Tweeted. Then flew down the tunnel.
“Look!”, he cried, produced a funnel, out from which
Poured golden streams. He grinned and from his eyes
Sprang glowing gleams. I leaped back.
With a “crack!” he shook his beard
And disappeared! 

I peered behind a nearby post.
There he stood, most delighted
At my surprise.
He winked his eyes.
I wished him luck.
Gave him a buck.

" Conflict" by Jan Sand


VERNAL PROCESS 
The cold is gone,
The Spring's begun
And life begins to spill from time
In green cascades. 
Miniscule eagernesses
Coalesce from rain and air
To gobble up the energies
Pouring down from the sun
To fabricate life's brocade. 
So now the killing must begin
As tooth and beak ply to their trade
To swallow down the newborn hopes,
Divert their purposes unmade.
Elemental shapes reform to new sophisticated norms
Which rise in waves of ceaseless change,
Anticipating to arrange
The modules of the living things
To patterns of both death and hope
In this grim kaleidoscope.








--------------✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿--------------

Also welcome back: Jim Dunlap







The Politics of Verisimilitude. A Villanelle Poem by Jim Dunlap.
Posted at Poetry Life & Times on


An ill-thought-out statement can pack quite a punch,
So it’s best to be careful while speaking:
What you say at breakfast … can eat you for lunch. *

A bare-knuckle sandwich might be what you munch
If your words cause inordinate ‘freaking’:
An ill-thought-out statement can pack quite a punch.

Unwelcome visitors might join you for brunch
If bad thoughts from your mouth exit streaking:
What you say at breakfast … can eat you for lunch.

The state of the world, at last forced to the crunch,
Throws a stench that’s quite powerfully reeking:
What you eat for breakfast may inconvenience your lunch.

Of the species on earth, we’re the worst of the bunch,
And we’ll likely not find what we’re seeking:
Mother Nature could just simply CANCEL our lunch.

No ‘bang’ and no ‘whimper’ can make such a scrunch
As the blast where the fuel line was leaking.
An ill-thought-out statement can pack quite a punch:
What you mis-said at breakfast … can eat you for lunch.


Snipping the Threads 
from The Hypertexts by Jim Dunlap 

Talking to you yesterday, I realized
that love never really dies, at all ...
and that, although you empathized,
you’ve moved on, far beyond recall ...
while I’ve kept the embers fanned,
and still see you in nightly dreams.
The chasm truly can’t be spanned,
nor time embroidered at the seams.
We’re rather different people now,
though to me it seems just yesterday.
Our last goodbye became a vow,
and your black and white, my gray.
I've gathered threads I cannot sever:
see you on the far side of forever.



Jim Dunlap's poetry has been published extensively in print and online in the United States, England, France, India, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand. His work has appeared in over 90 publications, including Potpourri, Candelabrum, Mobius and the Paris/Atlantic. He is the co-editor of Sonnetto Poesia and and is serving as co-editor of a new sonnet anthology currently in production, The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. He is also the chief proofreader for the On Viewless Wings Anthologies, published out of Queensland, Australia. In the past, he was a resident poet on Poetry Life & Times and the newsletter editor for seven years with the Des Moines Area Writers' Network. You can download an e-book of his poems, The Spirit of Christmas in Poetry, by clicking on the hyperlinked title.
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jim%20Dunlap%20Poet%20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.htm


Homepage: http://mindfulofpoetry.homestead.com/index.html


www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com





--------------✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿--------------



And the welcome return of: Richard Vallance ...

Sappho Ode. The Moon Has Set The Pleiades. Translations Richard Vallance.


Richard Vallance, meta-linguist, ancient Greek & Mycenaean Linear B, home page: Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae, http://linearbknossosmycenae.wordpress.com/
Also previously wrote The Vallance Review for Poetry Life & Times in the 1990's

--------------✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿--------------


FEATURED BOOKS



Fault Lines is a poetry collection that examines the disconnect, the unchallenged chaos, and the possible downfall of humanity.

‘Thoughtful, densely rich poems.’ Archers Crown Magazine

‘Excellent, chilling, sobering. Great work.’ – Six Sentences Magazine
One of the poems was a Pushcart Prize nominee by Nazar Look Magazine

Fault Lines.Gary Beck. Amazon.Com




--------------✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿--------------



100 Thousand Poets for Change
Leeds 2016



Since 2011, 100 Thousand Poets for Change has been working with poets, writers, artists, musicians… to help organize events around the world for peace, justice and sustainability. Now, more than ever mobilization is crucial so we have created the GLOBAL ACTION CALENDAR open to EVERYONE to post Creative Actions around the world.
 Editor’s Note:On January 14th 2017 at the Inkwell Arts Centre Leeds UK Transforming with Poetry presented this collection of poems by local Leed’s poets & contributors
editited by Tony Martin-Woods & Siobhan Mac Mahon. Their Editor’s preface scrolled down provides further elucidation on the purposes & intentions of this compilation of poets’ works. Once opened simply simply access the enlarge monitor on the bottom bar & follow the forward arrows throughout. 
   


Click the image to find out more about this anthology




--------------✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿--------------


Barbara Crooker: Les Fauves
(Paperback) Released on 15th January 2017

on amazon.com




Les Fauves is, as the title suggests, a collection of ekphrastic poetry, meditations on paintings from the Fauve and Post-Impressionist movements. But it also contains poetry’s equivalent to Fauvism, poems that take a walk on the wild side. There are language experiment poems, poems of word play, poems in form both usual (end rhymes, sonnets, ghazals) and unusual (abecedaries, traditional, embedded, and double helix), palindromes, anagrams, and word scrambles. Crazy word salad poems. Crooker’s subjects range widely, from living and working in a small village in the South of France, love in a long-term relationship, food as more than sustenance, faith in a secular age, grammar and usage, the pains and pleasures of the aging body. But always, what engages her most is what it means to be human on this fragile planet, at this time in our troubled history, still believing that “Beauty will save the world.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky).


--------------✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿--------------

All the Babble of the Souk 
by
 Robin Ouzman Hislop



Click book image to visit the seller's page at lulu.com

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





Janet Kuypers reads 3 life & death poems at Georgetown's "Poetry Aloud" open mic event on 21st January 2017





Madrid 1973; by Guadalupe Grande, 2013
Original Translation Amparo Arrospide & Robin Ouzman Hislop




The Lammas Hireling, by Ian Duhig




Tara Bergin reads "At the Lakes With Roberta"



You Tube Video Poets. Sara L Russell.



Meet Sara Russell she is Editor of the monthly Poetry Lifetimes Blog our plan at Poetry Life & Times is to make a YouTube Poetry Documentary with Sara as it’s Editor, submissions or for more info contact Robin@Artvilla.com for sample videos check this site or see our Facebook page www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes







No comments:

Post a Comment