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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

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Blog Fatigue and The Sermon of the Hound


Anyway, who would have thought that writing three or four hundred words a week in a blog would be so difficult after only a few weeks? Not me, that is who. I have to say that it is not my top priority at the moment. Besides my real job, where we have a Higher Learning Commission team visiting tomorrow and where I had 49 writing assignments to grade over the weekend, I have been doing the first edit of my novel The Doll. Let me tell you editing a 249-page (so far) story is not like editing a poem. I actually enjoy editing and revising a poem because I can see the results right there in front of me. As I was editing in Chapter 33 of the book last night, I called a hound dog by one gender or the other, and I thought, “Did I call that hound dog 'he' or 'she' back a couple of chapters ago?” I had to look because I could not remember and it is not on the same page or even the previous page. Editing a long narrative is boring and trying—and then I also have to realize that I may have to do it again three or four times.

So, speaking about hound dogs, here is Part III of a poem from the new book of poetry Atheists and Empty Spaces. The poem is called The Buzz Revisited Again. Part III is entitled The Sermon of the Hound. It is modeled after Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Buddha’s Fire Sermon, and T. S. Eliot’s The Fire Sermon section in his seminal poem The Wasteland. I guess that information is in the footnote from the book. I didn’t know it would copy and paste with the text. Hmm…Enjoy.


Part III. The Sermon of the Hound [i]

(We are the dogs that feed on the crumbs.)


Blessed be the trickle of the stream o’er rocks

And the many lusty scents ‘round the pool.

Blessed be the running sheets of morning fog

In the breezes above the squirming trees.

Blessed be the silent one holding his bay

At the senseless chatter of clownish squirrels.

Blessed be the hunt.


The hound does not come before the Master,

Yet he sends me ahead to see what’s there.

When I say, “Come! It’s here!” sometimes he does,

But he often whistles me back to him.

He knows that I would chase the faintest scent

To hell ‘cause I keep my nose to the ground.


I do not worry for my meals.

I hunt, and the master feeds me.

If I do not hunt, the master feeds me.


I carry his commands close to my heart:

1. Come.

2. Stay.

3. Go.

4. No.

5. Sit.

6. Hush.

7. Get in.

8. Get out.

9. Fetch.

10. Give.

But greater than all commands is “Listen.”


The master’s gentle hand upon my head

Is better than a cool drink of water.

The master’s pleased voice in my happy ears

Is better than a warm, lumpy gravy.

The safe and playful shouts of his children

Are better than a meaty shoulder bone.

To run and hear his firm footsteps follow

Is better than a day of sunny sleep.


The coyotes sing of masters long gone.

My master is the glory of my song

And shall not be forgotten while I breathe.


I sing:

Blessed be the one who does his master’s will.

Blessed be the hunt.

Blessed be the essence of our worthy prey.

Blessed be the running buzz of quick spirits,

The wind in my face, the sun on my back.

Blessed be the master first and, then, his hound.

[i] Calling to mind The Fire Sermon from Eliot’s The Wasteland and the Fire Sermon of Buddha, my “sermon” imitates Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from Matthew Chapter 5. The picture is of our puppy Luna, a mountain cur, who looks about as excited as I am about continuing the editing of the novel. Of course, lying on the couch is pretty much how she likes to spend her days even though she looks bored. Kellie took this picture.


The picture is of our puppy Luna, a mountain cur, who looks about as excited as I am about continuing the editing of the novel. Of course, lying on the couch is pretty much how she likes to spend her days even though she looks bored. Kellie took this picture.

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I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head to point and drapery.-S. T. Coleridge

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats

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