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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

joybragi84

New Pictures: Don't Have Any New Writings


Anyway, it has been a very busy week. Summer term I at ASUMH ended on Wednesday, so I had a deluge of grading Monday, Tuesday, and the first half of Wednesday. Kellie's sister Diane and family came up on Thursday, and we spent a day on the lake at Horseshoe Bend Friday and Saturday exploring the countryside around Eminence, MO. The picture above is of the Alley Spring Mill from the opposite side of the spring. I have posted pictures in this blog that Kellie and I took of Alley Spring earlier this year. When we were there, the mill was closed, and some trails were closed. Yesterday, the trails were open, and a ranger was stationed inside the mill so that anybody could go in and explore. It is a neat place for a short visit. There is not much to do at that spot for a day, but it is nice to look around.

That is my excuse for not writing anything this week.

I won't write next week either. I'll tell you why later.


This picture is of the sky and the trees reflected in the swirl of water at the spring pour off. It is like a warped reality.

Talking about warped reality--I got my fifth copy of The American Poetry Review today. I think that, as an educator, I got a year's subscription to the publication at a very low price. I sure hope that I did because every issue is the same. The poetry, if that is what they are going to insist on calling what is published on their pages, is the SOS (same old sh*t) extremely personal, psycho babble, diary-entry crap that makes absolutely NOBODY want to read poetry. I read some lines and went, "That is an interesting way to say that." I also thought a time or two, "I like the idea. I may explore that myself sometime." I groaned, "Ugh!" more than a few times.

What I never did wonder was this, "What would that sound like if I read it aloud?" I never thought, "That is something that will stick with me because it is memorable." And--Truly, truly, there was never a smidgen of an instance when I had an experience that goes something like, "Wow! I can't get that sound, that chorus, that rhythm, and music out of my head." I try to see this stuff written out in prose form to figure out if it was written purely in prose and not some randomly broken, almost verse-like, lines whether I would read it at all.

Nope! I'd just as soon read some random person's diary. It might be even more interesting if I knew the person. If this person knew something about me and wrote about me in her diary, that would be really interesting. BUT, it still would not be poetry!

Blah! The American Poetry Review is simply another collection of publishers trying to put their friends, colleagues, cohorts, and fellow workshop grads on the map. It is intellectually ignorant and incestuous drivel. I hope that this sensationalized criticism does not encourage you to read it.


Like most of you, I immediately thought this was a Monarch until I started looking closely at the picture. Then, I recognized the familiar swallowtail on the hindwings. I wasn't sure that a Swallowtail (Battus philenor) would have such a plain pattern, but this is probably one right out of the cocoon. Some of its spot pattern may not be developed yet. Yeah, I know, researching my own pictures again, what a nerd!

Well, I would feel bad without giving you some kind of poem here on the day before we celebrate out independence from Britain.

By the way, are we really independent from those Brits who mispronounce nearly every word on purpose? Seems like I spent two or three days a few weeks ago celebrating the reign of a queen who has absolutely nothing to do with me because it was everywhere on the TV and Internet. The British are coming! The British are coming! On Channel 10 at 5.

A poem! Let me go find one.

In this collection of short and unrevised songs, it appears that the third one has a bit about butterflies. Enjoy!

Some Nature Songs


I.

The sunbeams skitter through the mid-May shadows,

Flicker across the fusty forest floor,

Glimmer among the damp dewy meadows

And glare full force on the stream’s pebbly shore.


They skip like tip-toeing dancers

‘Cross the ripples ruffling the brook,

Scale the bluffs, lithe gilded prancers,

Luring wary-eyed creatures to look.


They are light at war with darkness,

Who abide no murky places,

Nature’s clarity and starkness,

Dappling all her empty spaces.


II.

The spring water murmurs;

Its cool echo shimmers,

Rustling the pale, tender leaves

Of woodoats growing in sheaves.


Above shadows of mossy stones,

Birch trees, like vertical bones,

Stiffen against absent wind

That will never tempt them to bend.


III.

Butterflies as brilliant as lucid dreams

Tickle the hairs of Bluestar blooms.

The Firestar’s crimson silently streams

Through a wash of wild plum perfumes.


IV.

Lonely fern nestled

In a mossy nook

Under a grey stone overhang

Where the sun’s sustaining beams

Are never seen,

How do you thrive?

How do you survive?

How do you stay so green?


V.

In the harmony of this moment,

Nature beats at a pulsing breast,

Recreating a serene savagery

In a mind like a lion at rest.


In the pleached darkness of closed eyes,

Brilliance dazzles the memory

And hears reverberating robin songs

‘Mid echoes of eternity.


Copperhead scales rasp on pebbles

As she scrapes ‘cross the forest floor.

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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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