Do You, Like Me,... - These Things
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
- Nikola Tesla
Well and so have you found yourself on websites recently that literally are only a list of Overly Descriptive Color Palettes or reading yet another “A working from home manual in disguise” article by someone who has been working from home for eight years and finally come to the conclusion that it really is ok to “Stop Trying to be Productive”? Or was that last week? Do you know that my dad is a pianist and is uploading short videos of him playing hymns...every day! Do you know all you need is a GMail account to upload your story, your whatever-it-is-that-you-might-want-to-share, to YouTube? Are your emotions swinging? Is it this wondrous strange lunar cycle or something else? Have you ever tried meditation? What about meditation that radiates the energy of the sun for healing? Do you know that it’s a great time of year to prune your fruit trees (if you live in Idaho (Jennifer has details, I’m not the gardener but I love dirt on a bicycle))? What music have you been listening to? What is it about Arvo Part’s “Sanctuary” album that calms and focuses me all the way through? Why is April National Poetry Month? Is it because T.S. Elliot opens his fantastic poem (if you’re into that sort of thing (“Nobody should experience anything they don’t need to, if they don’t need poetry bully for them.“ - Frank O’Hara, poet)) “The Wasteland” with:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire...
Do you know I’ve been recording and making video poems every day since April? If you’re in to poetry, do you know that if you click on the links below you can experience some?
Afterlife: Without Apples - poem by Susanna Mishler (coming soon)
I Hear America Singing - This is one of my favorite poems ever because Walt Whitman is so in love with the people of America and celebrates that we each have our song to sing.
It Happens Like This - James Tate is a neo-surrealist of sorts who combines folklore, religious symbology, and personal logic in ways that make me feel like I know what he’s talking about in his poems...until I think about them. Oh, and there’s a goat in the poem named “Prince of Peace.” See what I mean?
The Active Reader - Bob Hicok wonders about the book he’s reading, where other people have read the same book, and “is reading a sexual act, is there congress / between the text and my gaze, is there no mirror left me but words”?
That Is All, Louise Said, Except For - Mary Jo Bang is vast in her love of art but “Louise in Love,” a novel in verse, is playfully intelligent and I love this collection of poems.
My Noiseless Entourage - Charles Simic, another prose poet (poems written in paragraphs, not “lines”), has an amazing imagination in his personal folkloric style. He’s the first poet to win the Pulitzer Prize for a book of prose poems.
The Wheelbarrow - Russell Edson is a neo-surrealist and fabulist and, almost exclusively, a prose poet. He, Tate, and Simic are similar in age and style but Edson is very unique. “The Wheelbarrow” obviously comments on the famous Williams Carlos Williams poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow” and maybe wonders to what lengths do people go to to have the thing they think they need. Oh, and a farmer makes a wheelbarrow out of a cow.
There Is a Balm in Gilead - This is a beautiful poem by Charles Wright.
To Hold - Li-Young Lee is may be my favorite poet...no, I can’t say that, but this is a beautiful love poem.
Dear friends,
Jeff O.