As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth. ~ Boris Pasternak
Technorati Tags: Boris Pasternak,Myth Power & Truth
Saturday, August 08, 2009
We have a winner!
Mika proudly sports her first place ribbon (left) following her 1st place win in her first dock diving competition.
Mika is my daughter Shannon’s Malinios. Dock diving is not her only talent, as she has been trained to sniff out drugs.
Congrats to both Shannon and Mika!
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
In suit, ex-workers accuse Blackwater founder of murder | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com
In suit, ex-workers accuse Blackwater founder of murder
Posted to: Blackwater Military News
© August 4, 2009
Two men who worked for Blackwater allege in a federal lawsuit that Blackwater founder Erik Prince or his agents murdered one or more people who were planning to provide information to federal authorities about criminal conduct by the company and its operatives in Iraq.
The two are identified in court papers only as “John Doe #1” and “John Doe #2” because, they say, they fear violent retaliation themselves for making the allegations.
“John Doe #1” identifies himself as an honorably discharged U.S. Marine who joined Blackwater, the Moyock, N.C.-based private military company now known as Xe, and deployed to Iraq to guard State Department and other American government personnel.
In his sworn statement, he says he observed “multiple incidents of Blackwater personnel intentionally using unnecessary, excessive and unjustified deadly force.”
“John Doe #2” identifies himself as an American citizen who worked for Blackwater and affiliated companies for four years.
“On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince’s employ,” he says, “Mr. Prince’s management has personally threatened me with death and violence.
“In addition, based on information provided to me by former colleagues, it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct.”
In his statement, he says Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe. (click on link for entire article)
[these allegations are troubling but certainly I’ve not had a good feeling about Blackwater for a number of reasons. If this is true, it even dwarfs my already poor view of Blackwarter]
In suit, ex-workers accuse Blackwater founder of murder | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com
Thought for the day….
“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
Monday, August 03, 2009
This and That
Sometimes I think constraint writing must be when my mind is drawing a big goose egg when I’m trying to write. Of course this isn’t what is generally considered as constraint writing. Janet Holmes has an interesting comparison between the twitter of today and the telegraph messaging of the 19th century. Check it out on Humanophone 2.0
Copy of The Philosopher’s Club came in from an Intra-library loan program. This is an out of print book that I need for later this month. It’s out of print & only was published in hardback used copies are running between $37 - $120 so I was fortunate to be able to come up with it in time. It’s the first book of Kim Addonizio who is an awesome poet.
I must confess that as I’m writing this I’m watching Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D List. She is so outrageously riotous. Ok, I really should be writing.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Disordering as a positive attribute…
“The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences.” ~ Arthur Rimbaud
Friday, July 31, 2009
Finishing off July
Oh what a week! I won’t go into the long and the short of my week, but I will say that it seemed more of the former.
Outside of my own immediate personal space the week has truly been something else.
- Governor Sarah Palin took on a new direction as a private citizen with a not so private involuntary collaborative poetry production with none other than William Shatner. Then her Twitter went dark.
- We’ve seen the birther conspiracy theorists raise their voices in a crescendo of… well, I think they really speak for themselves.
- There was a beer summit held at the White House.
- Major League baseball teams played their annual musical chairs as the trade deadline came and went.
- July had the highest death toll for US troops in Afghanistan since the war began nearly eight years ago, and the lowest death toll in Iraq since that war began six years ago.
Looking for a weekend of productive writing and less insanity.
become enveloped in art
Those four words underscore the advice offered by Tara Jepson writing on writing for Examiner.com. This was an accidental discovery but one I wanted to share with readers because it certainly demonstrates an opportunity for all of us who write.
If I could reduce this article to simplest terms it would be realizing that “art begets art.” Perhaps not a novel idea but sometimes when we are struggling with where to go in our work we often overlook some of the best opportunities for prompts and sources of inspiration… the art of others. Article Here
Technorati Tags: enveloped in art,Tata Jepson
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Shatner to a Beat Poetry on Palin’s Weird Farewell
If you haven’t seen this, check it out. William Shatner cracks me up here.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Thunderstorms and Poetry
Reading today from Gary Snyder's Danger on Peaks and Naomi Shihab Nye's Fuel. Two very different writing styles. Both poets however lean heavily on personal experiences.
There’s a thunderstorm moving into the area tonight. I must confess that at times I enjoy just crawling into bed and listening to them unfold from the distant rumbling and slowly move closer until I can feel we are in the eye of the storm. Of course I say that with some light heartedness as being in the mid-west we can have quite violent storms. Still, it’s just one of many fascinating aspects of nature that one sometimes gets sucked into. As a poet you have love the various languages in which nature speaks to us.
Well, I’m off to bed… with book in hand. Let it rain.
Technorati Tags: poetry in nature
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Bringing prairie to the city & the mind
Trip to library today, picked up some poetry books to read, and a novel. I don’t often read fiction these days, but I thought I’d get something light to do recreational reading. Poetry really doesn't quite fit that bill for me though I do often really enjoy reading poetry, but I generally consider it more a act of academic endeavor.
After the library I made a stop at a nearby track in the heart of the city where a natural prairie environment has been recreated. I got a good exercise walk in then went back around a captured some pictures.
Funny, this make me think of Emily Dickinson writing on the topic of prairie: “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, / One clover, and a bee. / And revery. / The revery alone will do, / If bees are few.”
Technorati Tags: prairie in the city,Emily Dickinson
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Fantasy Tour Update
As the Tour de France is coming to a close – One more day till it’s history…. The latest fantasy team challenge between my daughter and I:
- Team Poetry –914
- DieuxVelo – 400
*Note to daughter – this is purely informational and not bragging.
Friday, July 24, 2009
This thing
This thing you call success
is holed up in the laundry room
attached to black hoses
on life support
is holed up in the laundry room
attached to black hoses
on life support
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Poetry Prize Shortlist
The Forward Prizes were founded in 1992 to raise the profile of contemporary poetry – and annual award that carries a £10,000 prize. The shortlist is out and a final announcement of the winner will come in October. The list follows:
- Glyn Maxwell - Hide Now
- Sharon Olds - One Secret Thing
- Don Paterson – Rain
- Peter Porter- Better than God
- Christopher Reid - A Scattering
- Hugo Williams - West End Final
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
A few powerful lines
I was reading an essay yesterday by Joyce Carol Oats in which Oats offers that confessional poetry has been replaced with what might be called the memoir of crisis. I find interesting her supposition that current literary culture is obsessed with memoirs. Getting into the meat of the essay I was taken by surprise at her mention of Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face. I read this book a number of years back as well and her second book, As Seen on Television and found her to be a an exceedingly talented writer. What really took me by surprise was the mention of her death. For some reason this was totally off my radar. I had not knowledge whatsoever.
Grealy’s first book was a memoir of the sad and tragic life – a victim at an early age of a rare form of cancer of the Jaw, she was greatly disfigured through the illness and subsequent multiple surgical procedures. But for all that the young girl endured, her candor and ability to express herself was a gift to all who read her words.
Lucy Grealy was also a poet, and after reading her second book I went looking for any poetry I could find published. My efforts at the time fell short. I could find nothing. Today I was able to locate two lines attributed to her. They are profound. Somewhere there must be other gems.
“When I dream of fire / you’re still the one I’d save / though I’ve come to think of myself / as the flames, the splintering rafters.” - Lucy Grealy
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
A Whose Who of Literary Magazines
Every Writer’s Resource has put out a list of the top 50 Literary Magazines. I’m sure it will likely have some additions or omissions from any list that you or I would compile. I’m not posting it for the sake of debate, but rather because it’s generally not a bad list and may be worthwhile to look at and see what publications you’ve perhaps missed and might find worthy of looking into further.
Technorati Tags: 50 Literary Magazines,Every Writers Resource
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Remembering Cronkite
The passing yesterday of Walter Cronkite is a monumental loss. I grew up on Walter Cronkite. He was a staple for many Americans in a time when the nightly news was designed to inform not entertain. Cronkite was the consummate journalist. He set a standard which for several decades that epitomized news reporting. When I think of Cronkite there are a series of historic benchmarks that he is indelibly connected to.
- The assassination of President John F. Kennedy and shooting of Jack Ruby
- The assassination of Martin Luther King
- The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
- Reporting of the Vietnam War
- The 1968 and 72 Presidential campaigns – especially the nominating conventions
- The landing of Apollo 11 on the moon
For some time now I have lamented the passing of the high standards of reporting which Walter Cronkite championed. The last decade has seen a an alarming shift in the delivery of news. Cable news has created an ala cart variety of reporting, complete with attempting to not only report facts, but filter the facts and present them in such a way as to do our thinking for us. This has taken place over the years since Cronkite’s retirement. His peers too have moved on and the advent of cable news networks has given us greater speed in news delivery but we’ve sacrificed something significant in the process.
Cronkite’s passing only serves to remind us that while he is gone physically, his work ethic has been missing for some time.
I suppose it is worth mentioning that his death only reminds those of my age how real mortality is when someone who was an American icon for much of one’s adult life is gone.
Technorati Tags: Walter Cronkite,news journalism
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
A New Project Idea
I was listening to an NPR story this morning (big surprise) about a visual artist and I was struck with an idea for a new poetry project.
It struck me that everyone's handwriting could be seen as an artistic expression. While we have a generally recognized alphabet that makes up our language, each of us has a personalized rendition of each letter. While our handwriting may follow a generally recognized formula we, like any artist have our own flair that distinguishes our writing.
In this age when letter writing is almost a lost art, and we see written communications mostly in printed text format, I thought it would be interesting to collect a number of samples of handwriting from different individuals and treat them as though they were each individual pieces of artwork. I would then select four or five of these and write a poetic expression of what the artwork speaks to me. I don't mean the words but rather the lines on the page. This would not be really any different then writing a poem inspired by a painting or a picture.
Anyway, if anyone is interested it contributing a few paragraphs of handwriting sample for the cause, e-mail me at poet@michaelawells.com
Technorati Tags: poetry and handwriting as art,new poetry project
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Foreign Policy: Iran's Terrifying Facebook Police : NPR
This NPR Story highlights the problem that the exchange of information represents in a country under a totalitarian government. Information is a threat to established power in Iran. Information in and information out. But as you can see from this story, instead of shutting down that pipeline altogether, they are using it to identify those in their country that they feel represent the biggest threat to their power.
There are stories that are making the rounds of arrests and even executions in Iran by the government of those who are considered in opposition the those in power. If even a portion of these stories that are getting out on Iran are correct, this is a terrifying time and an affront of humanity in Iran. I believe history will judge this government harshly.
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