Nature

Nature

Light rains on stones
Moss hides in the northern shadows
A trickle of assembled wetness tears up
Rolling down the rocks of solitude
The air in our midst circulated
By Sunday morning church fans
We pause to applaud
And continue on

Awakening

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

~Carl Jung

When the name Naomi Shihab Nye comes up at one of the meetings of our local chapter of the Missouri Poetry Society, eyes around the room generally light up. In fact there is quite possibly no other living poet who invokes such universal positive response. Oh we all have our favorites and what I like, another may not be so fond of. I think most of us have at one time or another seen Ney in person and the gentle qualities of this woman are remarkably contagious.

Ney is a person who is not only at peace with herself, she is at peace with the world. She describes herself as a wandering poet and she has traveled extensively. She has ties to Missouri but most recently has been living in Texas where she works with children in elementary schools. Her heritage is a mixture American and Middle Eastern ancestry, which brings a unique perspective to her view of the world and her writing as well.

Regis Behe writing in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article relates how Nye sees her mission as allowing everyone to experience poetry and to counter the myth that it is elitist or the province of intellectuals. She wants others to awaken their own poetry and to remember language can be very sustaining even when you feel very alone.

Anniversary

Anniversary

The odometer of fallen, rolls onward
Over too familiar terrain.
A merry-go-round insanity
Propelled by stubborn indignity,
Denials-
Capitulating nothing
While eating our young.

Recommended Reading

Dana Guthrie Martin is one of those people who's simply magical in her word choices. She has a poem in the latest Boxcar Poetry Review.

Another poet I have come to appreciate recently is Jayne Pupek and she's in Stirring this issue.

With that, I'll serve up a W. S. Merwin quote, since he is yet another poet I that elicits strong feelings:

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to all!

The rain falls steady this morning on the downtown Kansas City area and is forecast to for much of the day. The Irish community in this town hosts on of the three biggest St. Patrick's Day parades in the United States so obviously one must wonder what the wee-little green people did this year to upset the Mother Nature.
Still, it takes a lot more than rain to dampen the Irish on this day. Hell, after a few beers, many won't even know they are wet.

And with that, I close with a couple of thoughts for this great green day....

• "Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat." -- Alex Levine
• "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever." -- Sigmund Freud (about the Irish)

Another Journal Bites the Dust

Sunday evening and I am bemoaning the near end of the weekend. I think mostly because last week seemed like five Mondays in a row. I anticipate this week being pretty busy too It seems my caseload at work has risen with no consideration for my already significant commitments. There should be laws against such things.

Oh, before I forget... Happy Birthday to Ivy - She's 34 according to her own account. My God, I barely remember 34.

There are lots of sirens very nearby - I presume by both the sound and the numbers they are fire trucks. We don't hear them out here as often as back in the city. Certainly not a cluster of so many at once. Certainly makes one pause with some prayerful thoughts. The dogs too seem unnerved by the sound.

I am about to finish filling up yet another journal. This latest one was started on September 29th, 2007 and having only like two pages left, I'll likely finish this one off yet tonight. I was looking back at some of my work in the previous journal recently. It always seems to feel a bit peculiar looking at things you've written in the past. Since many of my drafts start in their crudest form in the journal before subsequent revisions make it to the computer it can be an eye opener sometimes reading these things. You just have to wonder where your mind was sometimes.

My side bar so badly needs changes. For one thing, the blog listings is so outdated. There are several on there I used to read but don't any longer because... well, mostly because some of them haven't been updated since middle of last year. It's time for those to come down. Also, there are a few more worthwhile blogs that I try to catch on s somewhat routine basis. Also, if you have linked to Stickpoet and I've not reciprocated, drop me a note so you can be added.

I'll close tonight with these words from John Steinbeck... "I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."

Looking for Genius?

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

~ E. B. White