Category: Poetry

This Book of Daniel Is Not in the Bible

5/1/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
One reason to fashion a story is to lift a grudge.
Bobbie Ann Mason
Born May 1, 1940

B. Mason

My Book World

Smith, Aaron. The Book of Daniel: Poems. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh, 2019.

This poet's persona clearly has a crush on actor Daniel Craig and cleverly weaves together nearly fifty poems with pop culture in mind. A couple deal directly with our eponymous persona, Daniel, but many cover other icons. In “I Need My O’Hara Frank” he idolizes other poets:

I Need Sharons:

Tate and Olds,
but mostly Olds,

and never, ever
the Rose of.

In “Celebrity,” he, stream-of-conscious style, connects the deaths of various celebs with himself:

Anne Sexton died in 1974, the year I was born.
Thomas James died in 1974 and was born
in Joliet, Illinois, where I was born. He wrote
Letters to a Stranger before he killed himself.
I’ve written three books few people read
and wanted to kill myself. He was 27 like
Joplin Hendrix Morrison Cobain.

In the title poem, the persona levels with readers about Daniel Craig:

I made a Daniel Craig scrapbook
called The Book of Daniel. For years I bought
every magazine with him on the cover. In Interview
he’s stripped to the waist, hopping around on the beach.
Jamie Dornan was in Interview, too: arms behind his
head in a bathtub. I fell in love with Daniel Craig
when he was stalked by a man in Enduring Love--
before he was Bond-hot and too famous.

I rarely read a book of poetry in one sitting. To me, that’s like eating an entire box of chocolates in thirty minutes or less (which I’ve never done but know better than to try). Yet I found myself turning page after page, getting Smith's poetry when often I do not get what a poet wants me to. And when I was finished, it may also be the only book of poetry I turned around and read all the way through again. There.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Anthony Walton's Mississippi: An American Journey

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A Writer's Wit

1/22/2019

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No man,
Til thirty, should perceive there’s a
plain woman.

Lord Byron
Born January 22, 1788

Byron

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-38 Maine

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Bullets to Bells: a Powerful Collection of Poems

9/28/2018

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A WRITER'S WIT
When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
Stephen Spender
Born September 28, 1909

S. Spender

My Book World

Clements, Brian, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader, eds., with an introduction by Colum McCann. Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Boston: Beacon, 2017.

There would nothing wrong with presenting a book-length collection of anti-gun poetry by itself, but Bullets into Bells increases its power by pairing each poem with a response written by a person who has been deeply affected by such violence. Note the eloquence of these lines from “Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World,” by poet, Martín Espada.

Now the bells speak with their tongues of bronze.
Now the bells open their mouths of bronze to say:
Listen to the bells a world away.Listen to the bell in the ruins
of a city where children gathered copper shells like beach glass,
and the copper boiled in the foundry, and the bell born
in the foundry says: I was born of bullets, but now I sing
of a world where bullets melt into bells. Listen to the bell
in a city where cannons from the armies of the Great War
sank into molten metal bubbling like a vat of chocolate,
and the many mouths that once spoke the tongue of smoke
form the one mouth of a bell that says: I was born of cannons,
but now I sing of a world where cannons melt into bells (53-4).

Or feel the biting irony of this response by Dan Gross to “The Gun Joke” by Jamaal May.

I’ve got another one:
A Republican hunter who loves guns and a Democrat city slicker who doesn’t are sitting at the local watering hole somewhere in rural America. The bartender, with a warped sense of humor, brings up “gun control” and sits back to watch the sparks fly—and initially they do. Then, as the two get to talking, they realize they actually agree much more than they disagree, especially about expanding Brady background checks to keep guns out of the hands of people they both agree shouldn’t have them, like criminals, domestic abusers, people who are dangerously mentally ill, and terrorists. Then a Congressperson walks into the bar, and the two citizens excitedly share their breakthrough, “Hey, Congressman, guess what! Turns out we’ve found a solution to gun violence that everyone agrees on and will save lives!” The Congressman responds, “Sorry guys, doesn’t matter. The gun industry is paying my tab.”
OK, so this one’s not funny either. But you know what would at least be fun? Imagine if we could write a new ending where the Republican and the Democrat get outraged, decide to say #ENOUGH and to hold this Congressman accountable for placing the interests of the gun industry ahead of our safety. Then, in two years, that Congressman is out of a job and needs to buy his own drinks. That’s the kind of real change that we all can make through our activism (116).

There are too many fine poems and too many strong responses to them to list here. Just buy the book and READ them for yourselves. Words alone may not solve this problem of gun violence but they can certainly articulate its many problems.

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-25 Michigan — October 17, 2018

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My Journey of States-24 Arizona

9/26/2018

A WRITER'S WIT
As gun owners, my husband and I understand that the Second Amendment is most at risk when a criminal or deranged person commits a gun crime. These acts only embolden those who oppose gun ownership. Promoting responsible gun laws protects the Second Amendment and reduces lives lost from guns.
Gabrielle Giffords
Born June 8, 1970 Tucson, Arizona

G. Giffords

MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the twenty-fourth post of fifty.

ARIZONA (1975, 1993, 2004, 2017)

I first made it to Arizona when, in 1975, I accompanied a couple of friends who wanted to drive to Phoenix from Lubbock. It was in June, and while Texas is certainly hot at that time of the year, it has nothing on Phoenix. One evening, as the sun went down and the temperature fell to 102°, someone was heard to say that it was nice that things had cooled off. Anyway . . . we spent a great deal of time either in a pool or inside bars with AC.

The second time I visited the state was in 1993, when I drove my mother and father out to visit my mother’s sister, who lived in Mesa. Again, June. Again, hot! I met two of Mother’s cousins, and when we all sat in a circle in one cousin’s living room, Mother looked more at home than I’d seen her in years, more genteel, more loquacious. She was at home! We visited a friend, an interior designer who’d bought an old adobe home and was remodeling it. Dinner with him was a respite from hauling the folks around.

R. Jespers, Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona — 2004

Ken and I visited Arizona again in 2004, staying with a cousin from my father’s side of the family, as well as working in a visit with my late mother’s cousin, whose wife and he greeted us with great hospitality, a meal, and a jar of preserves.

From Our Hotel Room, Gilbert, Arizona — 2017

In 2017, I visited my aunt who lives in Mesa, eighty-six at the time. She called together all my cousins, one of whom I hadn’t seen since we were children (see below). More of my family resides in Arizona than any other state in the union.

Jespers and Summers Cousins with Grandma & Grandpa Richards —1960

HISTORICAL POSTCARDS & Trunk Decals

If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link:
1-Kansas   13. New Jersey
2-Oklahoma   14. Delaware
3-Texas     15. New York
4-Louisiana     16. Connecticut
5-Missouri 17. Colorado
6-Illinois 18. Arkansas
7-Indiana   19. California
8-Ohio 20. Florida
9-Pennsylvania 21-Mississippi
10-West VA   22. New Mexico
11-Maryland 23. Tennessee
12. Virginia

NEXT TIME: My Book World | Bullets Into Bells

A Writer's Wit

9/25/2018

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I believe that if you don't want to do anything, then sit there and don't do it, but don't expect people to hand you a corn beef sandwich and wash your socks for you and unzip your fly for you.
Shel Silverstein
Born September 25, 1935

S. Silverstein

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-24 Arizona

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Orphans

12/4/2013

A WRITER'S WIT
I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage.
Joan Didion
Born December 5, 1934

Orphans

Somewhere in 1957 Ohio

My parents beg me to drive them
To the desert, almost a thousand miles
In three days.

“It may be the last time
I get to see Sis,” Dad says with Mom
Nodding, her tongue

Poised on her top lip—like my sister always did,
Plotting to change the channel when no one was looking.
“Daddy doesn’t see so good anymore,” says Mom,
“And I don’t drive at night.”

“Alrighty, then,” I say.

        The last day of touring--
        A string of bathroom stops
        Between Flagstaff and Phoenix--

        Leaves no time for pasta,
        Perhaps some poulet,
        So we stop at Burger King.

        Besides her Coke, Mother
        Now begs for a glass of water
        So she can gulp

        Seven small missiles for the arthritis
        Creating speckled claws
        That once cinched my Buster Browns.

        “But I want it with a lid,”
        She whines to my father,
        “So I can take it to the room.”

        She cocks her head like my sister always
        Did before grabbing the last drumstick.

One door and a breath away,
I snap the seal on a fifth of Chivas,
And I summon

A similar stop
At the Blue Ribbon Café
Somewhere in 1957 Ohio.

The fare was gold nuggets of shrimp
Which I relished
While others ravaged their chicken.

“Put a lid on your Coke
And we’ll take it with us,”
Mother had said, rolling
Her eyes as I bubbled the
Bottom with my straw.

That night
In an eight-dollar cabin
That shivered

When semis thundered by,
We all jammed into two beds:
Mom and Dad in one,

Three of us in another,
Arms and legs crossed like
Debris from chicken dinners.

My wayward fingers clipped
Nearby flesh with greasy pincers,
And my sister squealed betrayal.

“Don’t make me
Come over there, Nicholas,”
Mother snapped over dad’s snoring.

“I’ll whale you
Into the middle of next week,
I swear to Christ I will.”

I suppressed one last giggle
Like gas not passed
During communion, and I now

        Twiddle thumbs
        Over the steering wheel,
        Watching two old people

        Fiddle with that infernal lid,
        On their way out of a Burger King
        Somewhere in the desert.

        A strand of Mother’s hair whirls
        Like silver silk in the wind, and
        With head cocked to the sky,
        She might be ten. Again

        I sigh and ignite the engine
        As they fairly skip over to the car.

        Dad snaps the back door knob
        As I did at twelve—and they
        Clamber into my

        Rear view mirror,
        The children
        I never bargained for.

©Richard Jespers

TUESDAY, A STORY

Aloft

11/27/2013

A WRITER'S WIT
How do you know but ev'ry Bird that
cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd
by your senses five?
William Blake
Born November 28, 1757

Aloft

If you’ve ever seen a photo finish
of a man or woman running, you know
for a measly fraction of a second
the man or woman runner is airborne.

That, for me, is the entire glory
of running, not that of winning races.
All those airborne fractions of a second
add up to endless hours of flight.

If you could put all those moments
together, how far, imagine how far
you might fly. Could you see yourself on the
moon, or some equally desolate spot?

Running always makes you fit, but running
can make you creature to a kind of flight,
defying gravity right before your
very eyes in one last photo finish.

—Richard Jespers

Honors and Readings

11/17/2013

Ken Dixon at the Museum of South Texas

Dixon's Order & Disorder: "Maze"

For several decades Ken Dixon, visual artist, has provided exhibitions for the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, Texas. On Saturday, November 9, the museum honored all the artists who have contributed work to its permanent collection, an exhibition entitled "Forty Works for Forty Years." For more details click on the museum link. Look below to view a slideshow of snapshots from the evening (all iPhone pics).

Nighthawks Reading

Sporting My "Burroughs" Look

For over five years I've been part of a writing group that meets at the local Unitarian church. For a modest annual fee, we meet monthly to critique and celebrate each others' writing. Our approach is positive, even when the piece under consideration may have some difficulties. As a result of this nurturing approach, we've all grown, and so has our confidence. New works are constantly finding their way into print because of our sensitive efforts to help one another grow.

On Thursday, November 14, we staged a reading of our recent works-in-progress. Barbara Brannon read a series of sonnets that trace the life of her adult daughter. Michelle Kraft shared a prose piece about how her childhood home in North Texas later became home to an Army Corps of Engineers lake. Marilyn Westfall, poet and leader of our group, read a number of linked poems, among others, about a recent trip to the Isle of Wight off the coast of England. Actor and playwright Juanice Myers organized a troupe of players to present her monologues limning characters—from an old woman regretting how her looks have faded to one that looks back at the fun times the alcoholics in her family provided. I read excerpts from the first chapter of my memoir concerning my twenty-seven years of public school teaching. Thanks to everyone who came, and to the Unitarian leadership for providing us with a place to present our work to the public. Below find photos documenting our efforts. Ken Dixon, photographer.

Season's Grittings

12/13/2011

Items That Won't Recycle

_ The Eclipse gum and Nature Valley wrappers always catch my eye on the store shelves. What is this smooth, shiny Mylar (or look-alike material) made of? Petroleum? We see the Styrofoam Sonic cups everywhere, if not perched on someone’s desk at the office, then flattened in the street or skittering across our lawn (there’s a Sonic two blocks over, so the trip isn’t a long one). The Udi Bread wrapper is the same as any bread wrapper. It’s made of plastic. It will get caught in your tree limbs; that’s why I always tie those things in a knot before putting them in the dumpster. Regardless, it will still take thousands of years to decompose. If ever.

_Politics

_ I wrote my three congresspersons a letter each week for six weeks, and then I missed a week. I haven’t written since. My congressional rep. wrote back three times, if belatedly, but, of course, it was all the same party line stuff. Nothing new. He probably said the same thing about my letters. I’ll write my three congresspersons again—there’s certainly plenty of fodder for letters—but for now I’m taking a break. The holidays always do that to me. Time to take a break, let the old body and mind rest up.

A Dictionary Of Errors

_ The following may be a matter of choice. Maybe not. Why would a sportscaster on ESPN say a quarterback is the “most steady player” instead of saying he’s the “steadiest player”? It’s a trend I’ve noted for a long time. When I taught elementary reading years ago, we conveyed (I hope) the principle that most adjectives are “regular” and that all you have to do is add “i-e-r” for comparing two and “i-e-s-t” for representing the superlative. You only add “more” or “most” to irregular adjectives, say, like “beautiful”. You wouldn’t say “beautifuler” or “beautifulest”. Of course not; your ear tells you at a fairly young age that that construction is wrong. More and more, however, I hear more and more people treating EVERY adjective as if it were irregular. They say things like “more steady” or “more breezy” instead of “steadier” or “breezier”. Can anyone explain this phenom to me? Is it because elementary readers no longer teach the difference between regular or irregular adjectives, or is there something more sinister (sinisterer?) involved? I’d love to know.

Xmases Past

_ Below is an excerpt from the novel I just finished, tentatively called The Operatic Scale of Desire. It is the blog post of character Dan Wallis, chaplain of a busy teaching hospital in Wichita. He writes about an incident that took place when he was fourteen and philosophizes further on the meaning of a holiday that comes around as regularly as a winter cold.

Some time after reaching puberty, I intuit that there exist two Christmases. One holiday seems to begin ardently after Thanksgiving: arias you hear on the Texaco-Metropolitan Opera radio affiliate, songs you chant in the school program, songs of sentimental cheer crooned by your favorite stars on TV and the movies (‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ makes me smile and cry). Some time between the church pageant and Christmas Eve, the season’s feverish pitch falls to a hush: by now you have exchanged gifts at school, at church; you have presented offerings to your teachers, your neighbors; in the mail you long ago placed little packages that travel to Pop’s family on the coast. You are witness to the shared anxiety in everyone’s faces, from the postman to the woman who sells tickets at the Orpheum.

If you can’t find your money, Son, will you step aside so that others might enjoy the season. And when I do locate my cash, the toothy woman flashes me a practiced smile and says, Say, aren’t you the boy that played Amahl several seasons ago?

No.

Well, I’m sure you are, I never forget a face.

Fuck you, I mumble under my breath.

Her smile falls away, and she shouts through the hole in the glass. Get out of my sight, the world has no use for your kind.

What kind is that? I rant, giving her the finger. I then see a reflection of myself looking like Ma when she’s hopping mad, and I jump back.

You know what you are, now get out of my window so I can help these good people standing in the cold, Sonny.

The other Christmas is a parallel and unequal world of ancient hymns, the story as it is told from the Big Book on the lectern at church. Long ago a virgin mother gives birth to a very special baby (I haven’t yet learned paradox), a baby that will save all the wretches of the world (especially and including me). Very wise men following a star in the sky travel a long distance to be present on this very chilly night that the baby Jesus is wrapped tightly and laid in a manger. Ma—dressed in her Christmas nightgown through which you can see her breasts—explains that for all intents and purposes Jesus was born in a barn and that his manger was little more than a cattle trough. As she holds me close to her sweet bosom, I think of my grandfather’s barn, a place that smells of dung and car grease, and wonder, That’s where our noble savior was born?

The saddest thing is that one Christmas wars against the other like a jealous sibling. Yes, one is crass, the other wise. One powerful, the other weak and self-deprecating. One encourages inane consumption, the other generosity, the former eradicating one’s desire to practice the latter. It is a war I relive each year—fretting over what to get for whom and how much to spend or not—a case of post traumatic stress that multiplies and folds over itself year after year. It is a war that always ends in a truce, heathen burghers smiling smugly—even as a babe coos quietly in his manger.

Current Reading

_ I continue my close readings of New Yorker stories from 2011. Only two more to go until I write about the project.

What kind of statistics will be interesting? The number of male authors? Female? Number of stories about ethnic minorities? Gays/lesbians? Trannies? Average age?

How many stories are set in New York or on the eastern seaboard? How many are set in the boondocks, a foreign country?

Literary issues? Who uses the third person close point of view? Who writes in first person?

After January first I begin my trek through these fifty or so stories to see what the magic is, the alchemy that is the New Yorker story.

Potpourri

11/14/2011

Politics

I’ve written my three congresspersons a letter each week for three, almost four, weeks in a row now. I don’t know if my actions are doing any good (they may be infuriating their secretarial staff), but I’m having great satisfaction in expressing my opinions. [Actually, my congressman did write one letter politely setting me straight on a few things, and I answered him in kind.] And this is what we constituents should be doing, regardless of what we believe. Those people are in office at our behest. If we express our opinions in large enough numbers, should it happen that, hm, they might change their minds about a few things or find themselves out on the pavement? Acting collectively, our actions could become a very powerful thing.

A Dictionary of Errors

I may have overdone it last time, the English teacher having become enraged by the onslaught of change overcoming our language. The truth is that English is at our disposal to be used in the way that we see fit. Grammar books usually are written with a nod toward long-time usage, finally giving in to what ordinary people have fashioned of it. One day there may be no “their” there; the word may be spelled only one way, and it will be up to the reader to figure out its meaning (like most teachers must do with regard to their students’ writing). One day “bust” may become a perfectly acceptable way (maybe we’re
. . . there, there) to express that something has broken or burst. One day “Me and my friends” may replace “My friends and I” (maybe we’re really there, damn the grammar books). After all, ain’t “me” more important than me friends? One day “If I were
. . .”—normally used to express a hypothetical situation (the subjunctive voice)—will become “If I was.” Why? B/c (texting for “because”) it’s simply easier to remember. Why must we have all these rules we have to remember for the rest of our lives? Isn’t the important thing to communicate and get our ideas across in the simplest form possible? Mayhaps.

Items That Won’t Recycle

A few years ago I began to use the pharmacy at one of the big discount stores. On the neck of each prescription bottle, the pharmacist attached a blue rubber ring (so as to separate your meds from your mate’s, which may be red or orange or green). Though I recycled the plastic bottles, I didn’t know what to do with the rubber rings. I couldn’t just throw them away. I knew where they’d wind up. The same is true for those little plastic ties shaped like horseshoes that you find on a loaf of bread, many with a date on them, indicating when the loaf went to the shelf or when it should leave the shelf. Whatever. And what about those strips we glue to our noses at night so we can breathe? The truth is that none of these articles, as small as they are, currently recycle (at least not at our local centers). Too small to recycle? I don’t know. Millions of people must buy their pharmaceuticals from the same chain I do. Millions of people must buy bread each day, their nose strips. Just because we can’t “see” the space their (excuse me, they’re) taking up, can’t “see” the thousands of years it will take for the earth to ingest these items doesn’t mean we should just let them go. Does it?

Current Reading

I continue to do close readings of all the New Yorker stories from 2011, so far more than thirty. Early impression? Our nation (and our world for NY includes a number of translations) is blessed with a large number of gifted writers of various ages, who represent nearly every ethnic and sexual (almost) group in America. Anyone trying to get a story published in the New Yorker has a great deal of talented competition.

One Saturday I watched Michael Moore the filmmaker speak for three hours on C-SPAN’s Book-TV (I recorded it). A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn was a book he mentioned as having had great influence over his thinking. I’m about half-way through The People’s History, and I’ve learned a lot, too. One, Christopher Columbus was a murderer, who, along with other Spaniards, over a period of several years, wiped out an entire tribe on the island of Hispaniola. Hard to believe?

What about this? “Through all that growth, the upper class was getting most of the benefits and monopolized political power. A historian who studied Boston tax lists in 1687 and 1771 found that in 1687 there were, out of a population of six thousand, about one thousand property owners, and that the top 5 percent—1 percent of the population—consisted of fifty rich individuals who had 25 percent of the wealth. By 1770, the top 1 percent of property owners owned 44 percent of the wealth” (49).

Or this? At the beginning of the 20th century, writer Charles Beard noted that four groups “were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, and men without property” (91). Beard concluded: “The Constitution, then, illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle–income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law—all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity” (99).

Today’s “buffers”—the unemployed middle-class, unemployed students, unemployed graduates, underemployed union members, the disenfranchised elderly, all ethnic groups—have taken to Wall Street to march against this very same greed that has haunted our country since its inception. Let’s give them a few bucks a month to help out.

This Book of Daniel Is Not in the Bible

My Book World

A Writer's Wit

Bullets to Bells: a Powerful Collection of Poems

My Book World

My Journey of States-24 Arizona

ARIZONA (1975, 1993, 2004, 2017)

HISTORICAL POSTCARDS & Trunk Decals

A Writer's Wit

Orphans

Orphans

Aloft

Aloft

Honors and Readings

Ken Dixon at the Museum of South Texas

Nighthawks Reading

Season's Grittings

Items That Won't Recycle

_Politics

A Dictionary Of Errors

Xmases Past

Current Reading

Potpourri

Politics

A Dictionary of Errors

Items That Won’t Recycle

Current Reading

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