Tree Riesener

Tree Riesener Reading At Bolingbroke

2010-11-03T10:22:00.001-04:00

I'll be reading from my forthcoming collection of ekphrastic poetry, EK, which will be published by Cervena Barva Press in 2012. The reading will be at the Bolingbroke Mansion in Wayne, Pa. on December 7 at 7:00. More information will be coming out soon but there will be my featured reading with slides of the images, an open reading and gorgeous refreshments, all in an old mansion decorated for Christmas. What's not to like? Come on out and have fun!

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Poetry chapbooks by Tree Riesener: Inscapes (Finishing Line Press), Angel Poison (Pudding House Publications), Liminalog (Inmates Run The Asylum Press). Each book is $10.00 and shipping is free when you order from me! If you'd like to know more about the contents, just drop me a line! FORTHCOMING: New full-length collection, EK, from Cervena Barva Press!

The Meat Eaters By JEFF MCMAHAN (New York Times)

2010-09-20T19:20:00.001-04:00

An interesting analysis of the food chain--would the world be better off if all meat-eaters were replaced by herbivores? Would this enable us to be kinder, gentler people? Follow the link and read on . . .

Our own form of predation is of course more refined than those of other meat-eaters, who must capture their prey and tear it apart as it struggles to escape. We instead employ professionals to breed our prey in captivity and prepare their bodies for us behind a veil of propriety, so that our sensibilities are spared the recognition that we too are predators, red in tooth if not in claw (though some of us, for reasons I have never understood, do go to the trouble to paint their vestigial claws a sanguinary hue). The reality behind the veil is, however, far worse than that in the natural world. Our factory farms, which supply most of the meat and eggs consumed in developed societies, inflict a lifetime of misery and torment on our prey, in contrast to the relatively brief agonies endured by the victims of predators in the wild. From the moral perspective, there is nothing that can plausibly be said in defense of this practice. To be entitled to regard ourselves as civilized, we must, like Isaiah’s morally reformed lion, eat straw like the ox, or at least the moral equivalent of straw.

Tree Riesener Reading At University of Pennsylvania Bookstore

2010-05-24T21:34:00.000-04:00

Penn Bookstore Series

Light of Unity Association and Mad Poets Performance Series
1st Thursdays, April through September
Hosted by Tamara Oakman

University of Pennsylvania Bookstore
3601 Walnut Street
University Square
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Admission: $7 or $5 for students, seniors & MPS members. Proceeds split in half between performing artists and a different charity each month. Event co-sponsored by the Light of Unity Association.

Thurs., June 3: Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Dan Maguire, Quincy Scott Jones, Mel Brake, Tree Riesener, George McDermott, and a musical/spoken performance by: Ian Wolf.
June proceeds to benefit Philabundance.

This series is supported by PA Partners in the Arts (PPA), the regional arts funding partnership of the PA Council on the Arts, a state agency. State government funding comes through an annual appropriation by PA’s General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PPA is administered in this region by the Five County Arts Fund. Special thanks to April Williamson of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

Authors' Contracts Will Look More Like Service Agreements

2010-03-25T09:50:00.000-04:00

Fascinating article from Bruce Milligan's "Publishing Perspectives." Read the whole article by clicking on the title.

"Future contracts will reflect the multiple opportunities that authors have to market themselves and their works directly to their readers. “If you imagine a world in which authors ‘don’t need a publisher,’ it encourages the publisher to take a different view. The contract looks more like a service agreement. Publishers have scale and reach and access to funds that authors don’t have, but the paradigm looks slightly different.”

When Brevity Is a Virtue

2010-03-19T16:37:00.000-04:00

Short stories have won unusual plaudits this year. Alice Munro won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her body of work; Elizabeth Strout's short-story collection, "Olive Kitteridge," claimed the Pulitzer Prize. "Olive Kitteridge" has sold 472,000 copies according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75% of book sales—impressive for any kind of literary fiction.

When Writing, Avoid Early Closure

2010-02-13T12:59:00.001-05:00

There have been a few times in my life when a poem or a story composed itself like a house afire. My fingers danced on the keyboard. My pen slid over the page. I was completely channeling the duende and the work passed through me like sunlight through a window.

Not often.

Most of the time ideas start to gather like the harbingers of a storm. First a few clouds in the sky. Then a few drops of rain. Maybe a long sultry day before the first rain falls. Then a break, time to take a little walk, weed the garden a bit, put a bucket under the leaky place before the next installment of rain. Eventually all this foreplay is over, the heavens break open, rain drenches the ground, soaks in, swirls in rivers. The writing starts to come.

There's a natural tendency to want to finish a bit of writing. The soul yearns for the finished project. But for me, most of the time, I'm not channeling a poem. I'm laboriously building it up, word by word, phrase by phrase. I've learned to trust the process. As I take a walk, ride trains, read, run errands in the city streets, I live with the poem or story. It's always with me. I wake up in the morning and discover my brain has been busy all night.

I've learned to wait until a fair amount of notes, jottings, little sketches, cryptic phrases are there on the page. Only then is the best time for me to begin writing. After the first draft is more-or-less finished, I put it aside and resolutely ignore it (or try to ignore it) for at least a few days. The day comes when I feel it would be okay to work on it again. By this time, the well of ideas from my subconscous is overflowing again for the revision process, one of the most rewarding, voluptuous parts of the composition process.

Don't cheat yourself of all this joy by feeling the work must be brought to completion too quickly. It really is true that the process brings great happiness and almost always (except when the duende visit you) results in deeper, more redolent writing.

Read this poem, Ithaka, by Cavafy. It's probably the best poem ever written about enjoying the voyage as much as the port.

Bruce Milligan: In Praise Of The Lowly Chapbook

2010-01-25T10:14:00.001-05:00

From Bruce's article: "The books themselves run the gamut of printing and binding techniques: letterpress, offset, even laser printing; commissioned handmade paper, high-end linen paper, best-available-at-the-local-paper-store-on-Friday-afternoon paper; almost all have hand-sewn bindings—Coptic, Japanese, or plain saddle stitching. All are signed and numbered, with print runs no larger than 500 copies. Prices range from $14 to $75. What they all have in common is that they almost always sell out within the first year or two and, being “collectibles,” the last few available copies inevitably escalate in value, sometimes precipitously."

Susan Tepper Interview: Final Question

2010-01-12T22:14:00.004-05:00

Tree: Well, Susan, these are going to be your last soul-searching questions, unless we come up with some more. I want to pry a bit into your innermost thoughts today, so my first question is this:

Do you keep a journal?

Susan: I have never kept a journal. I was taught if you write it down, you've already begun. I'd rather just dive right into the fiction and poetry.

I spend a huge amount of time revising my fiction, many stories have gone through thirty to fifty rewrites. Same thing with the novels.

Huge amounts of time spent on rewrites. I end up with a mound of papers before the piece is complete for me. Raymond Carver said you know you're done when you take out punctuation, put it back, then take it out again. In other words, when the redundancy kicks in. I can tell I'm done when I'm happy with it each time I read it over.

Sure, over the years, I can see things in published work that I might tweak a bit. But once it's done, it's pretty much set in stone for me.

Poetry is a little different. I write short poems that come out fast. Some work well and get published quickly. Others, I let sit, and might revise a year later. Revision for me, with poetry, is more about form than words. I write abstract poetry, so in revision I might slide the lines around a bit, which can cast the poem in a different light. Abstract poetry is more like painting, in the sense that it makes its statement on the page by where it appears when the line is "speaking." I hope that makes sense.

Tree: I know this is a question asked of all writers but for me it has an enduring interest. What writers do you return to and read over and over? Contrastively, who are some new writers you are excited about?

Susan: William Trevor is a staple for me. I have never read a William Trevor story that failed. He has brilliance on every level: his craft, his choices, the way he understands the human psyche and its weaknesses and failings. Simply amazing. I think that's a true gift some are born with, and he made the decision to steer it into writing.

I also read Jean Thompson. Her unusual take on life really spikes her fiction, I'm very fond of her work.

Mark Wisniewski, who I've been reading for twenty years, just knocks me out. He goes places I wish I could go. I think of Mark as my "spirit writer." I finally met him, when I invited him to read in my FIZZ series at KGB Bar. He is as nice as he is talented.

With poetry, it's Simon Perchik that I read over and over. I interviewed him twice, and reviewed his opus book Hands Collected for the Boston Review. That book spanned fifty years of his poetry. We have become close friends, and Simon is my poet mentor. I feel truly blessed by this.

Tree: I go back to Trevor over and over, keep his big fat collected stories beside my bed. Mark Wisniewski is a favorite as well. What an enigmatic thinker! I'll have to investigate Jean Thompson (like tomorrow!). Simon Perchik is wonderful. We like so many of the same writers. No wonder I'm drawn to your work. Okay, let's go on to the next question.

Would you free associate these phrases. No need to explain. We won't make the mysterious mundane!

The first phrase is this. What do you think of when you think of a good place to be?

Susan: My bed, in a sweater, St. Martin in the Fields Church concert, KGB announcing my readers, greenhouse in winter, local ice cream parlor, Prague, Waterloo Bridge, tea in the Crypt, St. James Park, Marios cafe, the Jimmy concerts

Tree: What are some places where you wouldn't want to go?

Susan: Cemeteries, Madrid, Las Vegas, Detroit, para-sailing, deep sea diving, family reunions

Tree: Well, I said I wouldn't ask but I hope someday you'll explain these to me. I can understand not wanting to go to Detroit, but Madrid? And I've always thought Las Vegas would be the Grand Canyon of Neon. Love to go there just once.

Okay, this is the final question. Let us in on the secret. What are you working on now?

Susan: A bunch of things. A novel of linked stories, a story about a museum guard, a story about a man who lives in Prague. And always poems... when they want to come to me. !

Tree: Susan, thank you for spending this time with us. Good luck with Deer

Susan Tepper Interview, Question #3--Intuition or Planning?

2010-01-11T17:24:00.001-05:00

Tree: I know you have characterized yourself as an intuitive, spontaneous writer, as compared to an outliner or planner. Could you share some thoughts about your writing habits, even such mundane things (that can be very important) as, for example, pens or pencils. Special kind of pen? What kind of notebooks? Home or cafés? Any computer programs? Neat or tidy desk? Give us a picture of you as a working writer!

Susan: If you can picture someone acting compulsively, then you pretty much get me as a writer.

It's my drug of choice.

I wake up with poems on my brain in the middle of the night and dash into the next room to write them down. Lately that has eased up a bit, thank god.
But I'm like the person who buys the big double pack of Oreos and sits down and eats until the last cookie is gone. In other words, I have no will or willpower over writing.

Tree: But as a writer, you do have to sit down and work on something. Of all the writing projects I presume you have in your brain, how do you organize the day's work?

Susan: I don't make decisions. I don't say: I want to write a novel. I sit down at my computer in a cramped, pathetically overstuffed little room and start typing and whatever comes through me onto the page, that's what I write. The other day, I overheard someone saying something in a diner, and I thought: that would make a good story title.

If writing wasn't so completely enthralling to me, I probably would have gone nuts by now. The whole thing totally absorbs me. The writing, the submitting, the promotion, the editing, the magazine, my writer friends, my reading series... on and on.

Tree: But what about the times you need for actual writing? Do you like mornings, afternoons, any particular needs of that sort?

Susan: The only time I'm not writing on a daily basis is when I'm traveling. I never travel with a laptop or notebook. I adore travel so much, I want to take in everything without being distracted. If I could travel endlessly, I might quit writing.

Oh! I just caught a little insight. Writing is travel! So that's the key to the puzzle -- I'm a compulsive traveler! In actual travel, I travel with my husband, Miles, who is a great travel companion.

Tree: What can I say? I'm an organized writer who makes endless lists and action plans. But a part of me is just like you. I usually start the day with very free-wheeling writing exercises and I have to say some of my best writing has come from those times when I empty my mind and just type whatever comes directly from my brain to my fingertips.

I think it's good for writers to be comfortable with both approaches and draw on them as needed, maybe trust an intuitive approach for the initial work and then re-approach it more critically for the revision. But we have to trust the duende who bring us the ideas and the flow, right? Never second guess them or they might stop helping us! Thanks, Susan. Until tomorrow!

Susan Tepper Interview, Question #2--Magical Realism

2010-01-10T19:34:00.004-05:00

Tree: Okay, we're ready for question #2, continuing our exploration of the scenes behind the scenes of your stories, and here it is!

Transport one of your characters to his/her dying days. Using first person, talk about a moment (or two or three) when this character was happiest, when something "clicked." In other words, what are one or several things in life that brought him/her some happiness in spite of everything?

Susan: Very cool question! Ok, I'll go with the character Maura, in Elvis Out of The Meditation Garden.

Tree: Before we read more about Maura's dying thoughts, could you fill us in a bit on her background?

In the story she's a young woman in her twenties, kind of sweet and not especially interested in her boyfriend Ramey, who is pressuring her to marry him. But Maura is very interested in Elvis, who they've stolen from his grave, and transported to their Elm Street Community Theatre, for a special Elvis musical event. For the purpose of answering your question, Maura is now in her forties.

Whoever knew that living near power lines could cause you so much trouble? I was just so happy to finally have a house, a nice old white clapboard house. For about the first decade we lived here, I never really paid attention to the phone lines and all that electricity strung pole to pole through the back yards.

I was busy raising our twins, Julie and Jim, while my husband Mark was on the road a lot. Sales. I never liked when he had to leave, it worried me, not that I'm afraid of being alone, but I worried about the women. There are always women around men who travel. Elvis traveled. Priscilla must've spent a lot of time alone with Lisa Marie.

But back when I knew Elvis, that short while at the theatre, I'll confess I wasn't really thinking about Priscilla. Sure, her name had come up a few times but she was history. I wasn't. I was there and Elvis was there and it was magic! He had touched my breast! Held onto it. Until my boyfriend Ramey made him let go.
Now I touch where my breast used to be and hold my breath remembering.

If only I had figured out a way to be alone with Elvis before he had to leave us. I should have gotten Ramey out of the theatre on some pretense. I should have led Elvis over to the pink velvet couch from our Arsenic and Old Lace production. I know Elvis would have followed me.

I knew it then and still know it. Nothing can take that away. I touch my phantom breast again and I can feel Elvis inside me, deep in my body. That makes me rest more easily.

Tree: When I read this story, I think "magical realism." Did you consciously write this story to fit into this category? Is this a school of writing you are interested in?

Susan: Magical realism is wonderful! I love the stories of Garcia Marquez, which I read intermittently. I have written a few pieces that I suppose could be put into that genre. One is a story called "Above the Clouds Midnight Passes" which was published by Crannog Magazine in Ireland, and inspired by seeing a Max Ernst exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What an incredible painter!

But I have to say I don't consciously choose which way a story goes. The Elvis story could have turned out to be one that takes place while he's alive. But somehow his wanting whiter teeth forced it into the present. And, of course he's dead! So the story had to become whimsical on some plane. Here's what I remember about the "Elvis" story. I woke up with the first line in my mind and could picture Elvis saying it. I typed that first line and the rest followed. I'd be happy to have someone call this story Magical Realism.

Tree: Well, Magical Realism is one of my favorite genres and I think this story definitely has an honored place there. Thank you, Susan. I look forward to your answer to tomorrow's question, when we pry into your writing habits! Until then!

Susan Tepper: Interview

2010-01-09T13:18:00.005-05:00

Last month I posted a review of Susan Tepper's new and acclaimed book of short stories, Deer. This month I'm following that interview up with a series of interview questions. I'll be posting one question and answer each day this week.

Here's the interview for today!

Tree: Susan, since you lived with these characters a long time as you were I wonder how you would assimilate into your characters' landscapes, the worlds they live in. Of all the characters in your stories, which one lives in a landscape in which you would most like to spend a year?

Susan: Wow, tough to answer. My first thought was none. Most of these characters are struggling. Then I decided I could live in the landscape of childhood again, particularly the landscape of Henrietta in "Velvet Box." She's a scrappy girl, smart and independent. Life doesn't touch her. It's the suburbs, in the 1950's, when children were allowed to run free. She has her little tribe: younger sister, Bibi, and younger cousin, Pete. She's the leader of this pack and the world is her oyster. She tears around the neighborhood saying and doing pretty much as she pleases. There's grass and trees and dogs and caterpillars and hydrangea bushes and plastic lawn deer. There's also a violent neighbor, a repressive church and a dying uncle. Henrietta remains aloof from all that is not life affirming. She does this unconsciously. That life can be bad or difficult simply doesn't penetrate her spirit. And that is the ultimate freedom. I could definitely live there.

Tree: That sounds like my childhood. I would take off all day on my pony, with a BB gun and a lunch. Nobody worried about me all day. It's a sort of freedom children today don't know. I could live in that landscape again, although I'd do without the BB gun!

Tomorrow: Susan turns to the other end of life for one of her characters and discusses her thoughts when nearing death.

Susan Tepper's Deer & Other Stories: Step Into Her Scary, Tender World

2009-11-10T20:33:00.006-05:00

With this publication of Deer & Other Stories from Wilderness House Press, her first book of short fiction, novelist and poet Susan Tepper is well on her way to establishing her own territory, even as Cheever, Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor have done. Instead of the world of monied but angst-ridden New Englanders, violent and ancestor-ridden Yoknapatawphans, or Gothic, God-ridden Southerners, Tepper has her world of late-Twentieth-Century-ridden lost but valiant souls.

The leitmotif of this book is the deer, who makes an appearance in each story whether as a head on a wall or hanging upside down in a garage, draining. Putting a deer in each story could have been a tiresome affectation, something dragged in to achieve continuity, but when deer cross from their wilderness into contemporary civilization (or what passes for it in a Tepper story), my first thought is of the deer as elegant, out-of-place creatures standing frozen in the lights of a car. We know they will soon be transformed into road kill, much as many of the characters in this book will be transfixed and wounded by the lives they find themselves out of place in, whether that place is cleaning a filthy rented house or sexually servicing the Beatles along with the lesser Mahareeshi in India.

It is a measure of Tepper's excellent writing and the tenderness with which she views her characters that we care what happens to these high school students playing hooky and driving illegally while passing a joint, this mismatched honeymoon couple with a wife trying to cope with a mouse-haunted house and a husband who wants sex "with devices," all the while worrying if such a thing might leave her with a permanent vibration, a young boy struggling with life in Italy with his grandparents, his only friend another young ex-pat who tells him his family "defecates" in the ground. "Naturally we have a toilet. We're not animals. We shit to fertilize the garden. We give back what we get from the ground. We get very large radishes. You'll see."

The stories are fascinating but let's talk about the language we find in this book. Susan Tepper writes damn good sentences, sentences to enjoy, to linger over. As someone who has taught writing, I could pick any page in this book and have students study the variety of sentences, the texture they lay on the page. A lush variety of beginnings, from prepositional phrases to participial phrases to single words. Front-loaded sentences, back-loaded sentences. Balanced, coordinated sentences and the occasional short, starkly declarative utterance. This is the writing of a language lover, not cunningly devised but flowing easily with a gorgeous balance of language perfectly suited to the characters.

Immediately and especially noticeable is the onrush of exciting, powerful verbs. Teenagers clock eighty-five, things are rammed, chilly wind beats, food is shoved into mouths, a wife flashes a sweetly savage smile. Details are crisp, clearly observed, telling, not overloaded with adjectives and unneeded adverbs.

The dialogue here is language that would naturally issue from the mouths of her characters but even in passages where the characters are not speaking, we share in their interior lives with interior monologues. This is an immediate book and we are sucked into these difficult lives and stay with them until the resolution, wishing the story could go on a little longer.

The thing to remember when you rush out to buy this book (which you should immediately, it's that good) is that these people (I won't even call them characters) are US, in our infinite variety, pain, and machinations to survive. Along with us, they are all afraid of dying and camouflage that natural human tendency in a variety of ways, their hopeless, stumbling rush toward oblivion honestly but lovingly chronicled.

The Kill Zone: Scribd's new e-book store: A sea change in publishing?

2009-10-28T07:42:00.000-04:00

I'm interested in this because my poetry collection Liminalog is for sale at Scribd. It's a flexible e-format--the book can be downloaded in a variety of formats, even for cell phones. I'm thinking of putting my other two collections up as well since I own the electronic rights.

The Kill Zone: Scribd's new e-book store: A sea change in publishing?:
"We've been talking quite a bit on this blog about e-books, and debating their merits. I think that scribd's move into selling books online, in a range of formats, at a price split that dramatically favors the author, has the potential to upend the publishing totem pole. The scribd platform could finally provide the grassroots publishing momentum that puts more revenue and power into the content creator's hands, rather than the distributor's."

Facebook | ANIMAL RIGHTS - SHOW YOUR SUPPORT GROUP

2009-10-03T11:50:00.000-04:00

Follow the link to join a group that works against all kinds of animal torture.

Facebook | ANIMAL RIGHTS - SHOW YOUR SUPPORT GROUP

Gmail - This Sun., Mad Poets Festivel-CityTeam Ministries FOOD BANK - treeriesener@gmail.com

2009-10-02T17:43:00.002-04:00

This Sun., Mad Poets Festival-CityTeam Ministries FOOD BANK

From Eileeen D'Angelo, President of Philadelphia-area Mad Poets Society--Come to have a good time and help the less fortunate, this Sunday, October 4! Follow the link for all the details.

Hello, Everyone,

Please take a minute to read the attached press release. Although this Sunday is the 22nd Mad Poets Festival, noon to five at Media Borough Hall, 3rd and Jackson, in the Mansion Parlor + 40+ Poets will read- More importantly- John Clifford of CityTeam Ministries told me yesterday that CityTeam Ministries is experiencing a dire reduction in food donations due to the economy& lack of donations. He will be present at our festival to collect non-perishable food items, or canned goods, AND to dish up warm & delicious chicken chili at a minimum of $1.00 a cup - to bring awareness to the poor and disadvantaged in our area. The Media Food & Arts Festival will happen during the same time frame, on State St., between Monroe and Orange: bands in the streets, arts, crafts & all different types of food. John and I thought this is the perfect time to remind everyone not everybody has food. The event is free - but your "ticket" is some non-perishable food item or canned good. A listing of ideas is posted below. All Donations to CityTeam are 100% deductible, and their contact info is below. Please spread the word any way you can. IF YOU HAVE A BLOG, please post this. If you do Twitter, or if there's some other social network you are involved in, I urge you to post this information & see if we can "scare up" some food donations. IF YOU HAVE A MAILING LIST of folks you know would be interested in helping CityTeam, please forward this to them.

Southword Journal Online home

2009-09-30T08:26:00.000-04:00

Interesting and thoughtful article about the printed (?) word and online publishing, from Southword magazine (Ireland).

Southword Journal Online home

Time To Get Serious About Blogging

2009-09-27T18:40:00.000-04:00

I have to accept the fact that summer, that lovely, louche time of being very gentle with myself, is over. It's been so seductive to picnic and laze on the front porch reading and consequently, I haven't kept up my blog. Those days are over now (leaves starting to fall) and I have to face the fact that the whole nature of a blog is timeliness! So hold me to it if I let slackerdom creep up on me again and tell me to start blogging. In my own defense, I'll say I've published a ton of poetry and fiction during this time so I haven't been totally morally dissolute.

Today I want to share one of my little book customs. Every change of season I make a stack of books to work on in the coming months. I will read other things along the way but these are the ones I want to get through for sure. I like some variety: poetry, short stories, a couple of contemporary novels, some classics, letters or memoir, a travel book for sure and something about nature. These things live between the two owl bookends on the table by my favorite chair (yes, I have a favorite chair, so what!) along with my journal, my bookmark collection, and my fountain pens with different colors of ink.

For a classic, I've just started to re-read Thomas Hardy and started with Far From The Madding Crowd. I decided to read Hardy because I was intrigued by Katherine Ann Porter's essay on the contrasting views of Hardy and T.S. Elliot about the "common people" in their writing. She felt Hardy had a much gentler, but very realistic, view. So far, I have to agree, at least that Hardy penetrated to the essence of his peasants, while depicting them, often, as mildly comic.

This book takes me to a time when landscape was so much a part of these people that the death of a tree was noticed and commented on, seeing the tree as one of them, a laborer that had its place in the world of work.

"Yes; and Tompkins's old apple-tree is rooted (uprooted) that used to beaar two hogsheads of cider and no help from other trees."
"Rooted?--You don't say it! Ah! stirring times we live in--stirring times."

A kindler, gentler world, you might say, but the book also deals with the plight of a deserted, unmarried pregnant woman, general illiteracy, no social welfare system for the old, rampant disease and death, and the necessity to find work, or often, simply starve. We have so much more and go so much faster, but I think the French proverb has much truth: The more things change, the more they remain the same. In much of the world, women live precariously close to death for transgressing social mores, there is general illiteracy, especially for women, there is no welfare system for the old or the weak, virulent diseases rage, children die for lack of simple medications, and people starve. Even in the United States, many are hungry and sleep on the streets.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Table of Contents: Easy, perfect alignment

2009-08-20T09:38:00.003-04:00

If you have labored countless hours over your table of contents, trying to make the numbers align, only to have a wavering line that looks like a snake's spinal column, leave me a comment and I will send you the elegant, easy answer! Editors will accept your manuscript if only for the beauty of your TOC! No more of this, "Well, I'm not even going to read this thing! Look at the table of contents--this author is definitely a sloppy, ill-defined thinker!" Leave me your e-mail.

Fanny Howe: “Buddhists Like School and I Don’t.” An experimental poet meditates on the intersections of language, writing, and God.

2009-07-25T08:15:00.001-04:00

And now, surprisingly, a woman was introduced as the image of compassion and an object of the Dalai Lama’s greatest admiration. Mary! He didn’t make fun of her apparitions but believed that they had really occurred and that she was sending us important messages about the necessity for peace. She was, in a very real way, the Christian Buddha, and he was perplexed by her removal from Protestant religions.

Indie Filmmakers organize! Why not Indie Authors?

2009-07-23T08:31:00.006-04:00

"If you have a passion for making movies and you are looking for others who have similar interests, you have come to the right place. Whether your talents and interests are behind or in front of the camera, IndieClub. com (click on title of post) is the premier site for networking. IndieClub's 30,000+ members include actors, directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, grips, gaffers, CGI artists, makeup artists, and any other title you might see rolling in the end credits. IndieClub's goal purpose is to network us all together!"

I have long wondered why we accept independent filmmakers and record producers as legitimate, inspiring artists taking production into their own hands but meekly accept the onus on authors who do the same. Publish your own book and no matter how good it is, you'll have trouble getting reviews with the major reviewing sites, newspapers and so on.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I understand this. When considering the purchase of music or buying a ticket to see a film, one can view samples. With the online tools now available, it would be easy to do the same for writing.

I grant you, people don't seem to follow writers with the same enthusiasm as they do music or film. How much more enthusiasm could be developed if independent publishers of their own work developed a cooperative package for helping one another? I think such an organization could be tremendously powerfull and could result in authors breaking the stranglehold publishers have.

Hope you'll take a look at this site and share comments. Shall we form an Independent Publishers Association? (I don't like "self-published." The word has become too tarnished with associations of the old "vanity publishing." Nobody says an independent record label is "vanity music"!)

Tennessee Williams Liked To Revise ... And Revise ... And Revise

2009-06-25T20:26:00.004-04:00

I've been reading the Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams, and I loved this anecdote. I'll just share the quotation from Gore Vidal's introduction.

"Over the decades I watched Tennessee at work in Rome, Paris, Key West, New Haven . . . He worked every morning on whatever was at hand. If there was no play to be finished or new dialogue to be sent round to the theater, he would open a drawer and take out the draft of a story already written and begin to rewrite it. I once caught him in the act of revising a short story that had just been published. "Why," I asked, "rewrite what's already in print?" He looked at me, vaguely, then said, "Well, obviously it's not finished." And went back to his typing.

As an inveterate reviser, I love this. Before I consider something even approximately finished, I have probably worked on revising it for weeks. Every time I send something out, I revise it again.

I totally understand one of the Impressionist painters, Bonnard (?) maybe, who was caught sneaking with his paints into the exhibition where his pictures were hanging, just touching it up a little.

Easy And Good Way To Make PDF Files

2009-06-23T16:15:00.003-04:00

This is going to be just a little posting but I have been so happy with this free program I want to share. Several times lately a publisher has asked me to submit a PDF. Not wanting to spend money, I searched for free programs and found one called Cute PDF Writer. It was a quick, easy download and seems to work perfectly, at least for my simple needs. I've put a link to the site if you want to give it a try.

Creative Writing Tip: Thunder Writing

2009-06-21T16:42:00.004-04:00

Last week I introduced you to Lightning Writing—white font, white background. Today I want to show you how to do Thunder Writing—black font, black background.

First, I’d like to think about the connotations of these two kinds of writing. Lightning Writing, as I said, is white on white. But what does white writing make you think of? Sudden illumination, jagged writing, purity and clarity? Definitely. But whiteness also makes me think of the eeriness of a deserted, weed-filled field on a hot summer day, with the buzz of unseen, unknown beings filling the air; Remember how Meursault felt in Camus’ L’Etranger in the blinding heat of the beach, leading him to an unpremeditated murder? You never dare to stare into the sun for fear of blindness. The point? When you write in white, you must open your mind to ambiguity—clarity and confusion.

You’ll experience the same abiguity when you do Thunder Writing—black on black. We often think of blackness and night as scary. Night is when the vampires and zombies come, when we feel terror trying to change an exploded tire on the expressway with all those serial killers cruising past. Sure. But night is also velvety soft, comforting and warm. It’s when you can think about things without guarding your expression. It’s time to be soft and warm in your nest of crisp sheets and blankets, for those wonderful moments of thinking before you sleep. It’s the gleam of crows’ wings and kohl to line your eyes. So when you write in black on black, consciously direct your writing toward affirmation and fear.

As with Lightning Writing, try to save your Thunder Writing without looking at it for a few days. Then you will open the document, select the text with Control + A, change it to black on white, and be amazed by what you wrote. Use it to write something consciously controlled and save it again, let it ripen.

Next week, we’ll talk about Sky Writing, Solar Writing, and Grass Writing.

Okay. Here’s how to do black on black.

Go to “Format” on the toolbar. Click on “Background.” You will see the background change to nice solid black. Then go to the “Text Color Selection” tool in the upper right (as you did for Lightning Writing) and choose “Black.” WARNING! Don’t choose “Automatic” or your text will be white, an interesting effect but not what we’re aiming for.

Start to write thunderously, with your fingers coming down firmly on the keyboard. Or begin to write stealthily, with your fingers coming down like delicate cats’ paws!

Friday's Creative Tip: Writing Soup

2009-06-19T11:02:00.004-04:00

Today's tip is about a delicious soup that writers can easily make and only take about fifteen minutes off from their work.

The pan: I think cooking instruments should be lovely and satisfying to the cook's soul. I make this soup in a huge saute pan with a long, curving silver handle. It's so pretty you can just leave the soup in it for everybody to serve themselves.

The ingredients: Carrots cut up in round slices or those little carrot-shaped pieces you can buy in a packet. A package of fresh Swiss chard. Three or four cans of vegetable broth (stock up when it's on sale).

The recipe: Empty four cans of fragrant broth into your elegant pan. Add the carrots. Cut the stems off the Chard, wash it, and chop it into rather small pieces. Dump the veggies into the broth and heat it until the carrots are cooked the way you like them. Add some mushrooms if you like but they aren't really necessary.

Eat your delicious writers' soup. It isn't heavy, which would stifle your creativity. It is BEAUTIFUL--golden carrots, dark green Chard, light green broth. If the day is hot, cook it early and put it in the fridge because it is possibly even better cold. You will get a lot more writing done because you won't have to cook again. Just add a nice piece of vegetarian cheese and some lovely crusty whole-grain bread!

Lightning, Thunder and Fire Writing! Part I.

2009-06-18T22:30:00.002-04:00

We’re going to start with Lightning Writing today.

Remember the joy of writing with invisible ink when you were a kid? You’d buy this ink at a novelty store and write in it. Nothing would appear on the page but when you held it up to a light bulb, the words would appear.

You can use a technological equivalent for those days when the censor is sitting on your shoulder and you’re lingering too much on what you’re writing instead of trusting yourself and moving ahead.

I’ve done this for years and was interested to hear another writer, Karen Blomain, talk about using it at a conference I recently attended. She uses the white version but I have several variations.

The idea is to write in a text you cannot see or cannot understand but which you can easily change back to your normal black Times New Roman (or whatever) on a white background.

Okay, ready to go?

First, change your font color to white with the selection tool in the upper right corner of the toolbar area. Begin to type. You will see . . . NOTHING!

This is a wonderfully freeing way to write. You will feel a closer connection between your brain and your fingers when you write without the in-between appearance of the printed text. Your thoughts will fly freer. You can come back and censor, tweak, re-arrange later. That’s the part of writing that should come later, divorced from the act of creationg. Give it a try.

Now that you know how to do this, be really brave and start a folder in which to save your unseen writing. Don't peek. It’s okay to give it a retrieval name you can see. You’ll want to call it up later, select the text, and change it to black.

After writing something, I always put it “in the drawer” for a few days, at least, or better, a few weeks before I come back to it. My mind will have been working on it in another way and my thoughts and eye are sharper to revise.

I’m going to give you a few days to try this and then I’ll post again, with some exciting variations.

Facebook Writing Community Rocks!

2009-06-17T12:00:00.003-04:00

I've been fortunate enough to achieve some writing successes the last several days: A first for the literary short-short at the Philadelphia Writers Conference, a second in the category of Science Fiction, Imaginative Fiction and the Supernatural at the same conference and being a finalist in the Black Lawrence Press for my short story collection, Kissing Jesus. It felt a little egocentric to post these accolades on Facebook (although other writers do the same). The resulting congratulations from others, especially writers who know the loneliness and difficulty of the writing life, brought me a lot of joy. Now one of my Facebook friends, Joolz Denby, has even started a Facebook cafe and treats us to a new kind of coffe or tea along with delicious cakes every day. If I can't have a writers' cafe down the street, where we all stop in for our coffee and absinthe at the end of a hard day of writing, I'll be happy with my Facebook friends. Thanks, all!

Iranians To Follow On Twitter

2009-06-16T08:08:00.002-04:00

StopAhmad and Emoltzan are good people to follow on Twitter for Iranian news as it happens. You can probably find more. I would think to be cautious even on Twitter. Who knows who is posting. The government could be posting under an assumed posture. Read and evaluate!

Twitter To Iran

2009-06-16T08:03:00.002-04:00

I am getting tweets from Iranian citizens, DIRECTLY from Iranian citizens. For example, a woman just posted that the police knocked on her door at 2:00 a.m. and took her daughter away. Her husband is now having heart pains because of this. We should all make an effort to get our news this way, direct from the citizens, because it's hard to know what's what when the news is filtered by the media.

Nabokov On Writing-Colum McCann, NYT

2009-06-16T07:51:00.001-04:00

Vladimir Nabokov once said that the purpose of storytelling is “to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

Writing Aloud is Dead

2009-06-15T22:42:00.002-04:00

Tonight I attended the final performance of the 10-year-run of one of the finest theatrical endeavors in the country. For the past ten years, eight under the direction of David Sanders and the last two under the direction of Rebecca Wright, a season of dramatized short fiction by local and national writers has been blessed with sold-out performances at InterAct Theatre on Sansom Street in downtown Philadelphia.

Over the years, I was lucky to have three of my short stories in the series. I met many other writers and actors who brought the stories to vivid life on the stage of Interact Theatre and who have become friends.

We ended the final performance with reminiscences and drank a final toast to a great series, a great theatre, great directors, great actors, and, from my point of view, best of all, great writers. We drank a toast there and I came home and drank another. When a theatrical series gives its final performance, it's like a death and so we had a wake for Writing Aloud.

Skyping From The Hospital

2009-05-22T09:51:00.002-04:00

I am in love with technology. Here I am, waiting in a hospital for my dear one to have an operation, tapped into a wireless network and even able to Skype Europe. Some people become irritated with those who use their technology (cell phones) in public but I kind of like that. It's nice to see people wanting to stay close to the people they care for. As long as they're not driving and texting, why not? I think it's better not to use cell phones for long chats while driving, but it's not a whole lot different from just talking to someone in the car, as long as they're using a headset. As far as talking on cell phones in trains and so on, I love it, being privy to all that information, participating vicariously in people's glorious and messy lives. On occasion, I have even entered into the conversation, whispering some advice to the person talking and definitely talking the problem over after, entering into people's lives for the space of the ride. I have yet to have anybody get angry; they seem complimented to have me interested. Little do they know I write it all down as soon as possible and save it for a novel.

Mother's Day haibun, 2009

2009-05-10T20:32:00.003-04:00

A day celebrating my biological role. More than that, I guess. My sociological role as well. All my failures kindly overlooked. As if I were the final winner of the American Idol of Motherhood show. As if I danced with the star who was the Platonic role model of mothers, her hands of steel and nimble legs using me as a marionette who appears to be dancing just as well as she does. Surrounded by faces who have decided not to tell me my cancer is beyond redemption, that the doctor has sewed me back together so the show can go on. Now the night's curtain has fallen. Wipe off the makeup, let my cup of hot milk tremble, no longer try to walk with a vigorous and springy step. Oh, how kind are the ones who surround me, how kind is the darkness.

still in the moon’s night

chamomile sheets and pillow

outside wind rises

Stop cruelty to humans. It starts with animals.

2009-05-07T10:43:00.005-04:00

This is a link to the Animal Rights TV of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

I think cruelty toward other people often starts with tolerating cruelty to animals. As little children, most of us enjoy the walking, talking, kindly animals in children's literature. At the same time, we're taught to eat meat. I wonder what kind of shock children experience when they realize they're actually eating their animal friends. Since meat is given to them by their adult caretakers, almost from the beginning, we learn to tolerate this ambiguity.

In my opinion, this toleration of cruelty lays the ground for the toleration of cruelty to any being, even humans, whom we perceive as "other." Put this ethical need for the elimination of meat eating together with the economic tragedy of how meat-eating is helping to destroy the resources of the planet, and this issue is something we really need to think about. Do yourself a favor and watch some of these PETA videos for self-education!

I'll be reading at Robin's on May 6

2009-05-04T10:46:00.003-04:00

Robin's is the most venerable bookstore in Philadelphia. Well, maybe there are other venerable bookstores but Robin's is beloved by readers and writers. You can find interesting readings and workshops almost every night of the week and buy some good books in the bargain. Robin's now occupies the second floor of the building and incorporates the Moonstone Art Center. I'll be reading poetry there on Wednesday evening at 7:00 p. m. (like I need to tell you it's p.m.). My co-reader will be Betti Kahn and I'm going to bring my famous home-baked Bards' Bars (secret recipe), so show up for food for the body and mind! We'll have books to sell and sign.

Nadia Anjuman, Afghan poet, killed (2005) for her poetry

2009-04-30T19:54:00.001-04:00

Woman poet ‘slain for her verse’

Christina Lamb

Susan Boyle

2009-04-15T12:55:00.002-04:00

Susan Boyle is a winner in Britain's equivalent of American Idol. Because she doesn't fit the standard beauty requirements of a show like this, the judges smirked and sniggered when she walked onstage. When she began to sing, the ethereal beauty of her voice caused them (very rapidly) to treat her with respect. It's an inspiring story, but why does an ordinary person, or even someone totally lacking in beauty, have to have talent to command respect? Here's an interesting summary of her story.

Poet Jilly Dybka's Poetry Hut Blog Analyzes Amazon's Takeover Bid

2009-04-14T15:34:00.002-04:00

Amazon & POD (Provoke On Demand)

I posted some links last week regarding Amazon.com’s attempt to force publishers to use Amazon’s BookSurge print-on-demand service. Or the book won’t be available for sale on Amazon. I think Amazon took some non-BookSurge POD book’s “buy” buttons off, too. Is that still the case? My friend Scott’s book is only available through the used book interface now. (Click on title to read whole article.)

Poetry Presses Using Lulu As Printer

2009-04-14T15:22:00.002-04:00

Following up on my previous post, I did a quick search for poetry presses that might be using Lulu as their printer and came up immediately with this one, Poets Press. It makes a lot of sense. Turn over the printing chores to someone else, who can also provide help with graphic design for covers, proofreading and so on. The editors can then concentrate on reading manuscripts, selecting good work and working with poets. Small runs make so much sense. I think a poet would have to think about rights since with POD, technically a book would stay in print forever.

Poetry Presses Using Lulu

2009-04-14T15:13:00.002-04:00

I notice at least one small (and good) poetry press, FutureCycle, is switching to Lulu.com as its publisher. I found this interesting because I had always thought of Lulu as place for self-publication, which I am guardedly in favor of, but this press seems to be using them simply as a printer. Lulu books are very well done, from the ones I have seen, and certainly POD is the way to go for micro-runs of books. Has anyone else come across this?

Help Protect Baby Seals From Murder

2009-03-11T07:51:00.001-04:00

PETA Prime: Celebrating Kind Choices: Oh, Canada

From the story: But Canada isn’t taking this lying down. In a misguided and dirty effort to make the slaughter seem more palatable, they’ve implemented new “standards,” including requiring that sealers wait 60 seconds before skinning the seals in order to “ensure” that they are dead. I’m sorry, but bludgeoning gentle animals, impaling them, dragging them across the ice, and ripping off their skin after a 60-second pulse check-if anyone is actually watching-does not fit any realistic definition of “humane.” And the new regulations don’t require a speck of oversight.

How Humane Are You?

2009-03-10T18:30:00.002-04:00

This is a story (click on the title) about laboratory torture of chimpanzees and monkeys. Do we have a right to make these creatures lives' years (sometimes as many as fifty years) of endless torment in order to help make our lives safer? Tests can often be performed on tissue samples instead of live animals. Many animals are tortured simply to make sure cosmetics and personal care products are safe for humans. I don't want to use a shampoo that has been rubbed into the eyes of restrained animals. Do you? There are companies that offer alternatives that have not be tested on animals. Do a little research and stop sponsoring torture. Please sign this petition to try to get a pain-free retirement for some elderly chimpanzees.

Writing Prompts

2009-03-07T11:43:00.002-05:00

I've found that some of my best writing comes from the simplest beginnings. As an encouragement to all of us to give this approach a try, I've just put a gadget on this blog that will take you to "The One-Minute Writer," a blog that supplies readers with a prompt for one-minute writing every day. Once you get in the habit of doing this, you'll find you come up with hundreds of your own prompts. Get a Moleskine and carry it around with you! You'll soon find yourself writing every minute you can find. "I never have time to write" will no longer be an excuse when all that is asked of you is . . . a minute's worth of writing. You'll find you want to go back to these when you have five, fifteen, sixty minutes and expand them into longer pieces. BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO! Leave them as one-minute pieces if you like, make them a journal of your thoughts and observations. If you do want to play with them a bit, try the "Expansion From Within" approach. After each sentence you have written, write a sentence expanding that idea. Do this over and over. If you want company, head over to the TOMW site and see what other people are doing.

Obama Orders Continuation Of Illegal CIA Renditions

2009-02-08T17:33:00.000-05:00

Obama Orders Continuation Of Illegal CIA Renditions

Obama lets CIA keep controversial renditions tool -- chicagotribune.com

2009-02-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

Obama lets CIA keep controversial renditions tool -- chicagotribune.com

Channeling Skype

2008-10-16T08:46:00.006-04:00

Having a child who lives in Scotland, and telephone rates being what they are, I am happy to satisfy my need of mother-talk via Skype, using our computers as telephones and paying exactly nothing. Yes, you heard me correctly. Zero. Nada. Rien.

However, today I realized why I always think of my Great-Aunt (or maybe that’s Great-Great-Aunt) Clementine every time I call my daughter.

Clemmie, as she was called, was married to Uncle George, who had charged up a hill with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American (so-called) War.. Clemmie brewed up her week’s worth of coffee all at once and stored it in jars under the sink. Her great romance, before Uncle George, had been at the St. Louis World’s Fair. She always carried $3000.00 in her purse and all her rings in a little bag around her neck.

When she went missing from time to time, everybody raced to the bus station and pulled her off the bus St. Louis-bound. Eventually, long after Uncle George joined Teddy Roosevelt, Aunt Clemmie passed on to that great World’s Fair in the sky.

She was a home-loving gal, however, and one of the great-nieces had a bit of a gift for psychic things. One of the most exciting events I remember from my childhood was when the telephone call would came, “Get over here quick. Clemmie’s trying to come through!” Then we all got to sit around in a circle in a darkened room and try to decipher the bits of disconnected babble that was Clemmie trying to find out what was going on , or to tell us something important about the afterlife. We never got the message clearly enough to find out. There would be some noises, “H-h-h-huh...” “Hello, Aunt Clemmie, is that you? We’ve got a bad connection. Try again.”

We would watch the dancing balls of light and brush bits of ectoplasm off our faces and shout back and forth to no avail for a couple of hours, asking questions about the afterlife and getting busts of stutter and babble in return.

This would go on some time until we gave up, coffee cake and mugs of cocoa came out and we all went home feeling we’d been in touch with something stately and grave.

Oh, right, that’s why I remember Clemmie when I Skype with my daughter. “Mu-mu-mu-mom, is that yyyyyyyyyoooooooooouuuuuuuuuu? Can you hu-hear-gobble-squawk-fadeout?” And I reply, “We have a bad connection. Can you hear me?” “Yes, I can hear you now. Can you hear me?” Sort of like the early days of CB radio. Remember that? “X calling Y. Are you receiving me, Y?” I remember my father going on like that all evening. My Skype call again.

But it’s a blessing. A good part of the time, it works. No matter how happy we are to talk, the conversation is sweetened by the fact that I’m not paying by the minute. Sometimes, there are extra-special glitches, like last night, when I realized I was saying this: “Aunt Clemmie? Is that you? Get off the line! I’m trying to talk to my daughter.” When this happens, we hang up and try again and fifty percent of the time, it works!

Poetry Readings As Sacred Space

2008-10-15T11:10:00.003-04:00

I am still in the afterglow of my featured reading at Robin’s Bookstore last night,. Robin’s is Philadelphia’s revered independent bookstore and literary Mecca. How grateful I am when I have a poetry reading and people actually come to hear me read. Let out sharp little intakes of breath. Smile. Laugh. Say afterward that THEY ACTUALLY ENJOYED MY WORK

I think we take it too much for granted that in small rooms in bookstores, coffeehouses, church basements, and on street corners all over the United States (and I suspect all over the world), people gather to get naked together via the words they have written. Being basically a shy person who longs for the life of a cloistered nun, I find it difficult to face a reading but I become filled with delight as the evening goes on and I realize people are listening carefully to these words the duende brought to me.

In addition, for me, one of the most joyous parts of a reading, one I always look forward to, is the open reading that follows the featured reading. If I am not the featured reader, I often go to other people’s readings and participate in the open mike. While we're on the subject, let me say there is a special place in hell for featured readers who do not have the courtesy to stay and hear the poems of those who have come to hear them. These people are strapped in slippery folding chairs beside microphones that read a monotonous alphabet to them for all eternity. (Oh, pray for mercy—even the self-obsessed may hope for redemption.) But I love the opens as much as the features, although in a different way.

The people who read in the open often tend to be newbies, those who haven’t published much yet, students, people in mid- or late-life who have just written their first poem, people who have written for the drawer a la Emily Dickinson for years and are just now creeping out of their room and venturing to share work, 13-year-olds who have just discovered haiku, cowpokes and mechanics and elderly, tattooed Hell’s Angels who pull out a poem written in pencil on the back of an old envelope..

Such work is often not polished but it invariably contains elements of naked truth. You are being privileged glimpses within someone’s thoughts and souls that I have not encountered in any other place. For some it stops there but you start to have a family feeling simply because you have come to know a lot about this person. For as many years as you encounter such people, they will continue to read similar poems, which you appreciate for their content. For others, you notice over the years that they are studying and learning more about the craft, which of course allows their thoughts to strike deeper within the listeners’ hearts.

Readings, whether in subterranean drippy caverns or lofty rooms where through Palladian windows you see the tops of trees, are sacred places, where we gather to enact over and over the rituals that we hope will open the numinous to us, even as do churches, theatres and maternity wards full of newborn babies.

Good Summary of Palin's So-Called Achievements

2008-09-29T11:10:00.002-04:00

Here's a sample of the text of this editorial. It's a good, clear summary of many of the distortions of truth and actual lies Palin has been saying.

"Relax Sarah; you’re not going to Washington quite yet. So here is a little news flash for you. You will not get a good opinion from the media unless you deserve one. So far, you do not and attacking the media for your own shortcomings is not going to help your situation. It is not the media’s fault for example that you are under an ethics investigation with a special counsel who says he has over 20 emails and voice mails from you and your people trying to coerce someone into firing your brother in law. It is not the media’s fault that your lawyer has now tried to move this investigation to a board, which consists of three people you have appointed; a clear conflict of interest. It is not the media’s fault Sarah, when it is discovered that you are the Earmark Queen of Alaska, sucking in 27 million dollars for your little town of 6,500 people, while claiming to be a “reformer”. It is not the fault of the media that there is video of you attributing the war in Iraq to God. It is not the fault of the media that your pastor is on record as twisting scripture to fit his own political agenda. It is likewise, not the fault of the media that you claim to be a reformer but haven’t reformed anything."

georgebushjohnmccainhugging.jpg (JPEG Image, 300x359 pixels)

2008-09-18T07:40:00.000-04:00

georgebushjohnmccainhugging.jpg (JPEG Image, 300x359 pixels)

Hormel Torture of Pigs--Consider Becoming A Vegetarian

2008-09-17T20:08:00.000-04:00

Call on Hormel to make changes for animals!

Time to rediscover the glory of chapbooks | Books | guardian.co.uk

2008-09-17T16:03:00.000-04:00

Time to rediscover the glory of chapbooks | Books | guardian.co.uk

The booklets have been spreading the literary word for more than 450 years and they still have the power to delight and inform in equal measure

It is sometimes easy to forget about chapbooks in an era of immediate online publishing and personalised literary blogs - a modern environment where any poem, review or piece of short fiction can be published the moment it is finished. Yet, against all the odds, somewhere within this grip of modernity, the age-old chapbook continues to delight and inform.

Listology: 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die: 1 to 785 (My Progress: 1)

2008-09-06T12:26:00.000-04:00

Not long ago, I shared with you a list of 1000 books you must read before you die. Now, in case you have a little time left over from your reading, here is a similar list of paintings. Start making plane reservations!

Listology: 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die: 1 to 785 (My Progress: 1)

The wisdom of writer Jeanette Winterson

2008-09-03T10:22:00.005-04:00

"All I can say is that there is no escape from the night sea voyage and when it comes, that dark ship with no crew and no destination, you must board it, not knowing when the journey will end or what its purpose might be."

Jeanette Winterson is not only a luminous and intellectual novelist but a wise human being, deeply in touch with nature as well as with human life. I think you will find it well worth your time to read her monthly blog as well as to discover all the other riches on her site. If you subscribe, you'll get an e-mail every month letting you know the new column is up.

Reading this will whet your appetite to rush out to your nearest bookstore!

E. Christopher Ott's Review of Demon Love Story

2008-08-28T15:51:00.004-04:00

Okay, I admit it. Every once in a while I Google my own name to see if there's anything new. To my surprise, I found this review of a short story I published in Identity Theory about a year ago. I don't know you, Mr. Ott, but I like you very very much and I thank you for liking my story. If readers would like to read it, there's a link to this story right here on my blog, as well as links to a lot of published poetry, short fiction and essays.

Demon Love Story by Tree Riesener is a lyric piece of magical realism in a domestic setting. Through the use of a loose second-person point of view, the narrator tells the story of abandoning a long-term, comfortable relationship with Satan to pursue the excitement of a life of affairs and relationships with more suitable amorous interests. But after working through the end of the relationship with the Demon Lover in very real terms, the narrator’s new life playing the field eventually finds the way back to a relationship with a changed, improved Satan,
which is yet a life with Satan nonetheless.

The primary attraction of this piece is the skilful use of Satan to personify a relationship that, while mature and developed, lacks the romance that this life should embody. The narrative manages to capture very quickly the essence of new, vibrant love appearing for somebody already in a committed arrangement and contrast it against a pre-existing love of convenience. Particularly stunning is the detailed, contemporary feel of the everyday events catalogued to illustrate the end of a relationship and the adventure of entering new romantic frontiers as well as how, though all new love gives way to old love, the essential nature of a mature relationship can change with experience.

The URCHIN Series

2008-08-11T15:35:00.000-04:00

The URCHIN series

Celebrate Mina Loy--an unconventional life and mysterious poetry. Join a crowd of whoever shows up at 2nd and Market, Philadelphia, 7:30. Bring Loy's poems to read. Hosted by CA Conrad. Down in the subway if it rains! Look for the signs!

Farewell to Solzhenitsyn

2008-08-06T08:26:00.003-04:00

This link will lead you to a video of the sorrowful farewell of the Solzhenitsyn family and the world to a towering literary figure. In an age where Western funerals have often become occasions for humorous memories by friends of whoever has died and even stand-up comedy is considered appropriate, it is a sobering reflection to see that in some places grief is acknowledged and a funeral is an occasion for a final good-bye.

Readings webjournal: Ravi Shankar - Vikings and Yellow Submarines

2008-07-24T11:15:00.000-04:00

An excellent and thought-provoking essay on the subject of the so-called new formalism.

. . . It’s when the new form begins to bear weight, to enable a tradition, to become institutionalized, that the aesthetic object passes over from the category of the avant-garde into that of formalism. That’s part of the point Paul Mann was making in his book, “The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde,” when he writes, “there has never been a project for delegitimizing cultural practice that did not turn immediately, or sooner, into a means of legitimation…the avant-garde has in fact served, in most cases quite unwittingly, as an instrument for the incorporation of its own marginality. The avant-garde is outside of the inside, the leading edge of the mainstream.” Ouch! That’s a rather grim view of the commodification of the avant-garde and serves to collapse the distance we presume exists between it and formalism, but the generative act itself and its subsequent deployment by the earliest practitioners is where the potentialities of the future are balanced by the subsistence of the past. . . .

Readings webjournal: Ravi Shankar - Vikings and Yellow Submarines

PA Puppy Mills - BOYCOTT Stores That Sell Puppy Mill Dogs PetsPlus Pet Shops in PA & NJ

2008-07-18T23:36:00.002-04:00

PA Puppy Mills - BOYCOTT Stores That Sell Puppy Mill Dogs PetsPlus Pet Shops in PA & NJ

Some very mistreated dogs have been rescued from one of the evil Lancaster County puppy mills, but there are many more desperate animals that need to be saved. Read this story to be aware of this horrible situation and be able to help the cause of helping them.

About the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die group - Shelfari

2008-07-10T12:08:00.001-04:00

You may not want to read all of these but there are a lot of good books here so pick and choose. Why not start a dedicated list of your own and start to work through it!

About the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die group - Shelfari

Eavan Boland at The Poetry Foundation

2008-07-08T21:49:00.005-04:00

This interesting essay by Eavan Boland is on the Poetry Foundation site, touching on various poetic subjects but especially interesting on the poet's life--to be a poet of skills who can write, read or teach, or a poet who dedicates himself/herself only to the act of writing?

"But there is always a fraction — even if it’s just a small minority — of poets out in the world who don’t want to do any of these things. If there’s a conversation, they’re having it with themselves, with their own poems. They don’t want to extend it, share it, structure it. They are private, inward, and dissociated from the skills on offer or in demand.

Once I thought there was a broad tolerance for this. Now I’m not so sure. In Ireland, or the us or the uk, the tilt is towards the poet who can navigate the worlds of the university, the institution, the community, the reading series, the community workshop, the literary festival. There has been a gradual, perhaps calcifying professionalism which requires of a poet a standard of behavior and communality which poets were once exempted from. I was never uncritical of that exemption. But now, somehow, I wish I saw more of it. "

Follow the link to read the complete essay.

I Love Facebook!

2008-07-07T09:45:00.002-04:00

After signing up some time ago and posting in a desultory fashion for a while, I finally started to use Facebook and I have to say I love it. To begin with, I've found some old friends. Since I'm a writer, I've found some friends of friends, looked them up and invited them to network with me. This is a gentle, non-obtrusive way to share lives with people who are engaged in the same enterprises. You can announce readings or tell people how much you enjoyed the grapefruit you just ate. To some, this may seem trivial but I have an enormous appetite for daily life and I find the little things people sometimes post endearing. And I love waking up, staggering to my computer before coffee (as is my habit) and finding somebody has sent me some virtual brownies! I love getting ideas for things to read from what other people are reading. I love sending virtual martinis, pigs, banana splits and hatchable eggs to people. After all, it's the thought that counts, isn't it, and writers never have any money to give real presents to people. Facebook has a nice clean presentation with minimal advertising. Easy to use. Lots of applications, all of which have worked seamlessly for me. I added the Facebook toolbar and get automatic updates so I can easily zip over to get the latest news and then get back to work. Yeah, I'm a born-again Facebook convert! Hope to see you there!

If you ever, in your worst nightmare, thought of voting Republican, watch this!

2008-06-16T12:08:00.000-04:00

I'm Voting Republican: ""

New Literary Magazine Launch--SVJ LIT!

2008-04-08T21:00:00.006-04:00

It was a joyous day on April 6 as poets from the Philadelphia area and as far away as Connecticut and New York City gathered at the Manayunk Art Center to celebrate two happy events--the twenty-sixth volume of the Schuylkill Valley Journal (the print edition) and the inauguration of SVJ LIT (the online editon).

As the photo shows, the reading was launched with a social hour of good food and drink, surrounded by the monthly show of the artists of the MAC.

Following party time, many of the poets and short story writers in the new issue read their work. Accompanied by Mark Wilhelm, SVJ LIT's information architect, I talked a bit about our new online magazine. We'll be featuring selected work from the print edition as well as work that will only appear online. The magazine will be morphing into new delights as we continue to develop our online presence, so check us out frequently at SVJLIT.com!

Four Poets Reading From Their New Books

2008-03-15T19:28:00.005-04:00

What could be better than gathering at the Manayunk Art Center, surrounded by the First Sunday art exhibit, and reading poetry with friends? (Poets in the photo are, from left to right, JC Todd, Alexander Long, host Peter Krok, Robert Zaller, and Tree Riesener.)

On March 2, I gathered with JC Todd, Alexander Long and Robert Zaller for an afternoon of poetry. We all have new books out: Robert Zaller's Islands, Alexander Long's Noise and JC Todd's What Space This Body. My new books are Angel Poison and Inscapes.

Part of the joy of a multi-poet reading is the variety of offerings. Of course there are contrasts but it's interesting how often a sort of synchronicity arises, with the poets touching on some similar themes but with very different viewpoints.

It's even nicer when, as with this afternoon's reading, there's time before the reading (with lovely refreshments and a glass of wine) and after to talk with the audience. After all, the writer and the reader have to come together for the poem to fully flower, and there are few things that give me such a rush as to listen to someone's comments on what I have just read (still better to get e-mails later with more thoughts).

Now that I have a chat room on this blog, I'm looking forward to a new sort of interaction. I'll be there every Tuesday evening from 8:00 to 9:00. Bring your poetic thoughts and join me!

The Earth's Sixth Great Mass Extinction Is Occurring As You Read This

2008-02-27T09:48:00.003-05:00

Here are some excerpts from an essay on the human rush to destroy the planet. I think this is one of the most important posts I have ever made. I hope you will all follow the link and read this essay by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson.

There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past, the most devasting being the Third major Extinction (c. 245 mya), the Permian, where 54% of the planet's species families lost. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year -- which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis -- this "Sixth Extinction" -- is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed. . . . Recently humans have accelerated the extinction rate to where several entire species are annihilated every single day. . . . Over 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have compiled data showing that currently 51 per cent of known reptiles, 52 per cent of known insects, and 73 per cent of known flowering plants are in danger along with many mammals, birds and amphibians. . . . Since animals and plants exist in symbiotic relationships to one another, extinction of one species is likely to cause ”co-extinctions”.

Tree Riesener's new poetry collection, Inscapes, now available.

2008-02-18T20:51:00.013-05:00

Well, here it is--my new chapbook from Finishing Line Press!

The title is a word coined by poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, referring to the psychological landscape that makes each object unique, the inherent essence that may lead the viewer/reader to transcend the physicality of what is seen.

Here’s what leading poets are saying about
this collection:

“Like her exemplar Gerard Manley Hopkins – who coined the word ‘inscape’ to denote ‘individually distinctive beauty,’ the divine spark flaring up in every living thing – Tree Riesener reveals in these poems a world infused with light, where ‘our bodies shimmer as we walk,’ and the inevitable shattering that life deals out only makes our fragments shine the more. In her inscapes, even scattered small change rings with richness; even the poignant mis-recognitions of dementia bear their weight of blessing; the Eucharist’s as neighborly – and as eye-opening – as a potluck dinner. Within the mundane, the tragic, the horrific, Tree Riesener offers us a fresh vision of transcendence ‘zingy as a nonstop rubber ball.’”

--Nathalie Anderson, author of Crawler (the Mcgovern Prize) and Following Fred Astaire (the Washington Prize), Poet-In-Residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Director of the Program in Creative Writing at Swarthmore College

“This is a book of mysteries: cosmic chartings, how desire wears many masks, and how light reveals the world to us, detail after detail. Here is a poet with a brave eye and even a braver heart.”

--Rane Arroyo, author of The Portable Famine (John Ciardi Prize for Poetry), Pale Ramon, The Singing Shark, Columbus’s Orphan and The Naked Thief, Director of Creative Writing at the University of Toledo.

“Tree Riesener's poems are a force in the face of the difficulties of our twenty-first century. A dark world presents itself, but there is a shimmering, too, as she sees it. Immediacy is her method. Urgency is at the heart of her mix of the commonplace and mystical. She gets her wisdom, it appears. from prayer, relics, palimpsest, and the weather channel. Apocalypse is in the air, yet bread bakes, leaves and incense burn. Strangely, we are comforted. How bright are all things here, and compelling and delicate through Riesener's eyes.”

--Leonard Gontarek, author of Déjà Vu Diner, Zen for Beginners, Van Morrison Can’t Find His Feet, and St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris.

“Tree Riesener’s inscapes aims for duration, in the form of historical perspective (with poems that appeal to Herodotus and Praxilla of Sicyon) and in the form of sustained brevities (fossil fungus caught copulating for 35 million years). But by its very title inscapes invokes Hopkins as its presiding spirit, and by extension the sacred as its obsession and torment, with the result (as in Hopkins) that joy and suffering are inseparable: we start with a declaration of one (“how bright are all things here”) and end with a declaration of the other (“listen we ate and drank god”).”

--H.L. Hix, author of Chromatic (Finalist, National Book Award), Shadows of Houses, Rational Numbers (T.S. Eliot Prize), Perfect Hell (Peregrine Smith Award), Director of the Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Wyoming

I am pleased to announce the immediate availability of Inscapes from Finishing Line Press. I've printed one of the poems below so you can have a sneak preview. Inscapes can now be orderd through the press's web page, www.finishinglinepress.com, under 2008 New Releases, for $14. You can also buy it at Amazon.com. Best of all, send me an e-mail at tree (at) treeriesener.com and get it without shipping charges! Thank you. I hope you enjoy the book! After you read it, I would love to hear from you.

a fragment from praxilla of sicyon

gone

a lifetime’s familiarity with apples

redolent

of cinnamon and nutmeg and myrhh

laid out in pastry

rolled with a delicate sure touch

for a moment

held high on triumphant fingertips

trimmed

to fall a perfect circle

on the floury tabletop

finally

flowers cut into a sugar-sprinkled crust

now no more

apples or pears or cucumbers

no more blazing stars milky moonlight

nor even beloved sun said praxilla of sicyon

the earth’s her bed now

not long ago

a moment in my garden

white hair drifting on the sunny breeze

arms filled with lavender’s comfort

she recited

from sunday school of eighty years ago

this is the day the lord has made

let us rejoice in it and be glad

later I warmed applesauce

served sugar-sprinkled toast

tea on thin flowery china

watching she said

I’m lost I feel so sad

until the sudden clarity of sunshine

through the window like a birth

splashed on window ivy silver pot

and her surprised face filled with joy

you remind me of my mother

she said are you my mother

Tree Riesener's Angel Poison now available.

2008-01-23T23:22:00.000-05:00

This is the cover of my new chapbook, angel poison, from Pudding House Publications. These poems are meditations on the condition of our contemporary world, such as this one:

extraordinary renditions

it's always two a.m.
in room 101
there where they speak screamish

brutal fat chuckles

sobbing swelling ebbing

segmentals and suprasegmentals
noted on a clipboard
evaluating the minimal linguistic unit

the language spoken
only in the place
where there is no darkness

Angel poison is available from Pudding House Publications or (easier) send me an e-mail (tree (at) treeriesener.com) and I'll mail you a signed first edition plus an invoice for $12.00.

Religious Poetry at the Manayunk Art Center

2007-12-05T01:45:00.000-05:00

Angela O'Donnell, Peter Krok, Tree Riesener, Father John McNamee, Marjorie Maddox

Catholic Poetry Gets Forum At The Manayunk Art Center

By: Jared Brey, For The Bulletin, 12/04/2007

Philadelphia - The Manayunk Art Center is accessed by a bumpy brick walkway that curves behind a stately residential house at 419 Green Lane. Benches line the yard, painted bold red and bright yellow. The center itself - MAC, as it is called - occupies a small brick stable built in the With two floors, a gallery, a studio and a small shop, the Manayunk Art Center offers art classes and poetry workshops, and on the first Sunday of each month, a special humanities program. This month's event was a poetry reading titled "A Catholic Look: Five Poets Putting Faith into Words."

Sunday's reading coincided with a gallery opening, "100 paintings for $100." The pieces on display, mostly small oil and watercolor landscapes, are the work of several local painters. The show runs through January.

Surrounded by these colorful paintings, five poets from various backgrounds convened on Sunday for an afternoon of faith-inspired readings. Chosen for the program were Angela O'Donnell and Marjorie Maddox, professors of English at Fordham and Lock Haven Universities respectively; Peter Krok and Tree Riesener, co-editors of the Schuylkill Valley Journal and MAC organizers; and Father John McNamee, a North Philadelphia clergyman whose book Diary of a City Priest was adapted into a film starring local actor David Morse.

Each author read a selection of poems which explored the concept of faith with unique, personal sentiment. The gathering was small but convivial, as guests enjoyed wine and light snacks while the poets read and conversed about Christian life, faith and doubt. Stirring poems about the Eucharist, the Saints, home and family were received by an attentive audience of the religious and non-religious alike. Each author's poems transcended rigid Christian dogma, studying the phenomenon of belief at a personal, human level.

Ms. O'Donnell read a series of poems about unofficial saints who have influenced her faith, Vincent Van Gogh and Frank Sinatra among them. Mr. Krok (who will be giving a reading and book signing this Saturday at the art center) read a piece from his recently published "Looking for an Eye," telling of his amazement with the trials and changes his life has endured. Ms. Riesener and Ms. Maddox each described in poetic detail their experiences with the holy sacraments. Father McNamee read contemplative pieces about his ancestral homeland from his newest book, Donegal Suite.

Peter Krok, known to some as the "red-brick poet," is humanities director for the Manayunk Art Center. The diverse events that he and his colleagues have planned for the next few months promise to be as interesting as this Sunday's reading. A Buddhism program is planned for January, a discussion of Poe and Dickens for February. MAC's sincere enthusiasm for the arts is refreshing, especially in a part of the city that is sometimes sickeningly "artsy." For the past few decades, Manayunk has been doing its best to present itself as an arts and culture hub. But despite a decent array of arts resources in the neighborhood, the general mood of the town's artistic personality is less than inspiring. Still, those involved with the Manayunk Art Center, which is set above and behind the faint glimmer of Main Street, seem to be earnestly engaged in the life of the arts. And judging from this Sunday's poetry reading, MAC's humanities programs are indeed a worthwhile endeavor.

For more information about the Manayunk Art Center or the poets mentioned above, visit manayunkartcenter.org

Stop Puppy Mills: Humane Society

2007-10-10T13:27:00.000-04:00

Check out this site for video exposing the cruelty of animal auctions and lots of information about the hideous world of breeding dogs to supply pet stores (and I suspect laboratories). Sign the pledge to stop puppy mills! Let's stop the torture of human beings by our government and the torture of animals (including the horros of factory farming). Unless you're buying eggs from truly cage-free chickens, that breakfast egg was tainted! If you can't be a vegetarian, campaign for pain-free animal execution!

Amnesty International Stop Torture Initiative

2007-10-09T11:52:00.000-04:00

Long after the scandal at Abu Ghraib and the Administration’s denouncement of all that happened there, the New York Times reported last week that in 2005, the Justice Department issued a secret internal memo that endorsed "the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency."

We’re angry: the America we believe in does not torture people. And in response, we're mounting a national fall campaign to "86" these policies once and for all.

86 days separate two infamous dates: October 17th marks the first year anniversary of the Military Commissions Act and January 11th marks the anniversary of the first detainee transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

Join us on October 17th as we stand and protest the wrong-headed policies these two dates represent: torture, indefinite detention, guilty until proven innocent.

Help us kick-off our "86 it" campaign by:

Hosting your own protest by downloading our action guide (PDF).
Attending an event that’s already happening in your area by contacting us via email at dtorture@aiusa.org. We’ll put you in touch with the right people locally.
Taking pictures of your actions to "86" torture and sending them to dtorture@aiusa.org.

.: G. Michael Palmer's "Parthenogenisis of Propago" :: Half Drunk Muse Poetry Ezine :.

2007-10-07T10:35:00.000-04:00

.: G. Michael Palmer's "Parthenogenisis of Propago" :: Half Drunk Muse Poetry Ezine :.

A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation - New York Times

2007-10-07T08:32:00.000-04:00

A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation - New York Times

Follow the above link to this interesting article, from which the quote below was taken!

In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.

Torture, Not "Severe Interrogation."

2007-10-05T09:17:00.000-04:00

Read this excellent and extensive article about what the Bush administration calls "severe interrogration." It's not severe interrogation, it's torture!

By Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations - New York Times

Conservatives Are Such Jokers - New York Times

2007-10-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's commentary on the callous greed of conservatives when it comes to caring for the not-rich-and-powerful members of our society.
Conservatives Are Such Jokers - New York Times.

THE GREAT AMERICAN PINUP

2007-08-04T13:05:00.000-04:00

THE GREAT AMERICAN PINUP
My faith lies elsewhere. When I finished reading Joshua Kryah’s Glean (Nightboat Books, 2007) and started thinking about what I would write in my review of the book, that is sentence that came to me, almost as if it had been waiting—who knows how long?—somewhere in the back or just below the surface of my consciousness for me to read the final lines of “Come Hither,” the last poem in the book. (I apologize for the problems with lineation. I could not get Blogger to reproduce the correct layout of the poems I have quoted): . . .

So What's With All These Chapbook Reviews?, Susan Settlemyre Williams

2007-07-19T16:42:00.000-04:00

From Susan Settlemyre Williams' interesting article about chapbooks: "The production values of many contemporary chapbooks are at least as high as those of longer books; those of Tupelo Press, for instance, are perfect-bound like larger books, although binding a book of thirty-two pages or less requires a heavier grade of paper. The covers of Poetry Society of America chapbooks resemble William Morris prints. Finishing Line Press describes its products, which come with bookmark ribbons and expensive endpapers, as "limited collector's editions." (Follow the link to read the whole article.)

Sums by Tree Riesener

2007-07-19T14:42:00.001-04:00

powered by ODEO
Do you have to cry all night for comfort in the morning?
When despair brings you to wine in the darkness
and you black out until the next morning,
have you missed your chance?
Some can say the mountains skip like rams
and the hills run to and fro like little sheep.
In your dreams you might believe that.
Waking, you know you'd be too weak
to stay awake for the rapture,
or the eclipse or even the late-late show.
You know you dozed there beside the bed
that night your father had to go away,
but you woke up for the plunging dial,
opened a window for his soul to wander,
even though the staff looked at you,
asked if you were all right, did you need anything.
Take it easy; your eyes can burn like thornfire,
even give out on you. They can fail you completely,
when you watch that long, no hope left in your heart,
sustained only by wine, blackness, and finally, tears.

The Stasi On Our Minds by Timothy Garton Ash

2007-07-10T19:31:00.000-04:00

Here's another take on the movie, The Lives of Others, from the New York Review of Books--an extremely erudite and well-researched review, "The Stasi On Our Minds" by Timothy Garton Ash. Scroll down a couple of posts to see my thoughts on the same movie and please post your own ideas.

"One of Germany's most singular achievements is to have associated itself so intimately in the world's imagination with the darkest evils of the two worst political systems of the most murderous century in human history. The words "Nazi," "SS," and "Auschwitz" are already global synonyms for the deepest inhumanity of fascism. Now the word "Stasi" is becoming a default global synonym for the secret police terrors of communism. The worldwide success of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's deservedly Oscar- winning film The Lives of Others will strengthen that second link, building as it does on the preprogramming of our imaginations by the first. Nazi, Stasi: Germany's festering half-rhyme." (Follow the link for the rest of the article.)

The Beat Goes On: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

2007-06-29T09:39:00.000-04:00

According to Ferlinghetti, in this article at About.com:Poetry, poetry should be about "presenting a new version of reality." He takes issue with Robert Pinsky's question, in his role as Poet Laureate, "What's your favorite poem?" Sometimes open-ended questions like this can bring about deep and surprising results, so maybe he's being a little harsh. I think it all depends on what you do with those poems, but this interview is an interesting glimpse into the mind of an icon of poetry, looking at today's poetry world.

The Lives of Others: A Movie About Writing

2007-06-13T12:28:00.000-04:00

The lonely writer in a garret—has there ever been a truer cliché? The lonely writer in The Lives of Others, the Academy Award-winning film from director Florian Henchel von Donnersmarck, does indeed carry out the traditional authorial function of endlessly banging on a typewriter (no computer in Cold War East Berlin) in a garret, writing down his observations of people whose lives are hovering dangerously close to disaster.

In this way, he embodies Graham Greene’s observation about all writers, that they “have a sliver of ice in their hearts.” Writers observe and keep notes. I myself have surreptitiously taken out my notebook at a funeral and jotted down some particularly interesting details. In keeping up with my daily journals, I have often thought that life exists mainly to be written down. This writer, however, is a member of the Stasi, the East German Secret Police, keeping an observation log of the writer who lives in an apartment under the garret. One writer keeping track of another—does that sound familiar?

We first meet Captain Gerd Weissler (Ulrich Mühe) interrogating a prisoner, forcing him to repeat his defense over and over for hours until, groggy with lack of sleep, he changes his wording. The Captain explains later to students that it is in that departing from the script that truth lies, a path the Captain will soon find himself following.

Up in the garret over the apartment of playwright Georg Drayman (Sebastian Koch), Captain Weissler is being faithful to the truth as he perceives it, keeping a log of the writer’s life to see if he is keeping to the party line, until the fateful day the Captain steps out of his role as observer, and, taking ownership of the story, manipulates his wires and causes the doorbell to ring in time for Georg to see his lover, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), getting out of a government car.

At this point, Captain Weissler crosses the line from being a diary keeper to being a true writer. He has chosen the life of an artist to that of a bureaucrat. He begins to fall in love with his characters, as writers do, live with them, obsess about them. From that, it is only a step to succumb to interacting in person, and he chats a bit with Christa-Maria in a grimy cafe. His reports continue to protect his characters from the danger of his higher-ups, inevitably starting to bring their suspicious glances on him.

Through the device of an article on the high rate of suicide in East Germany, suppressed from any publicity, but slipped through to publication in the West, suspicion falls on the writer in spite of the Captain’s attempts at protection; Georg and Christa-Maria are arrested.

Captain Weissler must interrogate her, no longer resisting this turn of events, and gets her to confess by assuming a powerful authorial approach. She is, after all, an actress (and a drug-addicted actress), whose being has been trained to accept direction. What can he do? All authors come to realize that at a certain point their lovingly crafted characters take on a life of their own. She reveals the hiding place in the writer’s apartment of the untraceable typewriter used to write the smuggled-out article. Of course the typewriter, and its blood-red ribbon, is missing, taken away by Captain Weissler, in a final act of artistic solidarity.

As Georg is being taken out to interrogation and prison, Christa-Maria is given some of the drugs she is addicted to and let to go free, unfortunately being struck by a vehicle in the street and killed, the prime witness gone, the case collapsed.

The ending? After the fall of the wall, in the secret archives now available to the public, Georg finds the story so carefully written by the Captain and re-writes the story in a book dedicated in gratitude to him. How did he know? I’ll leave that for you to find out by seeing the movie. It is full of rich detail. But have no doubt, this is a story of two writers, writing the same story, from different viewpoints.

A wonderful movie, possibly the best movie I have ever seen about the process of writing, the demands, the discipline, the betrayals. Oh, yeah, it’s a good spy story as well, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that is what this movie is really about. Yes, it details a world that attempted to crush the human spirit, and it's good that we have this insight into what it was like to live in that world but it’s more about the stories we write of each other’s lives, the loyalties and the betrayals and the struggle toward love and nobility, whether on paper or not, every day of this world that all of us live in.

As well as the Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film, this movie won seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards for best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor, and best supporting actor. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe. Rumor has it there’s going to be a Hollywood re-make but all I can say is, don’t bother to go see it. You can’t improve on perfection!

Helix Nebula

2007-02-11T11:55:00.000-05:00

Helix Nebula
Tree Riesener
(First published in The Schuylkill Valley Journal)

Scattered paraphernalia left after creation,
as when a priest,
wandering off with friends
for a glass of beer and happy talk,
leaves behind abandoned on the altar
bell, book and candle,
crumpled purificator,
chalice and ciborium,
holy bread and wine.

A trillion miles deep into Aquarius,
tie-dyed orange, gold, rust, ghostly green
haloes the superhot white dwarf,
already stillborn,
flinging away sanctified fire from
Mary-blue at the quiet heart
of the wingy, spoked, glowing wheel,
the morning-glory flower of thy open womb,
where more than bloodheated stellar wind
incarnated the doomed star's cosmic dust,
the last bell not even cast and hung,
the altar light guttering.

See The Trailer, Read The Book | Booksquare

2007-02-03T17:33:00.000-05:00

Watch the Book is an interesting new site for an interesting idea--make videos to tell the world about your book!

See The Trailer, Read The Book | Booksquare

PhillySound: new poetry

2007-02-02T21:07:00.000-05:00

A Conversation between Alice Notley and CA Conrad on trance, tarot and poetry. This will have you diving for your tarot deck when you write poetry. A rich interview.
PhillySound: new poetry

Desk Archaeology

2006-10-08T12:43:00.000-04:00

What I discovered when I decided to convert my desk from a storage place of three-foot-high piles to a functional place where I could write

Layer #1:

Receipt from certified mail to send COBRA payment to keep my health insurance after losing job
French vocabulary card for argent (silver, money)
Green-and-gold tomb-rubbbing bookmark of medieval Margaret Peyton, “the lace lady”
Small slip torn from an ad on the supermarket bulletin board: two young (they say) men selling small, split firewood
Gold ticket to the mummer’s parade in 2006, obtained under false pretenses when I pretended to be an out-of-towner at City Hall
Postcard advertising a novel, Carmen Dog, by Carol Emshwiller
Pretty little card of Jesus of the Sacred Heart
Note I’ve written to myself saying “12 Thirst, 12 Prayer, Birthday, Adultery, 13 Unlocking, 14 Random, Emissary, Dream”
Business card from Lewis Shacklock, Plumbing Specialist
Newspaper clipping with the headline “Unfair Tax Rule May Last Awhile” (so what else is new)
Old photo, much foxed and stained, of a stout old lady in an ankle-length flowered dress, probably taken in the 40’s. Who is she? I have no idea.
Book published by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1937 with such useful phrases as “formerly you did not wear stockings” and “the day before yesterday I sat here from morning to night.”
Recall notice with horrifying and dire information for all drugs containing phenylpropanolamine, which seems to be in every over-the-counter remedy I have ever purchased

I’ve only begun. Stay turned. In the meantime, excavate your own desk and share!

A Sweatshop Behind Bars by Chris Levister

2006-09-15T22:10:00.000-04:00

The nation's prison industry now employs more people than any Fortune 500 corporation except General Motors. Is prison labor rehab or corporate slavery?

If you think prison inmates only make license plates, you're behind the times.

As a child Ayana Cole dreamed of becoming a world class fashion designer. Today she is among hundreds of inmates crowded in an Oregon prison factory cranking out designer jeans. For her labor she is paid 45 cents an hour. At a chic Beverly Hills boutique some of the beaded creations carry a $350 price tag. In fact the jeans labeled "Prison Blues" -- proved so popular last year that prison factories couldn't keep up with demand. (Follow the link on the title to read the rest of this unbelievably shocking article.)

Dear Kafka (humor)

2006-09-10T20:46:00.001-04:00

In search of employment, I had to apply for a criminal background check. Discovered there’s a slick online system, requiring a major credit card, of course. A thought crossed my mind: How much of the criminal justice system is just one more growth industry? Reconsidered. Naaaaah, couldn’t be.

Although I’m a law-abiding registered voter, pretty good wife, mother, and churchgoer, my blood chills, the hair on my neck stands up, and I want to RUN when a police car happens to pull in behind me. I assume I’ve broken some law I never knew existed.

What I felt while waiting for the results of this test? Sheer terror.

How could I have got through this much of my life and not committed a major criminal act? Totally unknown to myself, of course. How can we even know what counts as a major crime? When I was about nine, I remember shoplifting a thumbsize pink plastic doll from the dime store. Maybe in the big scheme of things, that counts.

What if every night I come under the control of reptoids who have implanted a small module in my neck, using it to send me out as an assassin?

It seemed plausible that this check would show I was a bank robber, embezzler or, at least, as Psalm One puts it, someone who has been scornful and sat down with the disorderly. Done that a lot and boy, did I regret it now.

I pictured my results coming through to a room something like a cross between Winston Churchhill’s World War II underground command bunker and the control room of the star ship Enterprise. With maybe some Live-8-type fifty-foot high video screens outside to display my results to the world. I wasn’t going to be let off to sneak home with my crimes unknown.

Picture it. There’s a guy in suspenders, rolling a toothpick around in his mouth, watching requests for background checks coming in, getting mine, and calling out: “We’ve finally got her! Here’s the authorization to open up her records.”

Great excitement. The whole room gathers around the screen. All my enemies are there and even some major humiliations. Everyone who ever fired me. Everyone who ever passed me up for a date. People who had looked at the outfit I had on and snickered. All the thin people in the world. My mother from the time she got mad at me.

Everything starts to pour in. The screen fills up. Things flash and beep once in a while. All my ... crimes? Used the company photocopier to copy recipes. Wandered off with the bank’s ball point pen. Takes extra-big sips of communion wine. Wears sweaters instead of ironing. Eats deep fried food. Doesn’t always come to a full, car-crunching stop at signs in the middle of the night in deserted neighborhoods. Dips her chip twice when no one is watching.

It’s all there. Things I have done that I shouldn’t have, and things I haven’t done that I should have.

I think to myself, it’s not so bad. These are not crimes, only sins, and minor sins at that. But over in the corner, I see several men dressed in black poring over the printout. Worse than that, they’re highlighting things. Once in a while, one looks at the others and smiles.

I don’t like those smiles, remember what Cardinal Richelieu said back in the seventeenth century, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.”

In the end, the background check came out clean. Nothing they could hold me on. After all that, didn’t get the job. Still, it’s nice to have the certificate saying I’m crime-free. I guess. I’ll keep it in the folder with the transcipt of my unfinished degrees, my credit check, my Lyme Disease test results, and the letters from my old boyfriends.

For my literary executor.

Site Update

2006-09-03T11:33:00.000-04:00

I will be installing and learning to use new blog software over the next week or so. I expect a lot of stuff to go haywire in the meantime. If things don't work as expected here, please be patient. Everything will be back better than ever soon! Thank you for your patience.

Book of Hopes and Dreams Ed. Dee Rimbaud--Worthy Cause

2006-08-14T11:17:00.000-04:00

THE BOOK OF HOPES AND DREAMS, edited by Dee Rimbaud
Dear All:
I'm writing to let you know about my latest publication, a charity anthology of poetry, called "The Book Of Hopes And Dreams". This anthology will raise money for Spirit Aid ( http://www.spiritaid.org.uk ), to provide medicines, doctors, nurses and mobile clinics for the people of the remote Baglan Province of Afghanistan, who have had little or no medical facilities for a quarter of a century... as detailed in the documentary, "Children Of The Rubble", directed by David Hayman (head of Spirit Aid's operations)

This book features many award-winning and internationally respected writers, including Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Moniza Alvi, Alan Brownjohn, David Constantine, Cyril Dabydeen, Carol Anne Duffy, Ian Duhig, Ruth Fainlight, Vicki Feaver, Elaine Feinstein, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Ades Fishman, Magi Gibson, Alasdair Gray, Tony Harrison, John Heath-Stubbs, Michael Horovitz, Mimi Khalvati, Tom Leonard, Robert Mezey, Edwin Morgan, Lawrence Sail, Penelope Shuttle, Jon Stallworthy, Anne Stevenson and many others.

The book will be published this autumn, but a special, limited edition of 250 numbered copies will be available on 31st August to those who place an advance order. These will undoubtedly become collector's items in years to come. You can find out more about The Book Of Hopes And Dreams and read the biographies of all the contributors on my website at http://www.thunderburst.co.uk

If you would like to order an advance copy, click on this link:
http://www.bluechrome.co.uk/store/shop/item.asp?itemid=126&catid=60
(NB: you can pay in various currencies and the publisher is willing to ship worldwide)

I do hope you will consider buying a copy, maybe even buying several copies as they'll make ideal gifts for friends and family. It's for a very good cause, and it's also a very good book: both positive and uplifting. Scroll down for the full list of contributors and further details about the book.

All the very best

Dee Rimbaud

ps: Any help you can give to spread the word would be gratefully appreciated. For example, if you've got an email list or do an e-newsletter, mention it in that. If you've got a website, add a link. If you've got a blog, give it a mention in that. Bluechrome is a small, independent publisher, with a big heart. They do a charity anthology every year, but they just don't have the sort of publicity budget that larger publishers have: so any help you can give in that department will really be useful.

pps: If you are overwhelmingly well-disposed towards this project and happen to know someone who writes reviews, perhaps you could buy a copy, give it to the reviewer and try to twist their arm and get them to review it. More than anything, a review in a prestigious literature magazine or newspaper would help generate sales and interest. Unfortunately, small, independent publishers tend to get ignored by the bigger magazines and newspapers, and Bluechrome just can't afford to send out hundreds of review copies on spec in the hope that someone might review The Book Of Hopes And Dreams. I know this is a lot to ask, but I can't emphasise strongly enough how important it is that we raise as much money as possible for this project. Afghanistan has fallen off the charity map: it is not the most popular of countries because of the Taliban and Al Quaida; and as a result, ordinary, innocent Afghani civilians are suffering considerable hardship.

LIMITED FIRST EDITION OF 250 COPIES
AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER TODAY
The title of this book reflects its contents. 'The Book Of Hopes And Dreams' is full of the power of hopes and dreams. The poetry within its covers is subversive; reading it may lift your spirits and could possibly infect you with optimism. Exposure to optimism can be dangerous; it is not just delightful, but highly-addictive. In extreme cases addicts will happily run the risk of public ridicule by swimming against the prevailing tide of post-modern, ironic ennui. Their street-credibility decimated, their cool lost forever; you will know these hapless addicts by the upturning of their lips and the twinkle in their eyes.
Read this book and you too may stop thinking that everything is awful and nothing can be done about it. Buy this book and you have already begun the process; for you are giving money towards a remarkable cause. You are helping to provide doctors, nurses and medical supplies for the five hundred thousand people who live in isolated villages in the Baglan Province of North East Afghanistan, who until 2002 had gone nearly a quarter century without medical facilities of any kind, who until then had precious few reasons to believe in the power of hopes and dreams.

Thanks to the Glasgow-based charity, Spirit Aid (headed by actor and director, David Hayman), the people of Baglan Province now have at least some limited access to medical facilities. Over the coming years, Spirit Aid hopes to raise enough money to considerably improve this access, by providing and running six mobile clinics, together with a medical team of local doctors, nurses, paediatricians, dentists, pharmacists, drivers and interpreters. It's an ambitious project, but the people at Spirit Aid are rarely defeated by apathy, for they truly believe in the power of hopes and dreams.

Title: Book of Hopes & Dreams
ISBN: 1-904781-89-6
Editor: Dee Rimbaud

Published by: bluechrome
Page count: 124
RRP: £9.99
Availability: Pre-Order Released: November 2006
Order This Book Now

Please note that pre-ordered books will be despatched ahead of publication

Big Bridge Shuts Down To Protest War!

2006-08-06T18:26:00.000-04:00

"BIG BRIDGE WILL SHUT DOWN

FROM JULY 20, 2006 THROUGH AUGUST 20, 2006

TO PROTEST ALL WARS

AND TO DEMONSTRATE OUR SADNESS AND HORROR

AT THE TRAGIC LOSS OF HUMAN LIFE

IN THE MIDDLE EAST

"

The Great American Pinup

2006-08-04T16:20:00.000-04:00

THE GREAT AMERICAN PINUP: "A place for poetics. Discuss poetry, how it is written, its forms and its function. Where do poems come from? What makes a great poem great? Where are the intersections of the arts? Where does aesthetics and poetics collide or do they elide? Discuss a poem. Discuss a form. Discuss a style. Be specific, think like a postcard. Be brilliant, expose your genius."

Dead for Drinking a Beer

2006-08-04T13:48:00.000-04:00

It's no news to anybody that the recent heat has been devastating, over 100 a couple of days and the high 90's the rest of the time. Amtrak reduced the speed of its trains. Some elderly residents were taken to air-conditioned centers if their homes were too hot. In spite of such measures, on Wednesday August 2, five area residents died.

On Tuesday, David Marvel, a law-abiding man of 59 years, who had been caught drinking a beer while fishing in Ridley Creek Park, was sent to do "community service," an option given to first-time offenders to avoid trial and sentencing.

In this heat, he was set to stacking concrete blocks. His co-workers reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer that he "was burning hot. . . . His heart was racing."

He fell over and died. Walt R. Omlor Jr., director of the county's Community Corrections Department, said his department hadn't changed its operations after the death.

"The weather was taken into consideration," on Tuesday, he said.

Medical Examiner Fredric Hellman said heat was not a factor in the death. He said it was a heart attack brought on by arterial disease.

The county can't ask community service workers about medical conditions, said Marianne Grace, the county's executive director. To place offenders in appropriate jobs, she said, "We look at the kind of work that people do" for a living.

Marvel told his coworkers he operated a crane from an air-conditioned cab.

Well, I'm no expert in these matters but I wouldn't have put any person who was almost 60 years old to stacking cement blocks on a day that we were being told was a heat emergency. I wouldn't have put anybody of any age to stacking cement blocks on a day like that. Actually, I wouldn't put anybody of any age to doing anything like that on such a day.

May blessings follow you, David. I bet Jesus will crack a beer with you.

The information in this posting was taken from an article by Todd Mason(tmason@phillynews.com)in the Philadelphia Inquirer, August 4, 2006.

Horrors In Lebanon

2006-08-04T12:48:00.000-04:00

There cannot be a blog that will let you know more about the horrors that are happening every minute in Lebanon. The images and words here in Philadelphia poet Ashraf Osman's "arch.memory" blog will break your heart but spur you to action. Read here and then do what you can to make the "powers" stop this war. Then go on to do the same wherever these insane conflicts are taking place!

Pass the ashes, please!

2006-08-01T15:21:00.000-04:00

We have quite a few choices nowadays for our ultimate resting places, from traditional graves to cremations to green burials to transformation into (low grade) diamonds to trips into outer space a la Scotty. Queen Artemisia's choice showed real true love and I think if you offer the same thing to your special person there will be no doubt in his/her mind that you reeeeaaaaallllly love him/her. After her beloved King Maussollos died, Queen Artemisia (his sister/wife) had him cremated and over a period of time drank his ashes in her wine, so that in addition to the really splendid tomb (follow the link) she built for him, she became his living mausoleum! If this idea turns you on, watch the carbohydrates!

Ivy is here

2006-08-01T14:55:00.000-04:00

This is a blog with real content! Australia-Scotland-Wales-the world-the universe's poet Ivy Alvarez always has something interesting going on. July 25th's entry on the origin of sarcophagus will remind you about discerning word choices. She's inspired me to write about one of my favorite words, mausoleum, which I'm going to do in about five minutes. July 14th's note about Japanese death poems makes me grateful I'm allowed to churn out poems on any occasion that strikes my fancy. Anyway, this is a very good blog-- always some excellent poetry and lots of good links.

Stacy Schiff on Wikipedia (The New Yorker)

2006-07-28T21:08:00.000-04:00

If you're interested in Wikis and the Wicked (those who keep Wikis going), check out this vastly erudite, well-researched and entertaining article about the Wikipedia.

Wiki Not Wicca

2006-07-27T19:36:00.000-04:00

If you enjoy blogging, the logical next step for you is to start dabbling in Wiki (no, that’s not Wicca—something else entirely). Think of Wikis as “super-blogs,” easy-to-find blogs encompassing the whole world. Although a Wiki site is often started by an identifiable person or group, the site as a whole seems to lack the stamp of one person’s personality, as is often the case with blogs (although Wikis also involve comment and interaction).

A Wiki is above all a place for collaborative work (as well as interesting reading).

The characteristic linking lists with others you find on personal blogs is done a little differently in the Wiki world, although in my limited experience, the line blurs. You won’t usually find such lists.

What is being done in Wiki World is developing fast and in a lot of different directions (like the Big Bang), but in essence you find a number of interested people working on texts as such or ideas expressed in texts in different ways (really different ways). In actual practice, this includes writers workshopping poetry and prose.

A very simple approach is to post something; then other people “edit” that idea, that is, note their modifications, approval, rejection, etc. of the idea. Others can “edit” the response or go back to the original and it takes off from there. Wikis characteristically have a table of contents to help you begin to navigate the site.

A Wiki can encompass all sorts of sites, including personal blogs. A good example is the famous Wikipedia.

Here are a couple of Wiki-type blogs to get you started. I’ll put them in my “Links” section: Check out wetpaint (easy place to start), wikiwikisandbox (introductory), novelas (a fiction wiki), and everypoet (a poetry wiki).

You enter everypoet.com like any web site. This site has many interesting sections, such as the poetry free-for-all where you can enter poetry for serious criticism, a showcase where you can just post a poem for the world to enjoy, a nice index of full text classics, a choice of different types of poetry: dark (for those days), formal, and so on. There’s even a link to site where the authors have devoted themselves to amassing a collection of poetry about the Table of Elements you remember so fondly from high school, poems about actinium, astatine, lawrenciem and a whole bunch I think they’ve added since high school.

Don’t forget to visit the haiku generator for such masterpieces as

cloudlessly cackling
abstractly patiently juice
hastens formlessly.

Hey, the syllable count is right on target!

And as your final treat, visit 43 folders, which includes a wonderful page for those of us addicted to Moleskine notebooks and just the right pen and ink.

Good prose is like a windowpane but . . .

2006-07-26T20:08:00.000-04:00

"Good prose is like a windowpane," said George Orwell. But looking out a clear window doesn't always give the most interesting view. The same view gets more intriguing when you're trying to look past the ice flowers that have formed overnight or past heavy rain running in little rivers down the glass.

Poems as Icons

2006-07-19T21:13:00.000-04:00

"Just these words" . . . . I had an “aha” moment when I read this phrase on Gino’s Blog (www.ghazalpage.net). My mind, my work, my poetry—like the mind, work and poetry of many writers, I suspect—works hugely by leaping along the net of jewels, illumination by analogy. What leapt to my mind with these words was iconology, the theory of icons.
An icon (which, by the way, is not “painted” but “written”)is not just a picture but a portal through which that which is depicted can interact with the viewer. Some have called an icon a window through which we can see God and through which God can see us.
These windows operate through different types of glass. To use some classic examples, if you look into an icon of a hodegetria (an icon of the Virgin pointing toward the Christ child) you can seek understanding of she who shows the way; a psychosotria (the eyes of Christ and the Virgin looking into each other), you can seek understanding of communication without words; a virgin eleousa (showing the Virgin and the Christ child snuggling, cheeks touching), you can seek understanding of the special warm relationship of a mother and child. These are just suggestions, of course, places of beginning to work with particular icons. The communication using an icon can spin off in dizzying other directions.
I can see the specific words of a poem, words which have to be just those words and no others, serving the same purpose. Here we have to touch on issues of intent and control. Having written my poem-icon, what control do I have over what message(s) others receive from it?

La Bloga: March 2006

2006-06-27T09:20:00.000-04:00

There's a lot of exciting stuff happening in the world of Chicano literature. This site is a terrific place to learn for those of us who have inadequate Spanish skills, because it's in English, ta-da! La Bloga: March 2006

POD with Amazon News

2006-05-22T15:05:00.000-04:00

Good all-around site!

2006-04-28T19:32:00.000-04:00

In this issue, an interview with Anne Tyler, fiction by Benjamin Krier, Keller+Kuhn, Kevin Sampsell, Colleen Mondor, poetry by Sally Ashton, Jenn Habel, Richard Norman & Max Winter, paintings by Shawn McNulty. DIY Publishing DIY Pub Web Ring: Announcing failbetter 20!