I have too many books. Occasionally I lose my sanity and sell some to the local used bookstore. I almost always regret it. A year or two ago I got rid of an attic-full of science fiction books. Biggest mistake of my life. Well, maybe not the biggest, but stupid all the same. I love books. I like the cover and spine colors, the different shapes and sizes of letters and words, the interesting publishing logos, the way they stand tight up against each other in my bookcases, or lean slightly upon one another. I like the texture of books bound in glossy paper, or knobby cloth or smooth, soft leather. I haven’t even commented on the smell, the sound, or the feel of them. I like that a thousand images and a thousand ideas sit inside them, not to mention a thousand characters, a thousand worlds. On the right wall they provide insulation. In the right space, decoration. In my life, just the right volume of intelligent noise.
Turn Your Many Pages: Find Your Optimal Time of Productivity
Everyone has a season. It is possible after many years of writing poetry, to look back at the dates my poems were written and find a pattern of productivity based on season. Find yours. Find a way to optimize when the silence ends and it is your time to speak.
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Cummings: Poetic Genius Led by Freedeom of Creativity
Cummings is to poetry what Picasso is to art. Purposeful deviation equals freedom of creativity. Coupled with the self, it forms poetic schools, creates poetic genres, and molds our most prized poets. I hope Cummings never had to hear Creeley chatter, “Never write in generalities if a particular, a detail, a specificity would do.” Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town ranks as one of the best poems ever written. While Creeley would have responded that detail wasn’t appropriate in this instance, his statement like so many more like it today, steers would-be-better poets into conformity or mediocrity. I’m not talking about complete chaos when I speak about a poet utilizing freedom of creativity— for freedom of creativity is control of chaos. It is not poetic license either, for poetic license drives the artist as opposed to creative freedom that drives the art.
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Know Yourself By Knowing the World You Occupy
Before dusk one night watching lighting bugs charge the air around me, I was surprised I had never studied them more closely. All the times I ran and caught them as a child, all the moments the lights dotted the dark, and I remembered nothing about watching them as intently as I did at that moment. They stood upright with their tails or lights pointed down. After descending, they darted back up. On the cusp of that upward movement their bodies glowed. As night rushed in they flew higher in the sky. Every once and awhile one would come close and hover as if to inspect me eye to eye. At one point, I witnessed my dog examining them in the yard as keenly as I did. That interested and satisfied me as much as learning more about lighting bugs.
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The Continuous March Toward Perfection
People always awaken at some point, whether at a place in their lives or in a time period as large as a civilization, and want a life of truth and freedom and justice. Gandhi led the Indian people. King led African-Americans. The Dali Lama leads in the same way, in peace and non-violence with a reverence for all life. The Tibetan monks cradled their religion before being tossed out of Tibet, as if the hand of the universe thought their words were worth sharing with the world.
The Fatherland: Bod
Among rock, the tree widens crevice,
kneels to dirt born from wind and rain
lives to serve the elements.
Among rock, snow tips from the tops
of mountain breasts,
melts each Spring into mouths below.
Among mountains, monks rock in lotus
turn prayers to steady minds
meet paradise to transform evil
empires into compassionate countries.
The highest point in the world leaps further down.
Pushed out, he slowly spreads his way.
Anita Stienstra
2007
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On Caregiving
Awareness is a blessing or a curse. It is a blessing if knowledge, beauty, or possibility finds its way to you. It is a curse if short-comings, ugliness, or self-pity leap upon you like prickles from a cocklebur field. Many days Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, comes to mind, and in the awareness of his words, I question if I face unavoidable suffering, and therein if I do, do I meet it with dignity. So many days it seems all I do is try to pick burrs from the cloth of my being.
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Monuments and Statues
The poem below was birthed in 1995 based on a memory of a statue that stands in the eastern edge of Valley Forge Park. There is a Star Trek Voyager episode titled The Monument that I think of in relation to my poem. In that particular story, a centuries old civilization left behind a monument with the capability of providing a virtual experience of the event in anyone’s mind as if the battle were their own memory. Bravo to whoever came up with the idea, whether writer or producer. It is intriguing. You sure could breed some empathy with that machine.
Motherland
The young boys scream
and fight each other. Wailing by tears
they cry continental pain. A regiment
with unrelenting blasts pierces the clogged ears
of the hanging air. Thick in frustrations
voices grope away from resolutions
and betray themselves explosive noise. Limitations
on simple minds delay solutions.
Where is the hand that feeds them? Hobbledehoys
rely on the mare to corral them clear of the clench
of the herd’s stampede. The young boys
fall away to silence (the wretched trench
calms fear) and mouths drop. Eyes, with convoys
of trooped vacuity rise upon the gray sky— appeals
to the Motherland. What shocked the impetuous
monsters into mocking statues? The metal feels
soft, no, smooth and righteous.
Anita Stienstra
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Star Trek: Rall on Ann and Odo
Last week, I discovered that political cartoonist Ted Rall questions in his blog if Ann Coulter and Odo, the shapeshifter from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, were separated at birth. This gives Ann too much credit. The character Odo does not deserve comparison to a regular, run-of-the-mill sensationalist and gossip-girl who tries to incite more friction and trouble into the world for financial gain. Odo is interesting and unique and has goodwill toward mankind. If Rall was right about anything, it was that metaphorically, Ann lacks the ability to form a real human face.
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This is why I like…
… Paige’s art “The Pole” so much as seen on the cover of The Maze 2008 (adonisdesignspress.com). For me, all the history and important-world-changing stuff that happened inside the fence is put into perspective. Her focus on the pole instead of the historical building reminds us to pay attention to the little things, the ignored, the trivial, to the seemingly insignificant stuff, that many times makes up all that big stuff.
Art takes a back seat to sports and politics often. Not here. The pole is part of an intricate piece of art. Sure it’s a barrier around a famous building, and perhaps a frame to draw attention to the importance of the history contained within, but the fence is a beautiful sculpture too.
Furthermore, the pole is a mirror. If we stand close enough and gaze into its reflective globe, it contains our image. From the right seat on a freezing February day, or on another day in the heat of August, that object held an entire city of people ready for change.
From an artistic point of view, I like how the pole mimics the shape of the capital dome. Others might snicker, “It’s just a pole!”
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Beets and poetry
Two subjects linger in my mind on this Tim Burton-like day, where black trees with spindly branches seem to reach into the rain as if the drops might medicate their gloom. Beets and poetry. Yes, beets and poetry are on my mind. While the sun fails to shine outside my kitchen window for the umpteenth day in a row, lunch consists of beets, cottage cheese with mandarin oranges, and mushroom soup. Ah, you might say…there lies the rub, but no, the soup is Campbell’s soup. The last time I checked, Campbell’s was not in the pharmaceutical business. Beets play a role in the book, Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. I enjoyed reading this book, but that was years ago. The book was better for me because beets were in it, not beets tasted better to me after reading the book. I don’t remember if this was in the book, but I thought the beet, a heart, a symbol of immortal love. Anyway…I love beets. Why? I do not know. They taste a little woodsy. Perhaps there’s an unconscious connection to the outdoors or trees or some other earthy thing I adore. Though I can’t place what it is about the color that is attractive to me, the color is deep and rich, and an unusual color for a vegetable. The texture may be the key. Cooked beats, like turnips, don’t fall apart as easily as potatoes, retaining their form, though they can get very soft. Yum. Beets taste good. Particularly pickled beets with hard-boiled eggs. I plant and harvest beets, boil them until the skins slid off easily, mix up a concoction of vinegar, water and sugar, boil some eggs, drain and peel the eggs, put everything together and refrigerate over night. Abracadabra. According to Wikipedia (a source I might add that you should use at your own risk), “the first known mention of the word abracadabra was in the 2nd century AD in a poem called De Medicina Praecepta by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed that the sufferer from the disease wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle. Abracadabra…beets and, I feel a little beeter, I mean better, and I haven’t even gotten to the poetry.
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Posted in On Books, On Nature, On Poetry beets Books Jitterbug Perfume poetry Tim Burton Tom Robbins