Wise Poets of the Present

The Hebrew scriptures teach that there is a season for everything and a new season is dawning in my life, retirement. I have a milestone birthday coming up and I simply want to spend more time with my husband, my local friends and to write poetry for my local newspaper, the Gazette Virginian. However, I will still be contributing to Community Corner as long as dailywisdomwords.com exists and Samantha is willing.

I would like to thank Samantha for all her hard work on this amazing website, for giving me a space here to express myself, and for just being my friend.  I hope that she will call me from time to time. I also want to thank Neel for his kind support.  And also I want to thank all the amazing authors that I have had the privilege to interview in person for this site; you all always made my day! Lastly, I want to wish Monday well in his career as social media director and podcaster.

I will be praying for you all.

 

How Wise Reader’s Interpret Poetry

We are moving a bit from the biographies of great poets and authors to the interpretation of their works, although the stories of today’s great authors have yet to be fully written and yet to come. Today we are going to look at the basics of the interpretation of poetry from a simple checklist that I have found on Google, which I will expound upon of course from my own experience reading poetry. Then we will take a look at a poem by our very own Alexis Karpouzos for a brief interpretation following this outline.

     1. Read the poem over in it’s entirety to get the feel and overall meaning of the poem. Often to get the full “feel” and meaning of a poem, you must read it two times silently and once out loud to hear the sound of it.

     2. Look for the imagery and give some thought the meaning of it to get the full meaning of the poem. And that’s the thing about poetry, it requires some thought (and you may even want to look up a term or two to get understanding), but although you don’t have to be a genus to understand, it does takes a little work to “suck that marrow from the bone” (Walt Whitman).

      3. Look for the symbols. A symbol is a person, place or thing that stands for something bigger than itself. For instance, an egg could be a symbol fertility, but I personally use it as a symbol of the self, or more specifically a fragile boundary of self, with the self being closed in and not free inside the egg.

     4. Look at the poets choice of words. Look at not only their on the surface definitions, but look in depth at what the particular word is associated with, IT’S CONNOTATIONS. For instance I ran across a rather humorous poem once that highlighted the difference between the two interchangeable words of “naked” and “nude”. In other words, “naked” is more to be ashamed while nude is itself quite bold! Keep in mind though that some post-modern poets selfishly use their own private vocabularies and don’t give a flip if you understand it or not, so you just have to read into it your own thoughts just as you would look ar an abstract painting.

5. Determine the voice, and how does it make you feel on an emotional level. Are you happy, sad, inspired or angry when you read it? Is the poem a narrative story with conflict and a plot line? Then just read it as you would a good novel and enjoy.

    

7. Determine the poem’s type. Is it wild and crazy free verse such as an e e cummings, then you are probably reading a poet who is more liberal in his or her views, or is it a more traditional form with meter and rhyme such as a real Shakespeare fan, then perhaps you have a more traditional writer behind the pen. However, all poetry writing and reading is entirely subjective to the individual.

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Using the above outline, I will interpret the following poem by alexis karpouzos.

 

The Shuddering of the Heavens

 

Listen, if stars are still lit it means there is someone who needs them. It means someone wants to love,
Why then do we feel so much pain and heaviness of heart?
are we waiting for something, regretting anything?
To whom I can strech out my hand in the somber desert ? Who will accompany me on the empty night?
Who will give me a fiery day?
Who will bring back the sea that left?
No hope here. Torment is certain.
Without sacredness in the emptiness of this world of ours, the heart of man fades like a flower.
Suddenly, the shuddering of the heavens penetrating my soul, Oh never let the parting sun, no star is ever lost we once have seen. the long rains will continue to fall.

This is a poem about the destruction and desecration of nature by mankind and a man’s own soul and his regrets about the things he’s lost. So the overall feel of this poem is one of sadness and foreboding. I know this poet and the respect that he has for nature and the repeated warnings he has given us in his writings regarding mankind’s poor stewardship of the planet that even heaven shudders at the sight of it, In his imagery and his specific choice of words he likens the world to “a somber desert” and life on earth to “an empty night” in the wake of mankind’s failure to hold nature sacred in a world where man’s hope “fades like a flower”.

I think this particular images denotes the relative temporary estate of the human race in creation compared with the stars that are never lost and the “long rains that continue to fall”. However, I think the poet is also saying that although there are people like himself in the world who still desire to love, he does not hold out much hope to see another “fiery day” or that the sea that has left is ever coming back. In short, mankind has pushed his own creation on earth to the point of no return and that he has basically lost not only his hope, but his spirituality as well, he has lost all sense of sacredness.

There are two main factors in the making of a good book; plot (which has already been dealt with in this column) and characterization. Characterization can be defined as the development of a character’s personality traits, their motives, their thoughts, and how he or she interacts with others in the story.

A character can be defined as the person, animal or thing that populates a story and provides the action for the reader, for they are the actors in the author’s own original “play”. So as stated, a character does not necessarily have to be a person, but a thing like some overwhelming obstacle  such as a disability or a “waste howling” wilderness in a jungle full of man-eating snakes to survive.  In one of C.S, Lewis’s most famous stories, for instance we have all three types, a Lion (an animal), a Witch (person), and even a Wardrobe which is an inanimate material object.

Generally speaking, there are two types of main characters in the story, the protagonist or the hero of the story who is either trying to pursue some kind of a quest, reach a goal, or overcome an obstacle of some sort and an antagonist who throws up the obstacles and provides the conflict for the story. But you do want to make sure that your characters are three dimensional and round, with more than one side to their personality, such as the Hitler villain type who has a slight good side in his personality in that he dearly loves his trained attack dog or the saintly hero type who has a thorn in his flesh and a penchant for chocolate cake that make him fat and greedy at the dinner table for instance.

You also want your primary characters to be dynamic in that at the conclusion of the story some sort of a change for the better is effected in them, especially in your protagonist, your villain however can emerge more evil and depraved as ever, especially if he or she has been thwarted or if your antagonist is a pure psychopath such as the Joker in the Batman movies. However, as in the case of a sad ending your hero can actually also emerge more frail or with more obstacles than at the beginning such as a brave Jane Eyre who now has to care for a blind and disabled husband at the end of the book and her real hard work and trials begin.

And avoid those flat one-sided stock characters if you can, such as the good guys in the old standard Western movies who always wear white hats, unless you, of course, you are writing strictly to entertain an audience and not shooting for creating fine art. A lot of what goes into characterization depends on the objectives and the imagination of the individual writer.

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We all love our stories; don’t we? But each story, whether it be in a novel, an epic poem, a play or a film, has one thing in common and that is a plot. Webster defines a plot in two ways, first definition is that it plan made in secret by one or more persons to do something evil. And the second definition states that it is the sequence of events in a story as written by an author. But often these two definitions intersect because a story usually has both a hero on a quest for something good and a villain who is planning and plotting to thwart him or hinder him or her in some way.  But sometimes the villain is not a person at all, but a thing, obstacle or an insurmountable problem that the person faces on an internal level. And sometimes our obstacle is often personified by a person that represents the problem.

 

Plot formation itself, however, follows a specific pattern that takes the shape of a kind of a bell shaped curve with an introduction,  rising action, a climax, falling action, and resolution and conclusion. These are the important working parts of a story. In the introduction, we meet the main characters and find out their agendas and motivations, and with the rising action of the interactions between the characters we have our conflict because without conflict we have no story. In the climax we have the main dramatic event take place which is the turning point of the story. And in falling action we have a gradual winding down of the story in which all the loose ends are tied up and problems are resolved. And in our conclusion we either have a firm ending, happy or sad, or and open ending in which the reader concludes the story in his own mind and which often paves the way for a sequel.

A good example of plot formation would be in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in which you have a conflict between two feuding families to keep two young lovers apart and their quest to stay together. The story climaxes when the pair run away to be together with the help of a clergyman and the whole thing is resolved with the untimely deaths of both lovers by suicide which leads to a pretty firm and final sad ending. The falling action lies in the priest’s internal reflections on the situation and the grim consequences for both the families.

This is just one bare bones example of a plot, but often a story contains one or more subplots with conflict also involving of the minor characters to flesh the story out. For an example, in an old movie called “The Paper” we have a major competition between two major newspapers in New York for survival in the marketplace and to be the first paper to publish the most important crime story of the year. But we also have a subplot playing out at the protagonist newspaper with the conflict between two editors for control of the newspaper, one male and one female, which climaxes with a physical fist fight between the pair which ends in bloody noses and the two rivals becoming friends, Also there is an even smaller subplot in the story involving a rooky photographer and her quest to get the perfect photo of the suspect in a crime of the century. This movie had a firm happy ending with all the heroes in the story winning the day.  These subplots give an extra dimension to the story and the reader added insight into the personalities of the characters.

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Bulgaria’s Alexandar Tomov Jr.: He Writes About All Things Absurd

Alexandar Tomov Jr. was born in Sofia, Bulgaria on June 3. 1982 in the shadow of the Soviet Empire. And, as Bulgaria was embarking on its own experiment in democracy when the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Tomov Jr, was finding his own literary voice by reading the great authors of his country as a rising student.

Tomov Jr. is an up and coming author and film maker like his father Alexander Tomov was a prominent film maker and writer in his native country of Bulgaria and worked as a an editor at Bulgarian National Radio in Sofia. Tomov Jr. himself is a writer of pithy little short stories and a maker of film shorts in the genre of the Absurd. And he aptly captures the absurdity of such things as the absurdities of a world leader who makes a deal with the Devil to have and orgy in his mansion and another on whom the peace of the whole world depends who is guilty of rape and murder in his story entitled “Beyond The Absurd” (also the title of e-book collection of short stories) and the futility of the dreams of a young girl being controlled by her mother in a totalitarian household (environment) in the story entitled “The Wanderer”. Tomov Jr. has a real flare for political realism and satire in his imagery, and a common motif he uses in his stories is the presence of fire which is a common element in Bulgaria’s history that the people used to banish evil spirits, and more recently, was representative of the terror of nuclear annellation for the people. So perhaps Tomov Jr., with his own unique genius, is banishing the evil spirits and the terror of war from modern society in his stories.

This is his life and literature, and his father in his own words:

1.Tell us, Alexandar, about your life, the literature of your country and what were the seminal influences in literature on your own writing and film making.

About Your question… We have some very typical and original writers deeply connected with the Bulgarian nationality and history, like Ivan Vazov, Aleko Konstantinov, Luben Karavelov. But our most famous poet, who is also national hero in Bulgaria is Hristo Botev–.(1947 – 1876). Genial poet, many critics consider it untranslatable because of the deeply typical Bulgarian features in his poetry

My unique fascination with literature starting at the age of about 11 when I read “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint – Exupéry. This book amazes me to this day. It is a simply written story in which there is the whole world. This led to studying the works of some of my favorite authors as Fyodor Dostoevsky – ‘Crime and Punishment’, Franz Kafka – ‘The Metamorphosis’, Edgar Allan Poe – ‘The Black Cat’, ‘Morella’, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, Mary Shelley – ‘Frankenstein’, Friedrich Nietzsche – ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ and others. Much of my views of life and art were influenced by my favorites scientists – psychologists – Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung works. As I approached my tenth-grade year in high school, I started to conceive that the emotional creativity one gets from studying literature can be used in generating cinema, especially experimental films that we Bulgarian Filmmakers normally produce. There is more to just a story, but those deep underlying psychosomatic feelings that one gets when studying an excellent choice of literature that is important. I realized that there is an art and a skill of translating those emotions to the audiovisual in cinema. From my studies of literature, I came to the conclusion that there are ten to fifteen-story themes that, if told right, can mesmerize a reader. These themes can certainly be translated to the cinema and also make real-life inexplicably interesting. My personal listing of these eternal subjects are love, death, friendship, betrayal, jealousy, greed, envy, hate, power, sex, violence, fear, revenge, remorse, change.
2. I understand that your father was famous Bulgarian author and film maker Alexandar Tomov; can you tell us about him?

I start answering to Your question. Sorry for my language, maybe answers will need some editing for the interview. My father, Alexandar Tomov – Senior,(R.I.P, 1944 – 2020), was a famous Bulgarian writer and screenwriter with eleven screenplays made in movies in Bulgaria. Some of the most famous Bulgarian films of the 80s and 90s are based on his scripts. Movies like ‘The Insurance (1998), ‘Margarit and Margarita’ (1989), ‘Pantudi’ (1993), ‘Live dangerously’ (1990), ‘Romantic story’ (1985), and some newer films as ‘The Rest Is Ashes’ (2020). He also have more than 40 novels, short stories and poetry. My mother is also writer and playwright. So, I would like to take the credit for being one of those kids that literature and cinema was my life’s calling. My fathers profile in IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0866957/?ref_=pro_nm_visitcons

Thank you Alexandar for sharing for fascinating life, literature, and country with us. Living on the edge of the Cold War has made you an especially compelling writer about all things dangerously ridiculous.

Alexander Tomov Jr. currently lives in the bustling, cosmopolitan capital city of Bulgaria, Sofia, home of the Ivan Vazov National Theatre and the National Opera and Ballet of Bulgaria, where he writes and makes short films and book trailers for other writers. Sofia is the prime cultural center of the nation.

Alexandar Tomov’s short films, short stories and links his book “Beyond the Absurd” and to his book trailer business can be found on his Facebook group page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/443545943496891. His book is also available directly from amazon.com. Check him out.

Poetic Imagery: Little Snapshots in the Mind

As we have seen before in modern and post-modern poetry, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the style of poetry you choose to write, You can write anything from the highly regimented Shakespearean sonnet with it’s hard and set rules of meter and rhyme to Whitman’s free verse without a set meter or rhyme scheme that just flows in the natural rhythms of the poets own mind and still call it poetry. However, imagery is a different matter, and we are hard pressed to call a written expression a poem if it is devoid of imagery.

Without imagery all you really have is a piece of prose organized to look like a poem because it is simply written in columns or verse form, so don’t let looks deceive you. It’s the imagery of a poem that helps the reader to experience the essence of the subject of your sentence or poem. It’s basically the sounds, scents, textures and visuals that both the poet and the reader experience in their heads when experiencing your poem, the mind pictures if you will.

For the intents of this essay, we are going to examine this common types of imagery: simile, metaphor,
and allegory. When you use a simile, you compare apples and oranges, if you will, as they are both perfect spheres. You can say for instance that “She walks in beauty like the night,” or “:She walks in beauty as the night,” and the reader will immediately make a connection between “Her” the subject of your sentence or your poem and the night in your mind’s eye. You may even be able to see a beautiful woman walking outside on a starlit night in your mind’s eye. But then an even stronger connection can be made using a metaphor to say, “She is the beauty of the night.” So, the basic difference between a simile and a metaphor is the use of the word’s “like” or “as” in a simile or the word “is” in a metaphor, thereby you can control the very subtle shades of meaning in your poem.

Allegory on the other hand, is a literary device that gives human traits to animals, ideas or inanimate objects in a narrative that teaches the reader a life lesson such as we would see in a myth. C. S. Lewis, for example, was probably America’s greatest allegorical writer with his fantasy writings of of “The Chronicles of Narnia” in which animals, mythical creatures, and inanimate objects such as “The Lion. The Witch, and the Wardrobe” talk and transport us to worlds unknown. Another good example of a modern allegory is the story of “The Lion King” in which all the animals talk and are oh so human.

But, although these various types of literary devices discussed here are what basically make a poem a poem, they can also be found in prose writing such as the in the highly descriptive purple prose of fiction and creative non-fiction. However this kind of rich imagery is highly discouraged in journalistic writing that depends solely on the facts and interesting little details of a story.

Inaugural Poet Amanda Gorman: From Watts to Front and Center

Amanda is a young poet who was first to do a lot of things. Born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in the neighborhood of Watts by a single, English teacher Mom named Joan Wicks, she became the first person to be named Youth Poet Laurent of Los Angeles at age 16, and then she became the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laurent for the United States in 2017 at age 19. She then broke a stunning age barrier when she delivered her iconic poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s
inauguration ceremony. And she was a stunning success reciting these words which were written against the backdrop of the recent Capital building riots.

“Let the globe, if nothing else, if nothing else, say this is true, that even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried. That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious, not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again know division.”

Now Gorman’s two books “The Hill We Climb” and “The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough” have skyrocketed to the top of the New York Times best seller list. But early success notwithstanding, Gorman does have her obstacles in that she is a consummate performing poet who suffers from hearing loss and a speech impediment in which she says she drops some letters from her words such as her Rs and has to practice and practice. She also describes herself as having been a “weird child” who apparently felt more at home with books than with people. But she also enjoys a close relationship with her elder brother Spenser Gorman and her twin sister Gabrielle who is also an activist and a creative like herself who pursues the film-making arts, and it sounds as if Amanda and her sister are close.

Gorman began her poetry career as early as the third grade and now uses historical music such as found the the musical play “Hamilton” as seminal inspiration for her poetry (as in a music prompt) and her subject matter includes feminism, racial equality, and the diaspora of the African people through slavery.

Today this bright young lady is also an activist who currently lives in West LA.

Neil David Chan: Canada’s Own Post-Modern Metaphysical Philosopher

In this article author, poet and philosopher Neil David Chan answers three important interview questions to define his beliefs concerning hid doctrine of metaphysical philosophy, His book “A Higher Conversation: Another Way to be Human” is published by Austin Macauley Publishers with offices in London, Cambridge, New York, and Shariah and is available on Amazon.

Definition of Metaphysics and Metaphysical.. ——————— Physical is what can be seen, touched and heard . Metaphysical is what cannot be seen, touched or heard BUT only felt- Feeling is the language of the metaphysical world. Our body is physical, our mind and soul are metaphysical. We cannot see, touch or hear them. The soul talks to us by feelings only, our mind is a great processor that converts our feelings and messages our body to act and react. Our mind is akin to a computer CPU – where did human beings get the computer idea from? It’s just a copy of our internal structure ———————

How does metaphysics relate to GOD? ————— God is the highest form of a metaphysical being. In JK Rowling’s book Harry Potter Lord Valdemort survived death by fracturing his soul in 7 parts and hiding it in several places. JK Rowling got this idea from the fact that God also fractured his energy into individual souls and enabled life in a physical form to happen. In a soul form there is no physical sense in a physical form there is abundance of physicality but we are made to forget our real metaphysical form because the journey from a physical being to a metaphysical being is a wonderful journey. Our Soul is God in an individualized form, this is what gives life to a human body – like a battery to a machine. It silently stays with every body hoping to see you remember and Re- member with God. When one day we make that connection and understand that you are a soul in a body – what the world calls enlightenment takes place. Jesus did his miracles because he knew who he was and so was enabled with the power to give – remember what he said in John 10:34 – “Ye are Gods” in Aramaic. No one believed in it – God is our soul in a miniature form to help us live life – we never use it – this is my book- Have that conversation with your soul because it’s a higher Conversation.

How does man relate to God and metaphysical? ——— In our ancient times man was used because we did not understand the use of gender neutral language. The term should have been human being – because God does not have a gender – it is an energy with super capacity and capability- power to create and recreate – when this powerful energy being wants to become physical, it takes the shape of a human being to feel physicality in Earth and in many other forms in billions of other planets . All physical life is God in a different shape – we just don’t remember. This loss of memory was purposely done for us to remember in our own way who we are – this way our journey becomes a mystery for us to solve – if we all knew who we were at birth what fun would it be growing up. In Jesus God gave us a demo of who we really are , he did do in the past with Buddha and other avatars . The create part is represented as Man and Woman and the recreate part is represented by the Woman. We do not see it this way . The power to recreate was given to a woman only because she has more loving abilities than a man. A child grows up only with love and this is given by the woman in plenty. But the coming of man and a woman is duality and necessary to sustain life, Till one day we all realize who we really are our earth will continue to be a mess because our struggle as a body form is going to be challenging simply because we don’t use our two metaphysical resources given to all of us in birth- body, mind and Soul… Both man and woman are two souls in two opposites body forms, all of life’s choices are opposites only because we get the opportunity to choose – love and fear , anger and peace- man and woman – instead of using the opposite as an opportunity, we fight it and keep choosing the wrong choice all the time. So life turns into a wrong turn till we get back on the main road.

I hope you got this – May I answer any questions you may have ? —————- We can’t see God, can’t hear God, can’t touch God, only feel God thru our Soul. God is the perfect and primary form of a metaphysical energy and we are the secondary form. GOD can be said to stand for the greater of the denominator , with human beings, animals trees and plants in Earth being the denominator.

Thank you so much Neil for sharing your thoughts with us. I am so looking forward to reading your beautiful book.

We Got Rhythm: The Beat of the Bard

Good poetry being a close kin to music not only depends on the sounds of words to make it musical, but it also needs to have a certain meter and rhythm to make it akin to a song. And what we have here are the patterns and the measures used in traditional poetry; it is the math inherent in poetry so get out your math thinking caps for this article, word-nerds.

Rhythm is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a word such as in Duhduh in which the first syllable is stressed or duhDuh when the second syllable is stressed. These little units of stressed and unstressed in a word or group of words the are measures which are called feet, and meter depends on the number of feet which are strung together in a line, as in iambic pentameter which has five feet (five units of sound consisting of one unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable) as used by Shakespeare in his sonnets, “Shall I compare thee to a sum mer”s day” a definite duhDuh duhDuh duhDuh duhDuh duhDuh pattern. And this particular Shakespearean pattern is most common in traditional English poetry.

There are actually five common rhythms in poetry which consist of the following:

1.Anapest: duh-duh-Duh as in “but of course!”
2.Dactyl: Duh-duh-duh as in “honestly”
3.Lamb: duh-Duh as in “collapse”
4.Trochee: Duh-duh as in”pizza”.

And the number repetitions of these feet in a line are named as follows: one foot in a line is called a monometer, two feet is a dimeter, three feet is a trimeter, four feet a tetameter, five feet a pentameter and six feet are a hexameter.

Now I hope your eyes are not too glazed over by now, but fortunately in today’s modern poetry, with poetic poetic license that we enjoy today the hard and fast rule books have been tossed away. But even this free-verse poetry that we write today should have a certain flow which possesses the natural rhythms of contemporary speech today along with room for individual differences in our thought patterns. I have heard it said that traditional iambic pentameter was the natural rhythm of speech in Shakespeare’s day,

The English language lends itself so well to rhyme that rhyme is common in English poetry, except for blank verse which has meter and no rhyme and free verse poetry. But even free verse poets can make use of internal rhyme in which two words within a line rhyme, use approximate rhyme, or the poet can end a free verse poem with a rhyming couplet. Poets have great creative license today in regards to rhyme. And basically there there are two major kinds of rhyme, approximate rhyme in which the end words of a line echo similar sounds and exact rhyme in which the exact sounds are repeated in two different words.

There are many rhyme schemes in found in traditional English poetry. but for the purposes of this article I will give you examples of five common types with probably the most common being alternate rhyme ABAB CDCD EGEG with ballades in particular making use of this device with an ABAB CDCD CDCD scheme.

The people along the sand A
All turn and look one way B
They turn their back on the land A
They look at the sea all day A

As long as it takes to pass C
A ship keeps raising its hull D
The wetter ground as glass C
Reflects a standing gull D

Another really common rhyme scheme is the couplet with an AA BB CC pattern.

Twinkle, twinkle little star A
How I wonder what you are A
Up above the world so high B
Like a diamond in the sky B

Another device is mono rhyme in which each line of the poem rhymes in a AAAA pattern.

Lifting her arms to soap her hair. A
Here pretty breasts respond-and there, A
The movement of that buoyant pair A
Is like a spell to make me swear. A

There are other more complex rhyme schemes that the poet can employ such as enclosed rhyme enclosed rhyme ABBA and the limerick which is AABBA.

The truth about poetry is that poetry is like spoken or literary music, so the sounds in poetry are important, and a good poet must have a real good sense of sound whether or not he writes free verse or traditional. Your poem should sound like a song in the head of your reader. At least this is my opinion.

Poet Laureate Georgette LeBlanc: Canada’s Choice Bard

The honor of being named Poet Laureate of Canada is a fairly new post created by the Canadian Parliament. It was created in 2001 and thus far there have been eight poets named to this post by the Speaker of the House of Parliament and the Speaker of the House of Commons, each one serving up to two years each for a stipend of $20,000 per year. The duties of the chosen poet include writing poetry for special occasions of national importance, giving poetry readings, and advising Canada’s national Parliamentary Library which books to acquire. And in order to qualify for the position the poet must have made significant contributions to the literature and culture of the nation that captures the spirit of the Canadian people and be a significant influence on other writers,

Poet Georgette LeBlanc was Canada’s last poet laureate serving from 2018 to 2019. and she captured the spirit of the Canadian people in her award winning book entitled ‘Prudence” which tells the story of the unjust expulsion of the Acadian people from Canada from her main character’s point of view. The poetry in this book is written in French and consist of narrative poems that expertly weave the story, although LeBlanc’s primary form of writing is free verse poetry according to her own words.

LeBlanc says of her own poetry,

My poetry, my way of writing poetry, is trying to tell a story. I’m trying to show you something, or make you feel something. I’m trying to draw you into my world, so it’s important for me to elicit some kinf of response in the reader, positive or negative, but to tell a story.

And “Prudence’ is the story of how the Acadian people were deported from Canada by British soldiers and scattered throughout the Thirteen British colonies to the south of them, the Caribbean, and back to Euope. The Acadian people were descendants of the original French settlers in Canada, many of whom settled in the American state of Louisiana and are known as the Cajun people of today.

Today, LeBlanc is living in the Provence of Nova Scotia is is the busy 43 year old mother of three children ages six, nine, and twelve and works in the archives department of University Sante Anne. She says that it is necessary to make time to write, “We all have bills to pay, we have to get things done. I have kids so it frees up time..”

Leblanc is the winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry and has written several books including Alma, Amede, and Le Grand Feu. So it sounds like LeBlanc is an ordinary woman with children and a job, but she also possesses an extraordinary talent for literature.

A Now Poetic Voice of the Covid 19 Age

They say history repeats itself, and in 1918, we had a worldwide flu epidemic like the world had never seen before. In that day the virus was spread by the movement of armies during the First World War while today’s pandemic bug is being spread by the massive movement of people through modern aviation for the reasons of commerce and tourism. The Bible itself predicted that people would be “:moving to and fro in the latter days” in an age marked by various plagues. Could these be those latter day? We don’t know. But today’s poetic voices of the pandemic hold for us a certain uncertainty about the future and that we must get this disease under control.

In the following poem we have the poet’s perspective of the isolation, uncertainty, and grief of it all in a poem entitled “Hazmat” by Lorcan Black.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Hazmat

The lungs of this city are burning.
Outside an ambulance expels three medics:

minutes later they move a man between them
like a chess piece.

From our terrace I can see the thin, frail rage of
his chest.
Rising and falling with each step.

I can see the fever glowing-radiation hot-
his chest heaving.

A woman stands by the door crying.
The suits help him tenderly.

Three beekeepers carefully arranging
the contagious fever of a whole hot hive

to be hand deliver, finally,
into a white sterility.

Each night since I have stared at that house.
What if they ban funerals? Then what will she
do, but sit

memorizing every last detail of those men,
eyes under white hoods, escorting him off into
darkness?

Into a night on fire with distance.
The spring trees are restless-

Listen-their branches are breathing and
creaking.

Tonight, and every night,
I can’t help but think

what walls of what houses-
how many thousands-

passing mere time,
caging such grief.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The poem illustrates a very personification of isolation in the image of the medics moving a Covid patient That were suited up like beekeepers, separated from the world by this suit, and moving him as if he were “a chess piece” (a most dehumanizing experience all by itself). And it was penned an author who is himself isolated on his balcony by the lock-down and is himself partaking in this isolation. So the isolation is a ubiquitous experience very deeply affecting us all, the “whole hot tribe” of us. And then he gives us a poignant picture of the contrast between inhumanity of this surreal scene playing out before his eyes with the very deep humanity, uncertainty and grief of the crying woman standing by the door, and the tenderness of the medics who move him gently to the “white sterility” of the inhumane isolation of the hospital ward where he would probably die alone. And not only does the isolation of the pandemic touch us all, but the grief and the uncertainty of this one woman is also universal also affecting us all. We share her grief in the “many thousands-passing mere time, caging such grief” with all of us also being at risk. “So thus we may be separated from each other by walls, hospitals, and hazmat suits and death itself, but we are all still inextricably connected to one another in spirit by the uncertainty the unprecedented loss of human life of this time in history.

Black himself wrote concerning the inspiration for this poem,

“Over the course of one week in lock-down…I counted five ambulances… The sheer level of that uncertainty for those loved ones left behind struck me as immense, and the grief of the families left behind-especially those for whom that might might be the last they see their loved ones-which inspired this poem.”

Happy New Year #dailywisdomwords #writingcommunity family. And stay safe.

Cathy Mellen Our Fall 2020 Contest Winner

I am very pleased to announce that our dailywisdomwords.com Fall poetry contest winner is poet and blogger Cathy Mellen. Congrats Cathy!

1. Where are you from, and please tell us about your life and your home?

️ I am from Lowell, Massachusetts.  Home to Ed McMahon, Bette Davis and Jack Kerouac. I am a mom to three children and a grandma to two beautiful granddaughters.  I left the big city four years ago, moving thirty minutes away to the farm and country scenery. 

2. When did you start writing, and what was the inspiration that sparked your writing career?

️ My first experience in writing was at age fourteen when I wrote a poem about a bird leaving an abusive lifestyle,  I was the bird.  I always knew I wanted to be a writer but shamed by my childhood, I chose to become a cook and caterer for twenty-five years. A car accident on my way home from work in 2015 left me disabled and a lot of free time to put over thirty years of writing into multiple manuscripts ready for publication.  

3. I understand you have quite a back story. Please share with us what you want us to know about your life.

️ Unfortunately between the ages of five and eleven years old, I was a trophy in a child predators sick world and I lived it all while under my birth mothers watch.  I ran at age eleven and went on to live over thirty years believing I was ten years old when I ran. Repressed memories ate age forty-five were of my last year living with my birth family.  Resulting in a walk into my hometown police department and an investigation into multiple unsolved murders in my hometown of Lowell Massachusetts.  

4. You mentioned to me that you write a blog on your own website. Please talk about your blog.

️  I started my blog to bring awareness towards childhood trauma, family secrets and being a statistic of abused children who grew up.  I share the courage, strength and positivity that I used as my stepping stones.  Along with sharing my poetry, Christmas poetry and a side of my comical fiction.   My blog is free to join, read and encourage. 

https://shatter-the-silence.mn.co/landing?space_id=820640

5. What are your plans for the future of your writing career.

️  My plans are to publish my work.  I have a two part Memoir, multiple childhood trauma, poetry and comical fiction manuscripts all ready.  I am currently working on my tenth book called 33 Cases of Karma ( Thirty-three comical short stories of when karma strikes back) 

6, Can you share with us your winning poem?
 
An Open Book 

I write the society of a world gone wrong 
The hate, the crimes and the lives now gone.
I write the reality the whole world reads
The scars, the wounds, the pain that bleeds.
I write the melody the whole world sings
The laughter, the tears, the simple things.
I write the love in a world gone cold
The dreams, the wishes and stories untold.
I write the words I placed in a poem
For all the world we call our home.

I read the society where lies belong
Shame, secrets and a shattered song.
I read the reality this whole world needs
The survivor’s in courage forever now leads. 
I read the melody the whole world brings
The freedom of birds, queens and kings.
I read the love this world does hold
Hidden in cracks, waiting to unfold.
I read the words I placed in this poem
From my heart and straight to your home.

7. What does winning the dailywisdomwords.com poetry contest mean to you?

️  It means a real lot to me.  I was shocked, honored and greatly appreciated hearing I was selected as the Fall 2020 contest winner.  Being recognized for my poetry is definitely an honor I appreciate and will carry for a lifetime.  

Thank you Cathy for your kind participation in our contest!

While not all great poets don’t chose big education as their chosen path to success, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jericho Brown chose that challenging path for himself. Writer Malcolm Gladwell, the author of “Outliers: The Story of success”. asserts that great success comes only by three major things; talent, preparation and practice. And Brown sure did do his time in the classroom, both as student and an educator to achieve success in the very difficult vocation of Poet.

Jericho Brown was born on April 14, 1976 in Shreveport, Louisiana and served at one time as a speech writer for the mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of New Orleans, where he earned an MFA, and the University of Houston where he earned his PhD. He went on to become an accomplished college professor and continued paying his dues by having his poetry published in various publications the New England Review, The New York Times and New Yorker Magazine. He released his first book of poems entitled “Please” in 2008 and his second book “The New Testament”. He then released his third collection of poems “The Tradition” in 2019 to critical acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. And it was written of him “His lyrics are memorable, muscular and majestic. His voice in these lines is alive…” “The Tradition” is a book that addresses the systematic evil in society and how it impacts him.

Brown is rather liberal in his views and has recently Tweeted:

I want Biden to win this thing and I want that senate too. And I want it so I can see what they boldly do for the people who put them there. the people who have the power to keep them there. What should those people do if their needs are not met by those they’ve empowered?

This on the cutting edge poet did not succeed to gain a significant voice in the world overnight. It took many years of consistent hard work at his craft. Congratulations on your prize, Mr. Jericho Brown.

Spielberg’s ‘Poltergeist’ the Great American Ghost Story: Halloween Month Horror Series Part IV

Now, you know you’ve got problems when a hostile ghost uses the family TV as a medium to communicate with your youngest daughter. And then with the earth shaking declaration by the child that “They are here,” your perceptions of life are forever changed. And that’s exactly what happened to the Freely family, an average family of five, when they moved into their brand new house in the brand new planned community of Cuesta Verde, California.

A poltergeist is defined as a malevolent ghost with an ax to grind with the living, and the host of angry ghosts who haunted the Freely family home had plenty to complain, when according to the paranormal experts that the family hired, their house was built over top their cemetery home. In short, the family of one son and two daughters were trespassing. So to get revenge, the highly irritated spirits play mind games with the family by moving furniture around and bending forks. Finally the spirits get the ultimate revenge by kidnapping the youngest daughter eight year old Carol Anne by pulling her through a portal in her bedroom closet to the spirit world. So now the child is speaking to the family through the TV. Now, her brave Mom has to rescue the child by having a rope tied to her ankle and entering the portal herself to retrieve the child, and she succeeds, entering back into the house through a second portal in the living room ceiling, But the family has no choice but to move away and leave the house as a haunt for the pesky ghosts. They won. This is a brief plot summary of the movie entitled “Poltergeist” the 1982 movie written and produced by Steven Spielberg, which became the eighth highest grossing film of the year.

Steven Allen Spielberg, born on December 18, 1946, is one of the major directors/screenwriters of the horror entertainment and science fiction movie industry of the late twentieth century, and high grossing movies such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark, “ET, the Extraterrestrial,” and “Jurassic Park.” he certainly is a big name in films, and his screenplays are considered to be among the classics. But he raised his film making to the level of fine art when he made movies such as “The Color Purple,” and “Schindler’s List” dealing with such serious topics of racism, sexism, and the holocaust.

“Poltergeist in particular” affected the public in such a way that real estate laws in the four states of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Minnesota have made it a breach of contract to knowingly sell a haunted house without disclosing the fact to the buyers. The public was actually led to believe, now that’s what you call influence.

J.K. Rowling and Her ‘Otherworldly’ Success: Halloween Horror Month Part II

Her marriage was over. She was jobless; on welfare. And she was so broke that she had to type 12 copies of her first book “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” on a manual typewriter to send to each publisher because she could not afford a computer. J. K. Rowling of ‘Harry Potter’ fame was really down on her luck, but then, almost like the magical world that she wrote about, her first book Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone just flew off the shelves as if by an act of witchcraft itself.

But was it magic; or was it a certain genius in Rowling that had its roots deep in her intuition that led to her success? Actually the idea for this book about the exploits of a boy wizard was birthed out of deep out of her imagination while she was delayed on a train to London. And it surfaced into her mind as if out of nowhere.

Born on July 31, 1965 in Yate, Gloucester, England, she proved to be a bright student both in high school and college, howbeit she was not outstanding, for she admittedly did not work hard. She began writing ‘Harry Potter’ upon graduation while being employed as a bilingual secretary by Amnesty International. But unfortunately, her much beloved mother died before she knew Rowling was writing her book, and with that tragedy, and with the collapse of her marriage to a physically abusive husband in the early 1990s, whom she met while working her second job as a teacher in Portugal, she became depressed and contemplated suicide.

But she went on to move to Edinburgh, Scotland and complete her first novel, writing in cursive, while hanging out in cafes with her newborn infant daughter by her side. But her “luck” seemingly changed suddenly when her book Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone was finally accepted (after being rejected by 11 other publishers) by Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury Publishing in London. An 8 year old girl associated with the company had gotten all excited about the book. Apparently, Rowling knew her young audience.

Then she was caught up in a whirlwind of success that seemed to have had a supernatural life all its own. A whole series of “Harry Potter” books evolved, after which the book sold upwards of 500 million copies, and then numerous movies followed making Rowling the wealthiest writer that ever lived, according to Forbes magazine.

But was this phenomenal success actually supernatural. As if the result of an act of witchcraft itself; or did Rowling just know the heartbeat of her adolescent audience and what peeks their curiosity about the occult of these older children in middle school? I think the real secret to Rowling’s success was her marketing genius and her keen intuition in knowing what her audience wanted to read. In short, it was no accident that Harry Potter, the amazing wizard, was their own age.

Stephen Edwin King is the wildly popular horror fiction writer that started life working a regular jobs like the average American working stiff. But he has a twisted imagination and a penchant for writing dark suspenseful fiction that has set him apart. Born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine, to a working class family, and with his mother becoming a single parent when his merchant seaman father, Donald Edwin King, left the family, Stephen King has known his share of financial struggles, and he had to work his way through college doing menial jobs. King worked as a janitor, gas station attendant, and finally as a high school teacher after graduation from the University of Maine in 1970.

But after he began to prosper by selling macabre short stories to men’s magazines, gradually morphed into a full time writer. And with the acceptance by Doubleday of his first bestselling novel entitled “Carrie”, he was finally able to pay the bill his turned-off phone and buy a brand new Ford Pinto with his $2,500 advance on royalties. And latter “Carrie” was made into blockbuster movie. “Carrie” is the story of a troubled, and bullied teenage girl with supernatural powers who was abused by her crazy, religious fanatic mother until a showdown between the pair ended in mutual murder. Mom, you see, could “Not suffer the witch to live,” according to her understanding of the Bible. King then went on to write many more bestselling books, such as “The Shining”, “The Stand”, “Misery” and many more books featuring the dark side of human nature that were made into famous movies. All in all, King has written 61 novels, 200 short stories , and 5 nonfiction books which include his memoir “On Writing.” Stephen King has actually sold over 350 million copies worldwide. His books all touch fored on the dark side of human nature such as the obsession of a dry writer turned family annihilator in “The Shining” and the the psychopathy of a twisted woman who kidnaps a writer in “Misery”. King has basically defined the horror story for a whole post-modern generation.

It is thought that the impetus for his dark imagination was witnessing a friend being killed by a train, although he himself does not remember it in his conscious mind, But he revealed that the seminal inspiration for his stories was a collection of horror stories by H. P. Lovecraft entitled “The Lurker in the Shadows”. And according to King in an interview, he knew he was home upon reading the book.
But King, unfortunately, has lived out his own horror story when he was hit by a car and suffered the catastrophic injuries of broken ribs, a broken hip, and a shattered leg, which put him at great risk of losing his leg, and left him in a chronic pain condition.

Stephen King is the winner of the Medal for Distinguished Letters award, and the Medal of Arts from the U.S. Endowment for the Arts, among many other awards, and currently lives in a stately Victorian mansion in Bangor, Maine.

Anthony Kellman: A Wise Poet with a Caribbean Beat

No lengthy discussion of poetry in the English speaking world would be complete without recognizing a great poet of present day Barbados, Anthony Kellman.

Kellman is a poet and singer/songwriter who was born on the island of Barbados on April 24, 1955. He is an innovative poet who successfully combined the English language with the West African rhythms of former slaves to create a new form of poetry called Tuk. Tuk is actually the original form of folk music that combined the melodies of England with the rhythms of West Africa in order to form a hybrid form of indigenous island music that would be acceptable to the slave masters that were holding the people captive during colonial times. The Caribbean islands were made up of giant plantations where thousands of African slaves were being held, and the slave masters placed restrictions on any expressions of African culture, so the people had to adapt. But eventually, the African decedents of the slaves became the predominant people and culture of the region with their own hybrid language of English and African languages called Creole, a complete language in its own rite.

Kellman finally came along and made his debut in London as a troubadour, after leaving Barbados at the age of 18, where he shared his music and his beat to become quite successful as a musician. He wrote several poetry chapbooks and his first full length book of poetry entitled Watercourse was published by the Peepal Tree Press in London. And he became an active member of the Poetry Society where he shared his work with other poets, and he went on to write four more books of poetry including his epic poem entitled Limestone, a long poem which spans four hundred years of Barbados history. It is his masterpiece and is currently available at amazon.com in a paperback format. He has also written three novels and recorded four CD collections of his music. His inspirational influences include the spectacular coral reefs and the limestone caves that grace the island, the history of his people, and of course romantic love “under the banyan trees….. a love that has to wait for freedom,” in his song We Love. His music can be found on YouTube under the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMNybyCN1wA&list=PLAo6EjQmjioPYq5liFvzOYbtBrN5BBbm4 and is reminiscent of a big band sound with many musical instruments being used combined with that unique African sounds of the bongo drums.

Kellman was awarded a Poetry Fellowship by the US Endowment for the Arts for his English language anthology of collected Caribbean poems entitled Crossingwater and is currently serving as a professor of English and Creative writing at Augusta University.

Writers are sometimes temperamental creatures, as artists go, and I was sometimes temperamental and a little over confident in my skills, since it takes a fairly strong ego to think that that you can write something that someone else is going to want to read what you have written. It takes a lot of nerve to be a writer and to withstand all the rejection that we ARE going to get. But I personally had a little lesson in humility in the classroom early in my ongoing quest to gain these skills.

It was the first day of school at Honolulu Community College when my first college level English teacher gave us an assignment to go out and look for something interesting to describe, and then write an essay about it. This kind of lesson is always the first standard lesson of any entry level English class in America, and the teacher read us an example out of a textbook from a writer who described a shade of blue as being “as blue as the blue butt of the blue butted orangutan.” I thought to myself “Wow, that must really be blue and I’ve got this. I know I can write at least that well, and I am going to really impress that English teacher with my first essay. Easy A. Wrong!

Well off I went on a walk on a local beach looking for something interesting to describe. And surly I can find something interesting to write about in Hawaii I thought, and then I spotted it: a magnificent Navy air craft carrier off in the distance docked at nearby Pearl Harbor, So I wrote my essay, and boy did I lavish on the adjectives as I was writing to impress. I described the ship as being like a queen and the aircraft as being like the jewels on her robe. What I didn’t realize was that I was actually overwriting the thing. I didn’t yet know that Mark Twain advised young writers to be sparing with the adjectives.

So on the morning when we were to receive our critiques and grade, the teacher called me up to her desk first and with a slight smirk on her face, asked me who I thought I was and wrote a big red C on my paper. Well, in retrospect, I am just grateful that she didn’t completely destroy me by giving me an F, and the lesson here is that that writers should by and large be invisible to the reader in deference to the subject he is writing about. In other words, if you are writing about the leaf on a tree, you should be specific about the shape, color, size etc. but be careful not to overwrite your work because you want your reader to be impressed with the leaf, not your writing style. Keep it simple. Keep it elegant.

Mark Twain also said at the end of his life, “I have only been a writer for twenty years of my life, I was an asshole for the first fifty.” So there is always room for improvement regardless of how good you are,