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Introducing Katie Sottak
Friday, May 01, 2009 Photo Provided by Katie Sottak IV.5.1. I was very pleased with my "Introducing Thomas Costales" issue two weeks ago and am doing it again, this time introducing young artist Katie Sottak. All of the images in this issue are Katie's work, including the lead photo of her standing in front of her mural "Midnight Magic." Katie is currently studying art at Florida Atlantic University. She plans to obtain her masters degree in visual arts with a primary focus in painting. She got into her first gallery at the age of 18, and since then her work adorns the walls of coffee shops as well as Pineapple Grove Arts District of South Florida. She travels all around South Florida to display her work at art shows and events. During a show, she usually does a live painting in front of an audience. She plans on teaching at a college level when she obtains her degree and she will continue her goal of becoming an internationally known artist. Also , I am sure that Michael Sottak, the poet whose work appears here frequently, wouldn't mind if I mention that Katie is his daughter. So, we have Katie, and then here's the rest. Discretion ALISON MARSH HARDING The Night of the Full Moon ME just having a bad day CARTER REVARD My Right Hand Don't Leave Me No More JIM BARNES An ex-Deputy Sheriff Remembers the Eastern Oklahoma Murderers WENDY ROSE Leaving Port Authority for the St. Regis Rezz THANE ZANDER The Day God's Balls Were Captured by Satan CZESLAW MILOSZ Vini Creator Encounter A Meadow December 1 If There Is No God Meaning ME poesis interruptus LANGSTON HUGHES I Dream a World BOB KAUFMAN Cocos Morning GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON Your World GARY BLANKENSHIP oozing through th joints of the stone COLEMAN BARKS Tu Fu Rephrased, and Kittsu This Spring Lizards Me on my own LOPE DE VEGA Various Effects of Love VICENTE ALEIXANDRE The Visitor MIGUEL HERNANDEZ The Train of the Wounded BARBARA MOORE Uncle Johnny LORNA GODISON Garden of the Women Once Fallen RACHEL MANLEY Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude KENDEL HIPPOLYE Poem in a Manger ME seeing what there is to see  "Tranquil Reflections" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak From 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, the anthology of poems selected by Billy Collins, I have, first, a poem by Robert Wrigley. Wrigley teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Idaho. A former Guggenheim and two-time National Endowment for the Arts fellow, he has published six books of poetry. Discretion Wearing only moonglow and the fire's final shawls of smoke, she made her way from the tent at 2 a.m., then squatted to pee. and the heavenly light showed me everything: its cool tongues of silver lapping mountain stones and the never-motionless leaves of aspens, licking her back, her hips, haunches and more, illuminating even the deep green eyes of whatever animal it was that watched her from the forest then - a deer, I believed, and still believe, though I confess I did not rise that night to make sure, did not shine my light or murmur but waited, letting my head as she returned settle slowly back down to the pillow made of my clothes and welcomed her shivering back into the tent, from which I had sworn I would not look. Also from Collins' anthology, I have this poem by Alison Marsh Harding, a native of Montana who now lives in California. Her poems have appeared in a number of fine journals. The Night of the Full Moon On Highway 5 the moon is low and bright in the sky, a natural headlight. It is not the orange globe of my childhood, when the dish ran away with the spoon, nor the oyster of last month, pearlizing my walk through the lily garden. It is the moon the general talked about on the radio station Sunday morning, when he said, "the night of the full moon, is perfect to begin a war." Now, I imagine the man in the moon strobing the cannon of light, across a field of soldiers and dust riddled road, down the mountain and into the valley, past abandoned clothes hanging on the line, to the darkened house, a blazing guide.  "Shadows over Addingham Village" oil on canvas by Katie Sottak Ah, hell. What a rotten day! Don't talk to me. just having a bad day yesterday was nice, fog over sun in the early morning bathing the world in a yellow light, a mysterious light suggesting forces were at work laying our surprises in the corners of the day today it's just a dreary April day perfect for my mood i grumble and grouch and have done so since waking, embracing this dark day, the north wind cutting, as i walk Reba, right through the thin short sleeved shirt i slipped on this morning, forgetting the vagaries of April weather when 30 degrees one night is followed by 101 two days later then back to the 50s two days past that ............... . . ..... perhaps a burst of honesty by the poet at this point will bring some truth to this stumbling exercise this poem has been much to much work to be any good its prime difficulty being that the poet wants to blame a day a little darker and a little cooler than usual as the cause of his own rotten mood a dodge he hates in other people, the kind of people who apologize for being an asshole by saying things like - geez i'm really sorry, but i'm just having a bad day we make our own bad moods just as we make our own bad days and the plain truth is our whiny poet has decided to have a lousy day today and will accept no substitutes  "Pumps" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak Next, I have several poets from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, published in 1988, The first of the poets is Carter Revard, born in Oklahoma in 1931 and raised on the Osage reservation. After earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Tulsa he went to England as a Rhodes scholar to study at Oxford University, where he received his Masters degree. Revard received his doctorate in English in 1959 at Yale. He is currently a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Revard is also a Gourd Dancer, and has served on the Board of the American Indian Center in St. Louis. His Osage name is Nompehwahteh which means "Fear-inspiring." My Right Hand Don't Leave Me No More When you were drunk you could always whip Joe Louis - Lucky he never stopped by Bartlesville On a Saturday night in the Green Lantern Saloon, Or he'd have been forced to let you knock him out. I think he'd have done it; not even the local bullies Would take advantage when you were fighting drunk And sober, you were so goddamned meek and truthful You once outfaced the big fat deputy star Who came to take our bootlegging uncle away. My uncle was holding his breath up in our attic. The sheriff believed he'd been around out place but thought he'd hid out back somewhere in the hills. The laws all knew that you never told a lie, So when they'd searched, this one came out and asked, "Now Alex, is your boy anywhere around here?" "Wellsir," you said, straightfaced, "He was around." One time though, I didn't think you'd make it. Out in the chipstrewn yard beside my window I saw you face the drunk with his butcher knife: He raised it over your deprecating hands And weary eyes that held its point with meekness - I saw him halt and scowl, then stumble close: "Old man, your time has come, you hear me old man?" One thing you did kept his knife from slashing; You did not meet his eyes. i saw him turn Bewildered eyes to me; you took the knife From his passive hands. I heard drunken apologies, Then brought him into the house and had a drink with him. You dealt with time, that way, and better ways: You fixed he broken farm. Your hands once drove A shining nail, squeaking under the hammer, into The massive gatepost's new-peeled oaken bulk; I marveled how those huge things yielded to you Under strapegong blows of the hammer's bluesteel are In the grip of your hands - I thought your hands that held off shame and poverty From all of us, could keep off death from you, My grandfather, but I was gone when he came And did not help. You died bringing in wood for the fire. Jim Barnes is my second poet from the anthology. Barnes, born in 1933 in Oklahoma, is of Choctaw-Welsh descent. In the 1950s, after high school, he migrated to Oregon, where he worked for ten years as a lumberjack. He returned to his home state to take a B. A. at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Later, he earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Arkansas. He has taught American and French languages and literatures, as well as world literature in translation, at Truman State University since 1970. In 1978, two years before the publication of his first book, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. Since 1980, he has published eight books of poetry, two of poetry in translation, one of criticism, and an autobiography. In 1980 his translation from the German of Dagmar Nick's Summons and Sign won the Translation Prize from The Translation Center. In 1990 he received a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Fellowship. In 2003 he enjoyed another Bellagio Fellowship. In 1993-94 he held a Senior Fulbright Fellowship in Switzerland (University of Lausanne). The City of Munich (Germany) awarded him a two-month Translation Residency at Villa Walberta in 1995 to continue translating poems by the Munich poet Dagmar Nick. From January through May 1996 he held a Camargo Foundation Fellowship to Cassis, France, to continue work on a volume of poetry. On Native Ground: Memoirs and Impressions won an American Book Award for 1998. He was awarded a second Camargo Foundation Fellowship for 2001. For three months in 1998 and three months in 2000, he was Guest Writer at Akademie Schloss Solitude, in Stuttgart, Germany. He is presently Writer-in-Residence and Professor of Comparative Literature at Truman State University, where he also edits The Chariton Review, an international journal of poetry, fiction, essays, and translations. from An ex-Deputy Sheriff Remembers the Eastern Oklahoma Murderers i. Summerfield They took a tire tool to his head, this gentle stranger from Wyoming. Oh, we caught them over at Talihina drinking beer at Lester's place, calling the myna bird bad names and shooting shuffleboard. I'm telling you they were meek in the muzzle of our guns. They claimed innocence and: why, they went fishing with the Cowboy just he other day. We said we knew, knew too the way they stole him blind that night. We spoke of blood, the way the dogs had lapped his face. The youngest of the three had brothers, barely thirteen, began to cry: "He told us everything was all right and we hit him till he died." And that is how it was , a simple thing like breathing, they hit him until he died, until he bled Wyoming dry there on the road to that part of Oklahoma no stranger has ever owned. ii. Red Oak We shot the Choctaw way back in '94, last legal execution by firing squad. He didn't die, through the heart, square and he didn't die. The high sheriff, my old boss, stuffed his own shirt down the Choctaw's neck to sop the rattle in his throat. You couldn't shoot a downed man no matter what and he had to die. Damned good Choctaw, I'll say that. Red Oak had no jail and it was too blasted cruel to execute him before his crop was in. The judge scheduled it for the fall, first Saturday after the corn was in the Choctaw's crib. That damn fool Choctaw gathered his corn like any other dirt farmer, dressed clean, and kept his word. "I'm ready" is all he said that day. You got to admire a man like that, Indian or not, murderer or just plain fool. He'd shot three men for sleeping in his barn and taking the milk bucket away from his little girl, though she wasn't harmed at all, and he showed up just like he said he would. There was a picnic in the shade after we choked the Choctaw to death and took the rifle home. First time I'd ever seen a camera, big damned black thing on legs, smelled like seven kinds of sin every time it popped. Had fresh hominy and chicken and the last of some damned fine late sweet red watermelons. My next poet is Wendy Rose. Born in California in 1948 of Hopi and Miwok heritage, Rose grew up in an environment which placed little regard on her Native roots. She received her B.A. and M.A. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976 and 1978, respectively. Her teaching career includes instructor in Native American and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, 1979-83, California State University, Fresno, 1983-84, and Fresno City College, 1984-. She is also an anthropologist. Leaving Port Authority for the St. Regis Rezz I saw a mesa between two buildings, a row of tall thin houses on top bare like the desert I know, the roofs occurring in clumps like greasewood. Oh Wendy, he said, looking at his fingernails, that's Weehawken. Well one way or another we'll get some where soon for I have seen crows dancing on the snow, a hawk on Henry Street, smoke plumes on the lips of streetkids, mesas along the Hudson. I am getting ready.  "Serene" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak Over the past eight-ten years, I've posted poetry on the web with lots of poets. Many are good; some are not. But most of us are what we are, doing essentially what we've done since we started. Thane Zander, our friend from New Zealand, is a different case. The truth is, when I first started reading his work years ago, it wasn't among my favorites. But it seems with each new poem he writes, Thane becomes a better poet, reaching further, digging deeper and, finally, producing amazing work, like this next piece, one of his latest. The imagery and passion and fire and unique Thane-Zander-voice of this poem astounds me. The Day God's Balls Were Captured By Satan The blue painted and wearing balustrade counts the memories of several thousand pliant and placated hands, washed unwashed the dirty nails scratching and bending into a music hall delivered from the Halls of Hell. Suck a Lemon child, your viscous tongue beholds the demon, your yellow spoiled frock the blood of a thousand infantrymen, a hundred thousand Blessed Virgin Mary's, your lollipop stick holds succor to a baby with teeth and a little boy with no balls yet. You see the eyes of Beelzebub shine like coal pits and the frozen North Wind pockets the eight ball, a sullen party goer kissed by a female vixen runs with the ochre of life running from his groin, the passenger passes, the passerby seeks passage, the red headed ex-blonde smiles a perfect smile, paid for with several years of massaging God's Balls in a church whose spire hides bells, the time chimed; the duck fucked; with a shotgun blast in a protected park; who says the winners dresses in pink? In the Halls of Valhalla, the Norsemen drink to Odin in a Vatican in it's own city, the Pope prays, in a reservation in West Idaho, the boneshaker rattles, in a street of Main and Third, a drunk shits in a corner, each with a mission in life, the purple of damnation sex starved demented rejected over and over and bloody over, the licorice green/black from years of practice indicates it's time to chew the stuff to spit with dark green teeth, to perpetuate the myth that God got his balls caught by Satan - in a fair fight. Today, life would seem that way inclined.  "Escape" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak My next poems are by Nobel Prize poet Czeslaw Milosz from his book Selected Poems, 1931-2004, published by HarperCollins in 2006. Miloz was born in 1911 in Lithuania. He survived World War II in Warsaw, publishing in the underground press. After the war he served as cultural attache from Poland in the United States and France. He defected to France in 1951 and accepted a position at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960. Although his writing was banned in Poland at the time, he was awarded his Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. He died in Krakow in 2004. Vini Creator Come, Holy Spirit. bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame. at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction. Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church lift its hand, only once, just once, for me. But I understand that signs must be human, therefore call one man, anywhere on earth, not me - after all I have some decency - and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you. Berkeley, 1961 Encounter We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn A red wing rose in the darkness. and suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture. O my love, where are they, where are they going - The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. Wilno, 1936 A Meadow It was a riverside meadow, lush, from before the hay harvest, On an immaculate day in the sun of June. I searched for it, found it, recognized it. Grasses and flowers grew there familiar in my childhood. With half-closed eyelids I absorbed luminescence, And the secret garnered me, all knowing ceased, Suddenly I felt I was disappearing and weeping for joy. December 1 The vineyard country, russet, reddish, carmine-brown this season. A blue outline of hills above a fertile valley. It's warm as long as the sun does not set, in the shade cold returns. A strong sauna and then swimming in a pool surrounded by trees. Dark redwoods, transparent pale-leaved birches. In their delicate network, a sliver of the moon. I describe this for I have learned to doubt philosophy And the visible world is all that remains. If There Is No God If there is no God, Not everything is permitted to man. He is still his brother's keeper And he is not permitted to sadden his brother, By saying that there is no God. Meaning - When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset. The true meaning, ready to be decoded. What never added up will add up, What was incomprehensible will be comprehended. - And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on a branch? If night and day Make no sense following each other? And on this earth there is nothing except this earth? - Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.  'Ultramarine' acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak As I think I've mentioned before, I don't much like holidays because of the way they interrupt my life. poesis interruptus i stopped off at my friendly local gas-grocery-beer-cigarettes convenience store for money after my morning coffee and newspaper read at my usual table at my usual diner with the usual Sunday morning dueling churchfolk to the behind and either side of me, including an extra place or two at each table filled by the twice-a-year Christians who, it would seem, get all the saving they need on Christmas and Easter, securing all other Sunday mornings for sleeping late or golf discovering, after my third cup, that i had no cash but for four pennies three dimes, two quarters and a canadian coin i've been trying to pass for two weeks now leaving me to pay my $1.94 coffee tab with a credit card..... .....it is at this point in the story that the poet is interrupted by life outside the poem - poesis interruptus - and the question is 4 hours later as to whether he can get it up again to finish what he had most ardently begun at first you might think that returning to the poem half finished is a process of separating the wheat of earlier inspiration from the chaff of the humdrum interim, but that's not the case because with proper poetic recognition of reality all could be one and each could be the other with no separation necessary or possible integration the need instead, finding the wheat in the essence of all chaff and the chaff that infiltrates all wheat like the small strip shopping center by the gas-grocery-beer-cigarette store where i stopped to use the ATM machine, anchored by a large vacant "$1 Store" close up to the "X-treme Impact Church" next to "Alive MMA - Brazilian Jiu Jitsu" adjacent to the "Gathering of Grace Church" neighbor to "Fantasy Nails and Tan" snuggled up tightly to "Tattoos and Piercings" sharing a common wall with "Gin's Chinese Restaurant" it's all like that shopping center, all the disparate bits and pieces, all the wheats and chaffs of everyday urban life, swirled together by the mix master of every day living, making.... the single and complete here and now of this particular and unique Easter Sunday morning another party to which i am not invited because i will not pay the price of admission - separation of sinners from the saved rather than the embracing unity of all mankind, some sinner in every saint and a bit of saint in every sinner wheat from chaff i am one and i am both and cannot separate my one self from the other or either from you  "A night in Paris" oil on canvas by Katie Sottak Next I have a couple of poems from the anthology American Negro Poetry, published Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in 1974. The first of the poems is by Langston Hughes who was born in Missouri in 1902. He was a poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist and one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He died in 1967. I Dream a World I dream a world where man No other will scorn, Where love will bless the earth And peace its path adorn. I dream a world where all Will know sweet freedom's way. Where greed no longer saps the soul Nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the earth and every man is free, Where wretchedness will hang its head, And joy, like a pearl, Attend the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream - Our world! My next poet from the American Negro Poetry anthology is Bob Kaufman Kaufman was a Beat poet and surrealist inspired by jazz music. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the "American Rimbaud." Born in 1925, he died in 1986. Cocos Morning Variations on a theme by morning. Two lady birds move in the distance. Gray jail looming, bathed in sunlight. Violin tongues Whispering. Drummer, hummer, on the floor, Dreaming of wild beats, softer still, Yet free of violent city noise, Please sweet morning, Stay here forever. Finally, from the anthology, I have a lesser-known poet, Georgia Douglas Johnson, born in 1880 and died in 1966. Johnson was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. Your World Your world is as big as you make it. I know, for I used to abide In the narrowest nest in a corner, My wings pressed close to my side. But I sighted the distant horizon Where the sky line encircled the sea and I throbbed with a burning desire To travel this immensity. I battered the cordons around me And cradled my wings on the breeze Then soared to the uttermost reaches With rapture, with power, with ease!  "Crimson Horizon" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak Gary Blankenship wrote this very tight poem last week and posted it on Blueline's "House of 30." I like it very much. The title is a quote from Henry Fuseli writing about slave forts in Africa. Gary says he found it in the book The Decline and Fall of the British Empire by Piers Brendon. oozing through the joints of the stone The stones seep blood like rock struck by Moses' staff, the stain as dark as a slaver's heart steel concrete asphalt plastic rubber leach humanity until those who protect as stone hard as the destroyers deep in the dungeons of old forts the sound of whips continue  "Sublime Spot" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak Coleman Barks published his first book of poetry, The Juice, in 1972. Since then, he has been know primarily for his translations of the 13th century mystic, Rumi. The poems that follow were selected from his book, Gourd Seed, a collection of his own work, published by Maypop Books of Athens,Georgia in 1993. Tu Fu Rephrased, and Kittsu A drizzling rain feeds the moss on the rocks and slows down the mail. Inside the mountain's cold afternoon shadow, a black bull makes a lowing noise. By the river a white gull screams out how hungry. Inlaid hairpins drop to the floor. She's sitting by her loom, almost crying. This will not come untangled, all day staring at threads. This After a long time of not, I light a cigar I'm given for a baby girl, and sit like my father used to sit on the porch, late, in the dark, in underwear. Mother had gone to bed. I would sit with him. We didn't talk much, or whatever we said was just part of being inside a summer night, with its one orange focal point, the breath-lit sun of his silence Spring Lizards Where the filter of the hill empties, I dig a miniature circular lake, a foot across and a foot deep, and leave to let it clear and come back, to arrange creek rocks around the edge and leave to let that clear and come back to fill a mason jar and a coffee carafe with spring water. I have never been so slaked with the mystery of freshness. And now I've left for two weeks and come back to find tiny spring lizards living in the well-place I dug, little waterbaby salamanders under the sweetness of galax and rhododendron around the opening, that leads up through reticulated rapids and invisible passageways smooth with giving the patience and hallucination of groundwater into this mouth where beings play in the clear like tongues, like sounds that hide so instantly, or pretend to hide. Nothing can actually hide its fear or its wiggly joy in so transparent a pool.  "Sippin on Seduction" oil on canvas by Katie Sottak Getting thing in order - the hardest part of leaving for me. on my own it was heaping plate of frustration for breakfast this morning, scrambled, with a mix of crisp-fried angst and three dollops of most wretched resignation twelve things to do before Reba and i set out Wednesday in our little red RAV for Denver, a dose of mountains and snow sorely needed as the seasons here begin their change from not-so-bad to gates-of-hell twelve things on nobody's agenda but my own  "casa blanca" by Katie Sottak I picked this interesting book at a used book store for the grand price of $1.98. It is Introduction to Spanish Poetry, published in 1965 by Dover Publications. It is one of a number of dual-language publications by Dover, intended for use by students of the various languages it's publications covered, from Arabic to Swahili. One of the poets in the book is Lope de Vega, born and 1562 and died in 1635. A writer of all types of materials, de Vega was, in his day, best known for his plays. He claimed to have written 1,800, of which 500 survive today, and was instrumental in the creation of Spain's national theater. Born in Madrid, he enjoyed a number of lovers, as well as two wives, and was a volunteer in the great Armada that threatened, unsuccessfully, England. He was ordained a priest in 1614, which did little to curtail his various love affairs. I like this poem - a little 16th century tongue-in-cheek. I can't find credit anywhere in the for the translation of this or any of the other poems. Various Effects of Love To be fainthearted, to be bold, to be raging mad, surly, tender generous, aloof, courageous, near death, dead, alive, loyal, treacherous, cowardly, spirited. Not to find, beyond your lover, satisfaction or peace. To look happy, sad, humble, arrogant, irate, valiant, self-effacing, satisfied, offended, distrustful. To turn your face from clear proofs of deceit, to drink poison as if it were a soothing liquor, to disregard gain and delight in being injured. To believe that heaven can lie contained in hell; to devote your life and soul to being disillusioned; this is love; whoever has tasted it, knows. The next poet from the book is Vicente Aleixandre. Born in 1900 in Seville, Aleixandre lived most of his life in Madrid. Because of frail health, he lived a mostly secluded life devoted primarily to writing. He belonged to a group known as the Generation of 1927, When the Civil War started, many of the group went into exile. Aleixandre stayed and mentored younger poets and, in time, became a link between them and the older Generation of 1927 exiles. Aleixandre died in 1984. The Visitor Here too I entered, in this house. Here I saw the mother sewing. A girl, almost a woman (one would say: how tall, how beautiful she is becoming), raised her large dark eyes, that were not looking at me. Another child, a tiny shadow, hardly a cry, a small noise on he floor touched my legs gently, without noticing me. Outside, near the door, an unworried man was hammering on a piece of iron. I entered, but nobody noticed me. I entered through the door to go out through another. A wind seemed to shake their clothes. And the girl raised her face, her big, vague eyes, and raised her fingers to her forehead. A deep, quiet sigh escaped the mother's breast. The child felt tired and softly closed his eyes. The father stayed his hammer and set his gaze on the blue line of the twilight My last poet from this book is Miguel Hernandez. Hernandez was born in Orihuela in 1910. He was a shepherd for some time and was mostly self-educated. He began to read poetry, then began to write it. He died in 1942 in prison after the end of the Civil War. He was only 32 years old and in his short life became a strong influence for younger generations of Spanish poets. The Train of the Wounded Silence shipswrecked in the silence of the mouths closed at night. It does not cease to be silent or to traverse it. It speaks the drowned language of the dead Silence. It opens roads of deep cotton, gags the wheels of the watches, stops the voice of the ocean, of the dove: it stirs with emotion the night of dreams. Silence The rainy train of flowing blood, the fragile train of the bleeding, the silent, painful, pallid train, the hushed train of suffering. Silence. Trains of the mounting mortal pallor: the pallor coating the heads, the cry of pain, the voice, the heart, the ground, the hearts of the badly wounded. Silence. They are spilling out legs, arms, eyes - they are spilling out fragments all over the train. they pass, leaving a wake of bitterness, a second Milky Way of starry limbs. Silence. A hoarse, faltering, reddened train: the coal is dying, the smoke sighs, and the engine sighs like a mother and pushes forward like a long dejection. Silence. This long mother would like to stop in a tunnel and lie down to sob. there are no stations to stop at, except in the hospital of the heart. To lie, a fragment is enough: a man can squeeze into a corner of flesh. A single finger, a single piece of wing can support the total flight of the entire body. Silence. Stop that dying train that never ceases to cross the night. And even the horse remains unshod, and sand gets into its hoofs and breath.  "Sunset silhouette" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak Here's another character piece, this one by our friend Barbara Moore. Uncle Johnny My dad and I observed him taking prisoners at Joan McGrover's wedding in the hotel suite From our corner, drinks in hand solitary companions in mute dismay we watched him work the room Uncle Johnny to me four flusher to my dad he glad-handed all beguiling his prey Pumping hands, flashing teeth he moved from clique to clan flattering the flappable goosing the glib with gab working every angle tweaking each detail for "a sure thing, easy money" his tongue silver, never still He was always "on" and folks were always fooled "Just look at him," I said "What a piece of work" my dad replied.  "Island Fusion" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak The next poems are from the anthology Crossing Water - Contemporary Poetry of The English-Speaking Caribbean, published by the Greenfield Review Press in 1992. The book's editor, poet and novelist Anthony Kellman, selected the poems included in the book. Born in Barbados, he attended graduate school in the United States and is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at Augusta College, Georgia. The first poem is by Lorna Goodison, Jamaican poet, painter, fiction writer, art teacher and public relations consultant. Her first collection of poems, Tamarind Season, appeared in 1981. She is one of the best know poets in the Carribean. Garden of the Women Once Fallen I Shame Mi Lady Lady, what could you have done so to make you close in on yourself so? The lady folds her arms across her chest The lady droops her head between her breasts. The lady's eyes will not answer yours Lady, if I tell you my crime will you tell me yours? Mine are legend and all to do with love misplaced yet I've been replanted in this arboreal place, now, if I can find favour (me with my bold face) you bashful you shy you innocent lady must/bound to find absolution/grace. Come lady, tie bright ribbon-grass around your waist Let you and I bloom redemption in this place. II Broom Weed You exhaust yourself so O weed powerless your life devoted to sweeping, cleaning even in your blooming. You pull dust balls from the air whisk away bee-droppings with your coarsened hair. And in your fullness they bundle you without so much as a by-your-leave. Drudges, make a coat of arms wear broomweed on your sleeves. III Poui She don't put out for just anyone. She waits for HIM and in his high august heat he takes her and their celestial mating is so intense that for weeks her rose-gold dress lies tangled round her feet and she don't even notice. IV Sunflower Possessed Her folded neck-skin reveals her age but the face powdered is limned by myriads of mirrors and gold-washed frills. This display for the benefit of the perfect one in the sky. To the ragged coterie of weeds round her she says, "In my first bloom I was the tender honey-skinned mamma of that great golden one on high." The ragged weeds never knowing glory (for this reason some weeds are evil) shiver their rags and hiss "sure" she semaphores, hoping the golden circle of her unmaking will give her they go round once more. The next poem is by Rachel Manley a Jamaican poet born in England, raised in Jamaica, and currently living in Canada. She is a daughter of former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley. Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude. Old men tell better tales. Somewhere in exile Between rumour And the slow revenge of memory The veins of a continent Crawl like snakes between stones You laugh from the belly Of the tribe's womb, On the vocabulary of blackbirds Words fly to meet carnage; Black black Orpheus. Before these cities That have come to look the same Truth had its own shape, Magic was magic... Those whose eyes are windowless live chained to a tree And she is love Who wanders through the generations collecting bones For the library, Listening to the returning confessions Of the broken rosary of blood... It is the knowledge And the mercy of the mind That are insomniac. My last poet from Crossing Water is Kendel Hippolyte. Born in St. Lucia in 1952, he is a teacher, playwright, actor, director, poet, and musician. Poem in a Manger where is the poem? not on this page i'm looking at and reading from. where is the poem? not here, not in these miserable words i'm writing now though i have to write them, though you have to read them, see them, hear them. cause really, if i could, i'd make this page howl at you, the paper burn crisp, the letters burst like pustules and pressurized blood vessels, so you would see on opening this inadequate irrelevant book flipping this ridiculous bit of paper not a "poem" but a baby blackening and charred and smoking still cindered by its private holocaust-to-come if the baby (that's its ear you're holding at the corner of the page - let go!) could curl and stretch and stiffen one last time like a burnt page in a still wind if this baby would show its blackening sooty teeth like letters hitting a page without a w o r d if it would turn over on its back contracting to a bitter foetus, regretting every screaming moment it was in the blank book of the living if you'd see this hear this, touch the wincing flesh of it just as you turned this page if you'd see - goddamn it, why don't you! - that the baby on this page, disguised as a raving poem 'is you, really all the time is you then how would there ever be again another war another flash of nitroglycerine another tin soldier flashing tin-medalled teeth another jack-booted "yes-i'm ready" puppet in the box another and another and another wall-eyed uniformed somebody's son to press or pull or push or ram the triggers, switches, levers, plungers, pins, parapher- nalia of the weltering world-waste of another war? how would there be if this baby, swaddled in words, lying on this inade- quate page would burn alive before your eyes and howling all the time that it was you? if you would see, they you'd see why the poem isn't on this fucking page then you'd see where the poem has gone and why i'm trying to use these useless goddamn words! to catch it, and why i need you to help me do that look at the page again: these are just words let us go find the poem.  "Wine Glasses of Funk" acrylic on canvas by Katie Sottak Here I am, getting things a little backward, ending this week where I started last. seeing what there is to see dropped Reba off at the beauty parlor for a bath and stink-abatement we'll be driving together for ten days beginning tomorrow and her addiction to rolling in anything offering the slightest promise of disgusting - it's her jones, you know - makes her not the most pleasant traveling companion in a small SUV de-rankafication before we leave is a pre-journey requirement if all goes to plan we'll be in Roswell tomorrow night and Denver the night after, D joining us Friday via the magic of human flight - being non-disposed to magic, i do not fly - four days of the sights and sounds of Denver and D will head for home via that old black magic she know so well while i take four or five days to do the same, enjoying along the way the essence of the Southwest from ground level - no scurrying ants for me - stopping when i want for a Pepsi Cola and a Moon Pie or a walk in a park with Reba - other things you can't do at 40,000 feet having been to Denver only once, and that for the sole purpose of driving 200 miles out of the way to worship at the Shrine of Red Rocks, enshrined, according to my son, by the several times the natural amphitheater provided venue for the Dave Matthews Band i assume there is something else to do in Denver whatever it is, we'll have four days to find it  "A Day of Fishing" by Katie Sottak That's it for another week. I'm back now from my travels for a while. Tired though; 3.000 miles driving in 6 days wore me like it didn't used to. Still game for the next one though. Until next week, I remind again - all the work included in this blog remains the property of its creators; the blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz. |
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