Blog Action Day is today, with a focus on Poverty. Currently 9,394 Sites with an audience with more than 10,612,112 readers are registered in Blog Action Day 2008. Last year, I participated when bloggers focused on the Environment. Read my post on how it’s “Easy to be green at the Carelton Hotel in San Francisco.”…
Two Candles by Ernest Dempsey My writing pal Ernest Dempsey is also known fondly on Riehlife as “our man in Pakistan”—you can find many blogposts about his work on Riehlife under “Read On” and read his poems under the “Writing Matters” archive categories. I asked him to tell us the story behind the creation of…
“Beneath the poetry of the texts, there is the actual poetry, without form and without text.” –Antonin Artaud, poet, essayist, playwright, actor & director
Painting by Joseph Lamarque (see profile under Art Matters) Vladimir Nabokov’s poem was suggested by my friend Leigh Davidson as our poem of the day.–JGR Nabokov’s Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings No, life is no quivering quandary! No, life is no quivering quandary! Here under the moon things are bright and dewy. We are the…
Click here to read about the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in Soccorro, New Mexico November Idyll: After the still life Leviticus 7:12-15 by David Lee (from Orion Magazine, November/December 2007) Above the grain field stubble a lift of cranes like a great table cloth shaken. _____________________ “The poet’s…
A foot of snow atop our bluff: Evergreen Heights, Jersey Township, SW Illinois. Mother, that which you filled and then emptied, we fill again as best we can. Your chair hold us at the wheelhouse hub, yet a glance windowward unfolds and holds worlds beyond. This morning’s world insulated in a snowy rug. Cardinal families…
Aaron Belz is a modern man of letters, a university teacher, poet,reviewer, essayist, and organizer of St. Louis’ Observable Readings. Through Aaron I met the Nigerian poet Obi Nwakanma who was a touchstone for me at last week’s Soyinka Symposium in Carbondale. Aaron Belz’ “gravely hilarious” poems, as Denise Duhamel describes them, in “The Bird…
I have returned from a journey. This journey has moved me further along my journey. Winter Woods. Then creeks and ponds. Rolling Illinois borderlands. More winter wood flash past. Small Illinois towns where one could stop awhile and spend time in geneological research. I could say I got lost. I could say I missed the…
Among just one of my pleasures at the St. Louis Writers Guild Loud Mouth Open Mic last week, was meeting Aaron Belz and becoming introduced to his “gravely hilarious” poems, as Denise Duhamel describes them. I bought a copy of “The Bird Hoverer” spent some enjoyable time with his hovering birds over several afternoons. Aaron…
II. Africa Maun, Botswana Afternoons, I teach schoolchildren to swim in the flooded waters of the Tamalakane. Two fingers support wiry bodies that sink every chance they get. “Arch your back! Spread out your limbs! Float! Kick! Paddle!” Until one student travels under her own speed. We collapse on the bank, gasping with sputtered water…