An Agenda Less Substantial Than Sight

Here’s a poem from Potato Eaters, published in 2008 by Finishing Line Press. I’m watching Mr. Turner, the biopic about J.M.W. Turner, and the poem references one of Turner’s paintings.

An Agenda Less Substantial Than Sight
Driving down the parkway trying to scratch
something from the mind, how the rain
and the slickness of the road escapes quickly
and what the thaw means.
You had been saying how cold
it has been between us lately. Not thinking
of the drive ahead—a car turned over
on its side has been placed there
by some immense hand, the first stroke
made by a painter on an empty canvas.
An ambulance, and the first color is red.
This is what Turner meant with his fires.
Not boats, not a singular bird,
charcoal at the base of the canvas, not
strokes of white forced in the background.
But the fire, smack
in the middle, drawing the eye like a dart.

It must be an ending, though,
Burial at Sea, because you know
which stoke must have come first.
Sometimes eyes wish they had an agenda
less substantial than sight,
so as not to see the flame’s inner glow,
or the turmoil within a stroke.
A way to see such that shadows
could be separated from light.

The full title of his painting is Peace–Burial at Sea. (image courtesy of the Tate Gallery)

Peace - Burial at Sea exhibited 1842 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00528
Peace – Burial at Sea exhibited 1842 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00528

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Riverwood Poetry Series

I had the pleasure of reading at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford yesterday, May 15, for the Riverwood Poetry Series. Joining me was poet Jasmine Dreame Wagner. It was so great to meet her and get to know her work. Both of us were invited and introduced by my good friend, David K. Leff, host of of the evening’s events.

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Wellspring House

Last August, I spent three wonderful days at the Wellspring House in Ashfield MA. I’m grateful to have had the space, time, solitude and solace, which allowed me to finish the manuscript for Reconnaissance. IMG_5450

Geranium

or geraniums, depending
on if I call it by the number of stalk –three –)
or by its potted home: –one – white enamel
ridged like waterfall rocks)
is deciding
whether it is coming or going.
Likely, someone has turned
the thinnest frond
toward the light
of open window; someone has filled
the pot with too much water.

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The Phillis Wheatley Room

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Riverwood Poetry Festival

Riverwood poetry festival

Join Jasmine Dreame Wagner and me at the Riverwood Poetry Series Reading on Thursday, May 14th. Doors open at 6:30. An Open mic session will begin the evening, followed by our readings and a Q&A. Admission is FREE. Non-perishable food donations for the AHCC (Asylum Hill Congregational Church) Crisis Food Support program are gratefully accepted.

Poem in your pocket

For the last day of National Poetry Month, pick up a poem and put it in your pocket, then share it. It’s not a bad idea to do this every day. A poem a day keeps the doctor away.

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Here are two poems I kept in my pocket for years.

since feeling is first

By e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Dream Song 14

By John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

Blue-stained Ukulele

I found this draft of a post this morning. I’m not sure why I never finished it or posted it last year. Thanks for this month’s issue of National Geographic (about Yellowstone National Park) for inspiring me. . .

From April 2015:

I’ve been a subscriber to the National Geographic Magazine for a few years now, often binging on issues when I find a pocket of free time. This weekend is the calm before the storm of end-of-the-semester melee that will consume the next two weeks. So I’ve been catching up on the April 2015 issue, which features a moving essay commemorating  the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death, tracing the route of the funeral procession. was reminded that the coffin remained open for most of the journey.

I finished that article on Friday, leaving all but one article for Sunday, when Maoist militants bludgeon the weakest of India’s citizens with terror and coal and pine beetles kill mighty forests from British Columbia to Colorado. Maybe the spirit of goodness in all of this was found in the salvaged wood, left after the beetles kill away everything else. The blue marks left over make beautiful patterns. Al Gore, apparently, owns a blue-stained ukulele, but I’m not sure to laugh or cry knowing that. Most of the time, the corpse trunks and branches are burned, but it turns out that much of the beetles’ reign is due to the practice of not allowing the forests to renew themselves through fire. That, and the sweltering globe, which we’ve given them so willingly.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and burdened by new knowledge. What I found stranger was that my own sadness was tempered by something like thankfulness. Of course I felt lucky to be safe, comfortable, and privileged, but more so, thankful for the writers and photographers, and for my subscription dollars that ask us to understand that sorrow exists and is as valid and life affirming as its opposite. Thankful that there are words, however insufficient, to make up for the sorrow.

Groundswell: UB Literary Magazine

groundswell_photo1 Another successful release of Groundswell, the University of Bridgeport’s Literary Magazine, featuring poetry, fiction, photography, and drawings by UB students, including a pool of very strong Creative Writing Majors. This year’s editor, Jose Cabrera, served as emcee for the release party.

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Thanks to faculty advisor Eric Lehman for promoting and reading from Reconnaissance.

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Photos courtesy of UB.

National Poetry Month

Head over to Homebound Publications for all you need for National Poetry Month, and get ready for Poem in Your Pocket Day. Here’s a selection from Reconnaissance and my little son, Django, who inspired the poem:IMG_4082

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Look for Reconnaissance in paperback and ebook, on Amazon, Kindle, and Nook or ask for it in your local indie bookstore.

Justifying the Ways of Animals to God

Having little or no knowledge
about the fall of man,
the boy approaches the ringneck
with the zeal of a crusader
without pausing, as there is
nothing eternal to consider.

The confession had been shed already:
flaky, transparent skin hidden
beneath a rug in the unheated summer room—
the yellow necklace collaring
a brand-new black form.

The saga unfolds quietly
unaided by the dramatic pauses
of scripture nor capped off
with sermons on forgiveness.
The bite is swift, but not final:
there must be suffering.

Rebellion, pride, seduction—
these do not enter the minds of snakes
and a cat cannot tell a fallen angel
from a demon dancing
in the living room’s haloed light.

Eric D. Lehman: Literary Lion in Connecticut

jtimothyquirk's avatarNUTMEG CHATTER

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It is fair to say there’s a true love affair between Professor Eric D. Lehman and the nutmeg state. When he arrived from Pennsylvania two decades ago, Lehman began to hike and discovered Connecticut’s little hills, rivers and forests. He soon fell in love with the museums and the wine trail and most importantly, fell in love with and married his wife, poet and professor Amy Nawrocki. His literary work celebrates our state like no other author, taking on the topics from Tom Thumb to The History of Bridgeport to A History of Connecticut Wine and so much more.  In his recent work, Lehman takes on the legacy of our nation’s most notorious traitor, Benedict Arnold, in Homegrown Terror: Benedict Arnold and the Burning of New London.

Professor Lehman chose Benedict Arnold as his subject because his first experience learning about the figure failed to answer the questions he felt…

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