Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014

Rest well, Maya Angelou.
Some of my favorite quotes, from people quoting you.
(I wasn't there when you said it, so I'll take their word for it.)

*

“My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.”

“What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.”

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

“My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.”

*

. . . . . Maya Angelou (4 April 1928 – 28 May 2014)

 

Poetry Day 2014 (two found poems) ...

Got to play author for a day - just a room full of AP English students and me.

{to video: 6 min.}

* Period 0 *

What are the positive and the negative aspects of it?

       If you weigh the pros and the cons,

                    I'd say that language is just as bad as it is good.

How do you use your poetry to create

a lasting impact beyond your lifetime?

      'What do you care about; what are you looking for in life; what is your moral foundation?'

              'Give me an example; give me some specific concrete detail.'

                                     I love doing that, and it's good for people.

                                  So my poetry, I think of it as like calls-to-action –

                                     I don't want to be the reason that somebody sits in a hole

                                                           reading a book for their entire life.

Do you plan on having children, and if so,

are there any scruples that you plan to instill in them?

          As far as scruples – empathize.

       Listen to people, understand where they're coming from.

    Put your head in other peoples' heads;

   put your head in animals' heads; put your head in everything's head:

    put your head in your sandwich's head and realize that your sandwich wouldn't want you to scarf it; 

           your sandwich would want you to savor it. … 

                               you will be living your life as a good person, 

                                     because you will be treating everything as precious. 

                                                                    And everything is precious.

How do you stay grounded?

          The things that make you afraid? 

                            Go and touch them – in safe, controlled ways.

   The things that you like too much? 

     Learn how to control that – sometimes you've just got to eat;

                    if you're like, “Aah, I'm so afraid of getting fat,”

go and binge until the point where you can't stand up

and be like, “Maybe I don't like food so much,”

and then eat a salad and enjoy it …

  learn to attach positive emotions

      to the things 

         you know 

                 are good 

                            in life.

{to video: 14 min.}

 

* Period 1 *

A lot of people say that you're not really an artist

until you have an audience to show your art to?

     Anybody who cares about being a real artist isn't a real artist –

       it's like, 'I'm a skater. And I wear skater clothes.' 

                                      No you're not; you are an actor.

      Anybody who says, 'This is what I am,' is an actor.

      So the reason to put your art out there is not to be an artist;

              the reason to put our art out there is because you like your art

enough that you want it to be the best art it can be –

                        and you don't have enough time in your life to figure it out on your own.

                 Other people can help you.

                                                           Cool? 

                                   Don't be scared;

                                           everything is drafts.

I was just wondering – what your favorite sense was?

     I don't – I don't want to hurt any of my sense's feelings.

                              'Cause they're all feelings;

                                    that's all they have.

Do you ever notice what you notice in the world as a writer?

I read something once about how writers notice different things...

     I feel like there's a distance that some

                      self-affected writers –I AM THE WRITER–

                                      those people, they step back and they're like,

                           'What's the next thing I'm gonna write about/OOH, you look like

                                                                 a good character {suck,suck,suck}

                                                             OH, what are you doing now?

                         Oh, I bet you- I bet you're thinking about your

                                      grandma, and/Ohhh {scribble,scribble,scribble} ... ,'

        But at some point–LIVE YOUR LIFE– you're

 like, 'Shit! I've been watching people so much,

I haven't been living my own life.'

     And so I feel like, the best way, to absorb those things

                       is through the path of empathy: you look at people

                                and you try to put yourself inside them –

                                                  not as a literary or a rational exercise,

                                                                             but just to feel it.

                    Just because you're like, 

                             '{leans back, smiling} I wonder

                                                                what it's like to be you. Aw...'

                       Curiosity, right?

         Like, 'What did all five of my senses just go through?'

    that's a rewarding experience as a human being.

                                                            Not as a writer.

                                      So –writer-schmiter–

                everybody should do that.

Werewolf-hunting (a bedtime story)

For my roommate, Jonathan. So he has a good fairytale to tell his niece in Germany at bedtime (to make sure she stays under the covers … awoooo).

{diction}

 

Werewolf, werewolf. Are you there, wolf?

Want to catch you in my snare, wolf.

But if you're smart, you won't be there, wolf

(you tricky-dicky little werewolf).

Werewolf, werewolf, loves the moonlight.

Werewolf, is tha(?)-aatchoo! Gesundheit.

Werewolf – now I must be stealthy

(because the werewolf's bite's unhealthy).

Werewolf's stronger, but – I'm wiser.

Werewolf ON MY NECK, OH SCHEISSE !!!

Still, I think you are a dumb one;

Werewolf, now I have become one. :(

(**Warning: Germans may seek retribution
if you butcher their accents.
... & they may own stun-guns.**)

Book 3: Cover & Introduction (the perfect example) ...

(book 2 is still coming along ... slowly. But inside of that process, I managed to distract myself into throwing together a cover for the next collection -- mostly to remind myself that I'm going to do it 6"x9" this time, instead of 8.5"x11". So here's the tentative cover & introduction for the poems to come.)

Book 3:

The Perfect Example

I used to write toward the dream of “permanence.” I intended my poems to speak in “universal” terms so that unimaginable audiences, looking at the thousandth translation, 100 years post-print and galaxies away, could relate to the spirit of my writing. But I realized that languages' open-source words themselves already contained that spirit, and what I had been writing was just an echo of the dictionary: combinations of the pre-existant; derivative, redundant, bereft of me.

The beauty of poetry is not primarily in the parts that “translate well," but in the parts that stale: that which resonates in its time and place with a local life and – like all things truly alive – dies as that time breezes past.

Some hold up poetry as the pinnacle of language-in-use. So the question follows: what is that use, what is it doing, what is its effect? I thought long and hard on this (neither an act nor a phrase that I coined), and concluded that poetry localizes the universal: it points out where flesh is channeling some spirit; it mortalizes the everlasting. Poetry finds an old idea alive in some creature for an intense and passing moment. This is not a lofty goal, but a lowly one; not an axiom, but a parable; not a thought, but a feeling.

The use of writing and speaking, I think, is not to contain a Concept (that is the duty of the words themselves) but to share a moment – green and brown, living and rotting, subtle and heady (communication is the stalk-whiskered, root-webbed scalp of the soil horizon).

And the pinnacle of writing and speaking, immanent and perspectival as it may be, is to give a perfect Example: visible from a few shifting angles; tangible with the right tempered touch; dead before we hear it speak, but alive again at the moment we perk our ears to listen; a ghost that seems to smell and taste like earth, but really ever only primes us to smell and taste the earth for ourselves.

Like our anchored & radiating hearts, poetry is boundless in its simple limits, true to its nature, a perfect example: no more, no less.

Valentinus (song)

Happy Valentine's Day!
Pass on some kindness.

(inspired by reading the Wikipedia article on Saint Valentine, who according to historical testimony “was arrested and imprisoned upon being caught marrying Christian couples and otherwise aiding Christians who were at the time being persecuted by Claudius in Rome. Helping Christians at this time was considered a crime. Claudius took a liking to this prisoner – until Valentinus tried to convert the Emperor – whereupon this priest was condemned to death. He was beaten with clubs and stones; when that failed to kill him, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate. Various dates are given for the martyrdom or martyrdoms: 269, 270, or 273.” Neat guy, right? So I figured, here’s a song in memory of his values-in-action.)

{melody}

Man, I'd never kill.

I’d never kill a man –

And when one tries to fight with me,

I put a puppy in his hand.

*

He said, “What you tryin’ to do?

Layin’ this dog upon me?”

I said, “Usually if a man is mean,

It’s just because he lonely.”

Even if a kid is bad,

I never strike a child.

A boy was being a brat

So I threw an octopus at him and smiled.

*

He said, “What are you doing

Giving me this gangly cephalopod?”

I said, “Usually if a kid is wild,

It’s just because they bored.”

I’d never call a girl

A ‘ho’ or a ‘bitch.’

A lady was chewin’ me out

And so I made her a ham sandwich.

*

She said, “Well, I was so mad at you,

But now I’m ingratiated.”

I said, “Usually if a girl is pissed,
She just need to be appreciated.”

I have seen all these things

And I pass them along to you.

So next time someone shows their teeth,

You just show them a love that’s true:

Just show them a love that’s true!

Special Feature: Holiday reminder ...

Happy holidays, friends and traffic-monitoring autobots!

           In this season of giving {love, presents, influenza}, I would remind you of only one thing -- Holidays are set aside in our life to rejuvenate (i.e., "to become young again," from re-"again" + Latin juvenis "youth") the spirit.

So, for goodness sake, play with your food!

I cannot recommend this course of action highly enough as BOTH an exercise for your imagination, and a warm-up for your masticating muscles (mostly in the form of smiling).

         Enjoy these days/ meals ahead:   God bless & Satan spur,
                                                 - Josh