in the monkey forest, i think of Sun Wukong & Hanuman as a macaque steals my sunglasses
Monkey Forest [Free Verse]
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Monthly Archives: January 2023
Banana Leaf Snail [Haiku]
DAILY PHOTO: Foamy Shore, Uluwatu
Winter Days [Sonnet]
My winter days are vaguely seen from here, but I cannot yet see the very end: only the plain that is the sum of fears, a sum that only living on transcends. The peek I take looks like my days back then. It's not so Batman noir as I've been told. My focus shifts to now; I find my Zen. The act of living life is growing bold. In dreams, that dreadful hour calls to me, and I feign sleep and turn my back on Death. If he can't be seen, maybe he can't lead, and I can soldier on with my next breath. My focus shifts to now; I find my Zen. It's good to gasp every now -n- again.
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Bone Cold [Blank Verse Sonnet]
From a stove-heated room, the snow brightens one's mind with hope that all will be made clean, but cleanliness is next to nothingness and nothingness is next to loneliness. From inside, snow is silencing and light. It's fine and shifts like sand in desert dunes. It's silent like the depths of a cabin at midnight on the prairie before time. From outside, snow saps all of one's resolve, and makes one wish to flee the purity it pretends to generate all around. The cold, it bites like a full-body vice. The feet go numb, but brains... they fire wildly -- they shake one awake, but dare one to sleep.
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DAILY PHOTO: Papan Larangan Masuk Pura, Bali
BOOK REVIEW: Eastbound Maylis de Kerangal
Eastbound by Maylis de KerangalMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Release of Paperback Edition: February 7, 2023
This novella is translated from French but set in Russia. The story is short and simple, yet evocative. It’s about the attempt of its two main characters to conduct very different plans of escape. Aliocha is a soldier who’s traveling by train to a remote assignment in the East when he decides to desert. Aliocha’s desertion plan ends up hinging on the assistance of a foreign woman, Hélène, a French woman who – as it happens – is fleeing a failed relationship. For whatever reason, but perhaps because she knows the intense need to break free, Hélène decides to shelter Aliocha in her cabin until he can make clean getaway.
This is a quick but intense read. The lack of common language between the two escapees makes for an austere telling, one that adds to the emotional tone of the story. I recommend it for readers of literature in translation.
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BOOK REVIEW: The American Sonnet ed. by Dora Malech & Laura Smith
The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays by Dora MalechMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Release date: January 12, 2023
The first one-third of this book is an anthology of sonnets by American poets that highlight some of the characteristics of form and content that evolved in America. Therefore, one shouldn’t expect these to all be fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. America is the land of Whitman, and discomfort with strict rules and constraining requirements along with a desire to etch one’s individuality and voice into all activities is part of what makes a thing American. It’s an enchanting and suitably diverse (also an inherently American requirement) selection of poems, and I think all poetry readers would enjoy reading it. Included among the almost 100 poets are: Walt Whitman, Phillis Wheatley, Natasha Trethewey, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Agha Shahid Ali, Claude McKay, Edna St. Vincent Millay, e.e. cummings, Countee Cullen, Natalie Diaz, Emma Lazarus, Terrance Hayes, Muriel Rukeyser, Sylvia Plath, James Wright, Gertrude Stein, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Lucille Clifton. The poets run the gamut from the Colonial Era to present-day heavyweights, and their works approach the sonnet from perfectly conventionally to wildly experimentally.
The remainder of the book is a collection of short essays that discuss various aspects of the sonnet in America. While the editors don’t explicitly group the essays, I would put them in three baskets. First, there are those essays that examine the work of a particular poet and discuss that artist’s influence on the sonnet. Second, some of the essays examine sonnets through the lens of a particular demographic and investigate how poets of that demographic have influenced, been influenced by, or modified the sonnet, be it those of a particular race, sexual identity, place on the autistic spectrum, etc. Third, most of the other essays explore technical aspects such as line length, rhyme schemes, metering, etc.
As I mentioned, I believe poetry readers will enjoy the selection of poems anthologized, herein. The essays are another matter. They are much more of a mixed bag for poets and poetry readers and are more geared toward other scholars. That is to say, some of them are both interesting and useful for poets and poetry readers, but others will probably not be of much interest to the non-academic reader. While the essays are brief and most are quite readable, a number of them either delve into arcane matters or tumble so deeply down the rabbit hole of wokeness that it’s hard to grasp what the author’s point is (or whether he or she has one.)
If you enjoy poetry and are interested in the American influence on the sonnet, this book is well worth reading – at least the poems and a selection of the essays.
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Crash & Sizzle [Free Verse]
waves roll over with a soft crashing white noise that splays out into a sizzle as foamy water expands flatly over hot sand until the sizzle is washed out by the next wet crash and then more sizzle and then more crash sizzle & crash crash & sizzle
Tiger Riding for Beginners 