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DAILY PHOTO: Saadat Ali Khan’s Tomb
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PROMPT: Chapter
Daily writing prompt
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
Chapter 7. Chapter 8.
NOTE: Incidentally, I would not title a chapter of my memoirs “The Hard Years,” so as to avoid the assumption that that was when I worked in porn. People would either skip said chapter… or skip to it.
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Strange [Free Verse]
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Banana Leaf Ant [Senryū]
an ant on a leaf seems small;
on a banana leaf -- somehow -- big.
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BOOKS: “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues by Langston HughesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Available online — Lehigh University
Langston Hughes was one of the greats of 20th century American poetry, and The Weary Blues was his first collection (1926,) containing some of his most beloved (and anthologized) pieces, including: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “I, too, sing America” [a.k.a. Epilogue; which plays off Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.”] I’ve always loved how Hughes used the rhythm of repetition and the technique of standing in for the everyman (as he famously did in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” but in other of his poems as well.) He also had a gift for concision.
These sixty-nine poems deal in a wide range of themes including race, travel, love, etc. Music, be it Jazz or Blues, is an ever-present force in Hughes work. In addition to the aforementioned classics, among my favorite pieces from the collection are: “Winter Moon,” “March Moon,” “‘The Night is Beautiful'” [a.k.a. Poem,] “When Sue Wears Red,” “Water Front Streets,” “Long Trip,” “Seascape,” “Suicide’s Note,” “Songs to the Dark,” and “Lament for Dark Peoples.”
I’d highly recommend this collection for poetry readers.
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Unsolicited Advice [Free Verse]
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DAILY PHOTO: Mekong at Luang Prabang
PROMPT: Sequel
I think sequelization is a pox upon the literary world. I would hazard to say that anything good I’ve ever read was a standalone work. Seldom does the “resolution-to-hook” ratio lead to a satisfying, let alone illuminating, reading experience. A popular book series is far more likely to end like the television series Lost than to pull all its outstanding narrative strings together coherently.
Unless you’re talking nonfiction, in which case I would be open to another volume of The Complete History of the World at some point.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 