Taken in December of 2018 on Neil Island (Shaheed Dweep.)
DAILY PHOTO: Rocky Shore, Andamans
1
Author Archives: B Gourley
Five Tiny Haiku
I
the forest,
seen from a child’s height,
shares secrets
II
lifting leaves,
I find a pale, sad sprout
ready to rise
III
sunflower seed:
carried across the floor
by dogged ants
IV
floating leaf,
twisting as it glides
down river
V
a spider,
dangling by its web,
feels each breeze
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
DAILY PHOTO: Kuala Lumpur Street Scene
Taken in Kuala Lumpur in December of 2013.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: Faces & Places of My Dreams
I once read that one never dreams:
-a place one hasn’t been, or
-a face one hasn’t seen.
This is either false, or
I’ve been a lot of places:
-of which I’ve no waking recollection,
-which don’t exist in my photos, and
-which no one ever asks me,
“Do your remember that place…”
I’m less confident that my mind generates faces —
except that I’ve dreamt featureless faces, and
I’ve sure never seen one of those while awake.
But, given that a blonde wig on a brunette actress is
— apparently —
enough to keep me from identifying her,
I can’t be certain that I dream faces,
faces I’ve never seen in the real world —
and there have been oh so many faces.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
DAILY PHOTO: Chobe River Scenes
BOOK REVIEW: An Incomplete List of Names by Michael Torres
An Incomplete List of Names: Poems by Michael Torres
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This collection consists of autobiographical free verse poetry. About forty poems describe Torres’s youth as a Latino graffiti artist, his adolescent experiences with his friends, and his adult years as he teaches in a prison. Questions of identity are a central theme in these poems. Having numerous group identities: ethnic minority, artist, scholar, and teacher, Torres explores how these facets fit together, and how they sometimes don’t.
Much of the work is simple prose, a direct telling of events, but frequent poetic flourishes shine through. The depth of insight into the author is the strength of this collection. He reveals his worldview with plain clarity. The collection offers touches of philosophical insight. It’s sometimes angry, but more often reflective.
This book is one of the five poetic works put out under the rubric of the National Poetry Series in 2019.
I enjoyed reading this collection and found the insights it offered to be interesting and evocatively framed.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
DAILY PHOTO: Parliament, the Kossuth Lajos Tér Side
Taken in Budapest in December of 2019.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOK REVIEW: Poems to Night by Rainer Maria Rilke [Trans. Will Stone]
Poems to Night by Rainer Maria Rilke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Out: March 2, 2021
This is a new English translation of Rilke’s 1916 collection of poems themed around the night. It includes the twenty-two poems of the “Poems to Night” collection, as well as seven draft poems from the same collection and another fifteen poems and fragments on the theme of night. Most of the poems were written during the same period as “Duino Elegies,” which is one of Rilke’s most beloved collections.
The period in which the collection was being composed was a tragic one for Rilke. He was trapped by the war in Germany (while he was born in Prague, he’d been living in France at the time) and all his possessions [in France] were disposed of by his landlord. He had a bit of military service, and — though it was a desk job — he wasn’t cut out for it. And he had an intense affair with a French artist.
The poems mix imagery with a heavy dose of strategic ambiguity — leaving the possibility for the poems to be interpreted in various ways. One might suspect a collection themed around the nighttime and written by a German in the midst of life crises would be deadly morose, but I felt that Rilke balanced the more somber elements with beauty and vibrancy. The poems felt more like a reach for catharsis than a wallowing in suffering (a fault of many poets, in my opinion.)
I found this collection to be evocative and mind-expanding. I’d highly recommend it for readers of poetry.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: The Flood [a Triolet]
The pounding rain will ease,
but still the flood follows.
The gale becomes a breeze.
That pounding rain will ease!
And stillness tames the trees
while runoff swamps the hollows.
That pounding rain will ease,
but still that flood follows.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
DAILY PHOTO: View from atop the Patuxay Arch
Taken in January of 2019 in Vientiane, Laos.
