Writer’s Journey

Still immersed withW.S. Merwin

/ lyncrain / Leave a comment

To the insects 

Elders

We have been here so short a time

and we pretend that we have invented memory 

We have forgotten what it is like to be you

who do not remember us. 

We remember imagining that what survived us

would be like us

and would remember the world as it appears to us

but it will be your eyes that fill with light

we kill you again and again

and we turn inutile you

eating the forests 

eating the earth and water 

dang dying of them

departing from ourselves

leaving you the morning 

          in its antiquity.
~The Rain In The Trees Poems by W.S.Merwin 1988

I’ve read three of his poetry books this weekend. I find it fascinating to see how his work has evolved 

Quote

/ lyncrain / 3 Comments

“For every poet, it is always morning in the world. History a forgotten, insomniac night; History and elemental awe are always our early beginning because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History.” ~Derek Walcott

Walcott passed on March 7th, 2017 at his home in St. Lucia. His metaphorical poetry captured the physical beauty of the Caribbean while never forgetting the complexities of his existence in a two culture world. Walcott was a mixed race poet living on a British-ruled island.

“Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed …

I who have cursed …

The drunken officer of British rule, how choose

Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?

Betray them both, or give back what they give?”

The Season of Phantasmal Peace
BY DEREK WALCOTT
Then all the nations of birds lifted together
the huge net of the shadows of this earth
in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,
stitching and crossing it. They lifted up
the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes,
the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets,
the shadow of a frail plant on a city sill—
the net rising soundless as night, the birds’ cries soundless, until
there was no longer dusk, or season, decline, or weather,
only this passage of phantasmal light
that not the narrowest shadow dared to sever.
And men could not see, looking up, what the wild geese drew,
what the ospreys trailed behind them in silvery ropes
that flashed in the icy sunlight; they could not hear
battalions of starlings waging peaceful cries,
bearing the net higher, covering this world
like the vines of an orchard, or a mother drawing
the trembling gauze over the trembling eyes
of a child fluttering to sleep;
                                                     it was the light
that you will see at evening on the side of a hill
in yellow October, and no one hearing knew
what change had brought into the raven’s cawing,
the killdeer’s screech, the ember-circling chough
such an immense, soundless, and high concern
for the fields and cities where the birds belong,
except it was their seasonal passing, Love,
made seasonless, or, from the high privilege of their birth,
something brighter than pity for the wingless ones
below them who shared dark holes in windows and in houses,
and higher they lifted the net with soundless voices
above all change, betrayals of falling suns,
and this season lasted one moment, like the pause
between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace,
but, for such as our earth is now, it lasted long.
Derek Walcott, “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” from Collected Poems: 1948-1984. Copyright © 1987 by Derek Walcott.  Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Photograph

/ lyncrain / Leave a comment

I saw a picture on Marilyn Armstong’s WordPress that I really liked in black and white. Typically, people do not favor landscapes in black and white but I am one of the oddities. I genuinely love black and white photography. I decided to blog today on another passion of mine that gives me creative license to be different.

  • “In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”
    — Alfred Stieglitz

DSC_0195

This is a picture I took of a seagull when we were visiting  Cape May, New Jersey. It has only been cropped and watermarked in the above picture. I love watching them swoop in the breeze over the ocean.

DSC_0195 (2)

This is the same picture with it sharpened and brightened.

DSC_0195 (3)

This is the same picture in black and white without any sharpening or added filtering.

DSC_0195 (4)

This is the final image with denim filtering over the black and white picture. This is my favorite take on the picture because of the way the filter allows the black and white to maintain intensity while adding just a minute coloring to the sky in the backdrop.Photo

Photography to me is like creating a poem. One poet may choose one word and another a different word leaving everything else the same but the poem will have a different feel to the reader.

  • “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”
    — Ansel Adams
  • “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”— Ansel Adams
  • “You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.”
    — Unknown
  • “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
    — Elliott Erwitt
  • “When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things.”
    — Wynn Bullock

I know for me when my muse is being resistant I grab my camera and open my mind to different surroundings and when I look at them through the focus of a lens my muse engages.

Thank you Marilyn for the inspiration. I hope you check out her landscapes and let me know which you love best.

A PHOTO A WEEK CHALLENGE – COMPARING THREE

Self-Promotion

/ lyncrain / 4 Comments

irish dance shoesI was looking in my port on Writing.com when I saw this poem, it’s one of my favorite poems I’ve written. I looked to see if I had shared it here on WordPress and discovered it among my early posts when I had one follower so I decided to share it again since I do have a larger following of poetry lovers.

It is done in couplets with a rhyming pattern on the end.

Love of an Irish Lass

He bowed his head in silence,
allowing his rattled breath to slow.

Closing his eyes, he could feel
the lively Celtic music flow.

He was swept away to days past,
Where her feet moved to and fro.

Oh wee lass, dance for me, I long to
see those ye’s rosy cheeks aglow.

Take me back to those days
Of hornpipes and tapping heel and toe.

Show me again those green Irish eyes
when you paused and bowed ever so low.

He lowered his head in silence again
cherishing his memories of long ago.

The lovely Irish ballad faded quietly away
and with it the old man’s final deathblow.©

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

/ lyncrain / 2 Comments

 

flag2I love seeing all the witty Irish proverbs appear:

  • May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far.
  • A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures.
  • If it’s drowning your after, don’t torment yourself with shallow water.
  • May you get all your wishes but one, so that you’ll always have something to strive for.
  • ‘Here’s to women’s kisses, and to whiskey, amber clear. Not as sweet as a woman’s kiss, but a darn sight more sincere!”  ( My grandpa used to say this a lot especially when grandma and him were at odds.)
  • May the hinges of your friendship never grow rusty.
  • What butter and whiskey won’t cure, there is no cure for. 🙂
  • Where ever you go, and what ever you do, may the luck  of Irish be with you.

A Blessing: Yol Bolsun

/ lyncrain / Leave a comment

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

scatterednotebooks's avatarScattered Notebooks

May there be a road
May your path always be clear
May your journey never fail
May your trail not disappear

May there be a road
May your burdens all be light

View original post 202 more words

Author Connection 7

/ lyncrain / 1 Comment

There is strength in numbers. Individually we are one drop but together we are an oceanI’m fascinated with creating poetry whether it be from a quote or an excerpt from another poet that inspired me or simply a blank page compelling me to write. If you think about it are our pages blank. We have ghosts of other poems, songs, catchphrases, even those silly tv jingles cast shadows on our blank page.

Do you remember that famous T.S. Eliot quote “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

I love making something from something else. Think of it as recycling creativity into a different creativity. Poetry, crafts, cooking, photography and other hobbies or passions it’s something as artists we share in common by deriving pleasure from old things to new things or vice versa.

A boiled corn beef dinner with potatoes, carrots, cabbage and onions for St. Patrick’s Day dinner. Hash on Saturday with diced beets added. Healthy eating. 🙂

Yards of fabric cut up and pieced back together a quilt. That same quilt invites the best cuddles ever on a cold evening.  I’ve got two different ones in progress, I love learning new patterns.

Where does inspiration take you?

 

Quote About the Purpose of Poetry

/ lyncrain / 2 Comments

Arc by Mike Green is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.W.S.Merwin says it the best,  “I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time. I think that’s a social role, don’t you? …We keep expressing our anger and our love, and we hope, hopelessly perhaps, that it will have some effect.”

What the CBO Report on the American Health Care Act Actually Says

/ lyncrain / Leave a comment

Informed decisions require a lot more effort than the old days with all the changes happening daily.

Vic Crain's avatarCRAIN'S COMMENTS

rollover082712
Photo Courtesy of Holden Police Department

By now. most people have seen headlines or soundbytes about the report.  The Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan group. The head of the CBO was actually appointed by the GOP. The purpose of the office is to provide Congress with a source of “objective” information about the financial impact of legislation that is independent from information provided by the Executive Branch. In a complex world, this actually makes sense.

What the CBO report actually says:

  • Health insurance costs for individuals will under the new act (the AHCA is also known as “Trumpcare”), will increase through the year 2020 and may decrease after that.  The CBO expects increases in health insurance premiums under the new law of between 15% and 20% for 2018 and 2019 under the new law.  However, the CBO argues that by 2026, premiums might be 10% lower than under…

View original post 366 more words

As a poet,

/ lyncrain / 3 Comments

I read a lot of different styles of poetry every day. I believe the key to writing good poetry is to immerse one’s self. This particular one by Collins I find stimulating because I love how Collins uses descriptive phrases like sunflash of trumpets, rows of roadside trees, the huge blue sheet of the sky, into a pasture of high grass than drops the reader at the dizzying cliffs of morality. Life is definitely too short to miss all the sun-flash and dazzle of life.

The Parade by Billy Collins
How exhilarating it was to march
along the great boulevards
in the sunflash of trumpets
and under all the waving flags–
the flag of desire, the flag of ambition.
So many of us streaming along–
all of humanity, really–
moving in perfect sync,
yet each lost in the room of a private dream.
How stimulating the scenery of the world,
the rows of roadside trees,
the huge blue sheet of the sky.
How endless it seemed until we veered
off the broad turnpike
into a pasture of high grass,
heading toward the dizzying cliffs of mortality.
Generation after generation,
we shoulder forward
under the play of clouds
until we high-step off the sharp lip into space.
So I should not have to remind you
that little time is given here
to rest on a wayside bench,
to stop and bend to the wildflowers,
or to study a bird on a branch–
not when the young
keep shoving from behind,
not when the old are tugging us forward,
pulling on our arms with all their feeble strength.
My own attempts are feeble in comparison to Collins, but wth practice I will become better.
sunrise_over_water
At The Lake’s Edge by Lyn Crain
The long rocky shoreline had rough water tonight
this breezy spring twilight in April.
I came to watch the evening sun set on the water.
I heard the loons crooning to their mates.
My tranquility was disrupted by a child’s screech and
two young people paddling hard in a canoe.
An elderly man fished on the opposite shore while
a woman read a book in her chair on the dock.
I shivered as the waves swished against the beach
and the cold spray hit my leg as I sat on the rock.
I struggled to regroup my thoughts, to close this day
The peace in my world was jeopardized so
I sought the calm of my beautiful beach haven.
I ached to find my composure once more
As I immersed myself in the beauty at the lake’s edge.
My mind rambled to the times when I brought my children
to swim and play in the chilling water in the summer’s heat.
Those moonlit nights on my way home from work when I swam
successfully working out stress in my own way.
I committed to memory the reasons why I must pick me up once more,
I need another sunrise, to gaze at another sunset on the lake’s edge.
The troubled emotions, I felt when I arrived have dissipated because
the lake’s rippled water refreshed my essence.
I heard the soft call of a loon, the woeful song was
a gentle reminder of my lover who waits for me
Good night, my lakeside haven!
Thank you for giving me sanctuary,
I am okay now because of you.
As you go about your day, I hope you find time to appreciate your surroundings and those in your life. Maybe read a poem while you’re there. ❤