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IN HIS IMAGE
He said the assignment isan easy one for this class,write a piece, poem or story,your choice, but focused on a single metaphor. Oh,and to make it interesting,that metaphor should bethe last pet you owned orcurrently own, and if you’venever been blessed with a pet,use an ocelot or a lynx. How hard could it be, I thought,I…
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AFTER ALL
After all that has happened,after all of the changestumbling one upon another,after breathing again new air,after ceding fear to hopewhen I sit down to write itall I have at the endis a small glass of snowin the middle of July.
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HARLAN
You came, Harlan, to Rochestersomewhere in an endless winter,“Ellison in Tundraland” you said.We all chuckled approvingly. You said a short prayerclimbing into the rusting Opel,sliding on the edgeof oblivion, andthe approaching snowplow. You stood, hoarse, smellingof Borkum Riff and English Leather,a tweed jacket over a polo shirtand thinning jeansand told us of the insanityof television,…
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AUDITIONS DAILY
It should be easy, my friend said,to imagine yourself a characterin a novel you particularly like,like I’ve found myself in any numberof Tom Clancy novels, since I caneasily become a CIA agent, it fits me. I know I’d shoot myself in the footor worse, and I’d keep no secretsif you even threatened to torture me,and…
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UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL
It was a plain white envelopequite large, laying in the mailbox,a name and return address,nothing out of the ordinaryuntil I realized there were nostamps, just a marking,Postage PaidMelbourneVic. Inside was a magazineand within two poemswith which I was familiarbut which were nowbeing read on the oppositeside of the globe and Ihad to wonder whatthe Aussies…
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LANGUAGE
The Hawaiian language has 12 letterswhich is important to understandparticularly if you consider writingan apostrophic poem, not to a personor thing, but to a letter of the alphabet. It might help to explain why Hawaiianpoets never write about zoology orthe role that zygotes play in life, andleave zymurgy to the haoles, fornative Hawaiians prefer a…
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THE POEM
The poem, all too often,suffers from a solitariness thatborders on despair, alonein a world that otherwise offersno peace or quiet contemplaton. The poem does not wish this,it prefers to be the centerof attention in the midstof all that is happeningat any given moment. The poem never expectedto have to struggle so muchfor even the smallest…
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ASK OF THE SEA
When you ask me of the sea,living, as I do, fifteen milesfrom the nearest ocean, itis not the sandy beachesof Hutchinson Island I recall,nor the crowded sandboxthat is Fort Lauderdale’s beach. If you ask me of the sea,it is perched on the horizon,far in the distance, lookingout of the kitchen window,or perhaps that of the…
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DEFINE-ITELY
It takes only moments for someoneto ask for a definition of poetry. That task is at once terriblysimple and equally impossible, a poem is many thingsbut not now or ever: a paean to a self-aggrandizingleader without soulor sense of direction,moral and literal; a rant on howall are conspiringagainst you despiteyour stable genius; a Jeremiad decryingfacts…
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JE SAIS QUOI
I admit I am an odd duck, odder for not being a duck at all. But the expression has a certain je ne sais quoi to it, as does that expression and I am all about language. All that is a long round about way of acknowledging that I have always wanted to use the…
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an old writer and his words 