Queen Alice

Here's a little postscript to the prior post!

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That is, here's another poem, my first in Light, 

edited by poet Melissa Balmain...

"The Wish for Queen Alice"

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Read the whole amusing issue: 

Winter/Spring 2022 ISSUE: Table of Contents

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Poems and a tiny thank you

I'm pleased that Michael Fitzpatrick, who wrote a lovely, recent review of Charis in the World of Wonders, included one of my poems at the close of his latest Eighth Day column: The Dreamer as Architect," which I wrote for novelist Midori Snyder and was originally published in First Things. Thank you to him!

The second issue of Pulsebeat is out, thanks to editor David Stephenson. And there you may, if you choose, read my poems "Their Faces" and "The Ancestors, Again."  I'm not too interested in writing about me-as-subject, but the second poem is definitely... me and my deep-South roots. "A Child in Snow and Sleep" was in the first issue and is another poem that stems from childhood: the first time I lived outside the South and met the airborne delicacy and earthbound weight of snow.

I have some book news, but that'll go to The Rollipoke readers first...

On being asked for my politics

Roderick Robinson1:27 AM, May 06, 2022

You've said you're not interested in politics; I'm not sure how you manage this given politics infects every human enterprise but I hope I know you well enough to say I respect this stance. But at the moment in the USA, politics - in the widest sense and with worldwide implications - is impossible to avoid. Even for an old male fuddy-duddy like me. Do you think you ought to say something? Perhaps your view may be controversial and you'd prefer not to attract flak. I can understand this and wouldn't want flak to happen. Even so...

Dear RR,

I have never thought my views--I do have opinions, of course, given that we live in a particularly fraught time, when many things are upside down--any more "newsworthy" than those of any other person on the planet. And I believe that talking to the e-aether about politics on social media or a blog is often absurd and chaotic in mode. 

Perhaps a more accurate way of describing my stance is to say that I, a mote caught in the mighty twenty-first century Machine, prefer not to engage in such a meaningless and stressful Babel-game. I prefer to be in but not of a Babylon world. Moreover, I am with Tolkien in feeling that "the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity." I do not seek that opportunity, even in a small way.

There are people who consider it their job to argue about politics. Fine. I let them. There are American-made celebrities who are so ripe with their own importance and wealth and the rushed necessity of using their "platform" (I dislike that term) that they simply must talk of such things. I am neither of those creatures and prefer to go on using what art I possess to make beauty and truth (though what I make is not devoid of thought and may be known, surely) and so add to the sum of what is good in the world. That is what you might label as my politics--to stand against evils and blight by working in my small, nearly anonymous way to add to that sum of truth and beauty.

Good cheer despite all,

Marly