Cooperstown 4th of July



Feathering clouds over Glimmerglass.



Joyous calligraphy of the air



July 4th celebration at Lakefront Park



Tourists with balloons...
later on in the dark there were fire balloons.



The village band



Tourists with "Indian Hunter" bronze
by John Quincy Adams Ward



A patriotic jellyfish hovering over the lake
and reflected in its waters.



Newlywed Emily Hylden with free cookies from Christ Church,
her husband Jordan looking on



Lake Otsego is dotted with lighted boats.

In the distance is Sleeping Lion Mountain.



Tizzy light.



Stones in and out of the wilderness

"Balanced Rock" courtesy of Steven Ritts of Tempe, AZ
and sxc.hu.

SHARP-EDGED & HARD

"To have an audience, you must care about a reader: that statistical non-entity who must purchase your book, read your poems, and be moved enough to remember or even memorize a line or two. So much contemporary poetry seems written for the void, for no one at all— like spam email, it is merely sent out by publishers conditioned to shrug at the public’s indifference. The audience for our good poets is so small that it’s easy enough to supply it with the not-so-good, or even the self-evidently awful, since the mediocre and the majestic sell the same number of books."  --from a review by Roy Nicosia at Contemporary Poetry Review


STONES IN THE WILDERNESS

  from The Throne of Psyche

  originally published in Mezzo Cammin

One was already there, all rough
   To feel and pitted, slashed
By a wedge of smoother rock that must
   Have been upthrust and dashed

Into the first before the world
   Was writ in hardened stones.
A second one I heaved onto
   The first; I paid in groans

And sweat to lay it there but left

   It so to judge the place

Where I, battered by word, raised arms
   Against a burning face.

Poems new and less-new at "Victorian Violet"

Cover image by Sophie Gengembre Anderson, 1823 - 1903
 "Take the Fair Face of Woman, and Gently Suspending,
With Butterflies, Flowers, and Jewels Attending,
Thus Your Fairy is Made of Most Beautiful Things" --Charles Ede

And yet another update: Another change of link names for magazine pages, so I have updated once more... And I think that probably will be it. Update: Thanks to Laura for asking! After taking a look, I saw that the links had changed and that the table of contents wasn't linking to pages. So I've managed to guess my new link based on the old one combined with the home page address.

Thanks to editor and poet Karen Kelsay Davies for asking for a new poem and some reprints for her e-zine, Victorian Violet, as well as for nominating "At Cullowhee" for "Best of the Net." The journal has a lot of interesting-looking work that I will enjoy more of when the dying, blinking, frenzied modem is replaced (lightning strike and surge from the last storm? Right now I'm camped out on the library lawn to do this post, scheduled via blogger magic for the following day.)

My reprint pieces are two from The Throne of Psyche that I have posted earlier, "Gulf" and "At Cullowhee." It's always surprising to find out what people are most drawn to, and I've continued to get notes about both of those, particularly the latter. At first I thought it was liked because of the North Carolina connection--I had many requests for it at a reading there--but it seems to be plain old liked. Just today I got a note about it from a painter friend. Interesting.

And then the last poem is one of the Red King series, titled "Red Poppy Dreams." The fool is bumbling about in the skirts of a poppy flower... Burmese climbing rhyme. You may find all three here.

Queen of Infinite Possibility

I could post a mysterious picture and not explain it one bit.

I could muse about the poems of Bei Dao, as I am reading them and will review for Oyster Boy. I could tell you how he transformed moonlight into grains of wheat that were people.

I could bemoan Sunday's simultaneous uprising from tub and toilet that flowed into the one room in the house that has to be carpeted--and my life with dehumidfiers, fans, and ripped-up carpet propped on bottles to dry.

I could talk about my yesterday with boys of 14 at the Cooperstown Fun Park and the subsequent wakeover, not yet over, no, not yet over.

I could tell why, if you are a kid or a kid-hearted adult, you ought to read Leon Garfield's Smith.

I could assure you that my fortune cookie said that you, dearest of all readers, really ought to get close and personal with The Throne of Psyche. Because I certainly cannot sell my books door to door like the Fuller Brush Man and a certain Canadian poet, male, conveniently male. Because: poetry is good for the soul. And if you have no soul, poetry may fill that absence and give birth to something strange that eventually you are forced to call . . . a soul.

I could share good news wholly unrelated to the perils of old houses.

I could complain mightily about the high cost of multiple college educations, currently balanced on top of my middle-class head and pressing downdowndown.

I could shout into my computer, or at the modem which is currently on the fritz (an e-squatter, I do wonder whose network I am on...)

I could ask you to find my missing car keys, lost in the mayhem of moving flooded articles.

I could attempt to tell you about a series of mystical, overpowering events that transformed me forever.

I could explain exactly how ordinary I am, and exactly how wonderful it is to be an accepted person in a familiar place with rooms and gardens and trees.

I could turn a cartwheel in words.

I could threaten, wheedle, and cajole. I could pass the hat.

I could rejoice in the splendor and radiance of the day in which, at last, there appears to be no rain. (I do rejoice.)

I could dance around the subject of trees, always inspiring.

I could frolic.

But instead, I shall not.

I shall not post.

Not at all, not bit or whit.

I prefer not to: and yet am no Bartleby.