POETRY: Dick Allen enlightens listeners

Poet Dick Allen read at the Blue Z Coffeehouse last Wednesday. As always, his work is  fresh and filled with details in layers of image and nuance. Though he had three books for sale, (Present Vanishing, The Day Before: New Poems and Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected), he did us the great favor or reading lots of his new work.  When this happens in a reading - not only do you get to see where the writer is headed in terms of  ideas and technique - you also get the heightened delivery because people are frequently more excited about their recent works.

Afterwards during Q&A  Allen spoke to his self-taught Zen Buddhist  roots.  He expressed how mindfulness lends itself to poetry, and his involvement in meditation, his belief in nondualism, and also reincarnation. (I thought those last two seemed to conflict, but I see there are several meanings for nondualism. In one, matter is  illusion, in the other, there is only matter....)

All in all, it was quite a very interesting evening.Allen noted that there are over 3000 print journals publishing poetry and an unknown number of online journals, blogs and sites.  One interesting point: apparently many of these publications are staffed by younger editors who send form rejections to everyone. While even a fine writer's work isn't always a fit with a particular publication,  he said old school notables are hoping for at least a personal rejection not a form letter.  I suspect these editors often don't know who they are rejecting or they would be inviting further submissions. (Makes me wonder who I rejected when I had Bent Pin Quarterly!)

Allen surely qualifies as one of those notables. He has a Pushcart Prize, and has gotten NEA and an Ingram Merrill Poetry Writing Fellowships. He's been published all over the map: The New Criterion, Crab Orchard Review, Ploughshares, American Scholar, The Georgia Review, The Yale Review, Poetry, Stone Boat, Gettysburg Review, The New York Quarterly, and The Hudson Review.  Literally hundreds of his poems  have been in publications ranging from The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and Agni to The New England Review, as well as 40 + national poetry anthologies including five editions of The Best American Poetry . That's notable.

We also got another insight into  Dick Allen, in the form of his  wife, poet L. N. Allen, who read some fine work during the open mic. I am not sure but a "little bird told me" she may be reading for Wed. poetry fairly soon. Tweet.

-- Mar Walker
Read about a workshop on short poems given by Dick Allen Several years ago...
Read his book Ode to the Cold War on Google Books

POEM: Koan (from Inverse Origami)

---

Koan

head-lamp                                                                shining

out of the eyes                                           wholeness

hiding                                               nothing

admitting                      everything

swamp songs of peepers at twilight

love                              hate                  indifference

shoeless feet slapping clay tile

one

flat surface of soup in a bowl

I am

holographic

mist drawn up from the lake

interior                 exterior

unchanged at 5 a.m.    the same at midnight

elemental         &         spacious

---

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

POETRY: Robin E. Sampson in Stamford this past week

It's an adventure careening across the winding paths of Route 124 and 137 on the way to Stamford. The destination was  the Stamford Town Center Barnes and Noble  which has a once a month poetry series run by Frank Chambers. This month the feature was Robin Sampson of  Wednesday Night Poetry, Shijin and editor of  Poetry Liner Notes, She gave a nice tight reading,  with a well-planned set that  seemed to have something of an emotional arc. It was smoothly executed with no paper rattling, no indecision, no apologies.  Well done.  Read some of her short poems in Bent Pin:

 Loom     Staring Back    Tangible Rain    
The Christmas Letter Life    The Sentence    Throw It To The Wind

-- Mar Walker

Tinnitus - these ubiquitous bells

This quiet morning, with a low sun and odd grey sky, I clearly hear the roar of highway and also a ninth chord of bells inside my head.

For many years I've had a common and incurable phenomenon known as tinnitus - which is a ringing sound in your ears, often related to hearing loss, blood pressure, allergies, or sometimes brought on by dozens of different medications.

I think of it as the hum of the universe. I guess more properly it is the hum of the "innerverse."  I find it comforting to  know everything is circulating and my inner machineries are on with their usual whirl .  On most days  this ever-present accompaniment fades to the background, becomes unnoticed. Today I am noticing it more than usual, though  I don't find it unpleasant.

Not everyone is amused by this malady. It drives some people crazy and they go to great lengths to find a cause and to mitigate the sound, sometimes with electronic devices that make still more static sounds. For me, as for many, the cause is unknown.

It's funny how what one person finds comforting, drives another to distraction. Life is like that I guess, what with all the little preferences we hold.

The photo is a reflection of a patron at the Blue Colony Diner in Newtown. The overall effect of each tiny light, with its reflection in the double-paine glass, reminded me a little of the layered ringing sound. She also appears to be covering an ear.

Comments are welcome.

-- Mar Walker

"Science is the poetry of reality" - from Symphony of Science

Another tuneful statement from Symphony of Science.com:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cd36WJ79z4&w=560&h=349]

Securities commission goes after "psychic" investment counselor forfraud

Some things are just too far out to be believed. Yet always someone believes them.....   Here is a link to a story on a National Public Radio blog, about the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) going after a self-declared "psychic" investment advisor for fraud.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/03/sec_sues_psychic_for_securitie.html

Poet Laurel Peterson at Blue Z

Poet, and Norwalk Community College professor Laurel S. Peterson featured for the Wednesday Night Poetry Series last week.  During her reading, at one point I laughed so hard I lost my grip on my coffee cup which fell to the floor creating a lake of coffee.  It was during a poem where she was describing various things she contemplated doing to other women who pursued her husband....   I imagine she also is a fierce defender of battered or abused women - she is a co-founder of the Fairfield County Women’s Center. She also started the  women’s studies program at the college. Her chapbook, "That's the Way Music Sounds,"   from Finishing Line Press (July 2009) is available through Amazon.

Visit her webpage at http://www.laurelpeterson.com/  where you can read a few of her poems.

-- Mar Walker