Collected Poem

Excerpts from Strokes of Solace Collected Poems by Sanjeev Sethi

by 

Decathexis 

In long-established fasteners
of familial zippers, 
my aloneness leaves me unfurled. 
We are so easily robbed 
when we give ourselves to others. 
Who will want to be a professional boxer 
if epistaxis is the only reward? 
When kindness is home, 
no-one eyes the egress.


Peccavi

Thuribles of trust coax me to be myself.
In the calm of auroral currents, I inhale 
without worry. In the noise of many 
truths, I choose my assailants.

One’s moral compass is as good as guilt 
permits it. Whetted by His workbook, 
outcomes are unwemmed, though our 
daemon is lame as our lapses.


Personalia

I negate the truths they tell me 
about myself, 
a trick I learned early in
game of one-upmanship. 
Whigmaleeries twist on
the dance floor of inclinations, 
I plié myself out of them, 
an exercise practitioners 
of the deadpan imbibe.
The closeness of tanzanite beads 
crumble at the shrine of surmises.


Chef-d'oeuvre

Raked on coals 
by an unseen powerhouse
it seems I am always 
in a sedulous cauldron. 
Chefs of caliber 
add merit and material 
to create a masterpiece. 
When visitants drop by
I garnish the viands,
with poise 
and accept the praise.

 
Editor’s Note: A month before the release of Wrappings in Bespoke, Strokes of Solace(Strokes of Solace, CLASSIX, an imprint of Hawakal, New Delhi, July 2022) was published.
 
 

 
 
Sanjeev Sethi has authored seven books of poetry. His latest is Wrappings in Bespoke (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK, August 2022). He has been published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 400 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He edited Dreich Planet #1, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the prestigious National Defence Academy, Pune. He was recently conferred the 2023 Setu Award for Excellence. He lives in Mumbai, India. X/ Twitter @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems

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Three Poems Excerpts from Wrappings in Bespoke Collected Poems by Sanjeev Sethi

by 
Asafetida

Investing emotions when other operating levers exist, 
loving without the privilege of parenthood is an essay
in emptiness. In some eyes, I can see myself. I’m inured 
to their throes. Come, let us camouflage grief in girdles 
of guffaw. Let this be our memory.

You and I inhaled prescriptions scried by sources beyond 
our breath. By then, my sight was misted by the smoke 
of your sticky tune. As with passive smokers, we nip and 
sometimes nurse. An opisthograph on love is not enough: 
lived lives have other needs. 


Allopatry

There was a phase, longish period when I read,
I scrived but didn’t put it in print. Tick-tock of 
my pendulum was on a cerebrational mode. 
Like a bodhi of sorts, I built a blindstory, 
quieter than all the calm there is. College 
friend, a bureaucrat, called. My apodictic 
response was to share not show-off. While 
cutting off, his har-de-har translated as loser. 

Marionette

In the statuary of my branular orb, your figurine shines the sharpest.
When fate conspires to have us face to face, you bring to naught 
the herringbone fabric I primp your mannequin with. I like the layers 
I pad you with: you’re you, plus my decoupage. This suits our setting.
The dominion of physical distance invigorates our weal with you 
chirking best inside me, heedful of my heart as your homestead.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored seven books of poetry. His latest is Wrappings in Bespoke (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK, August 2022). He has been published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 400 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He edited Dreich Planet #1, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the prestigious National Defence Academy, Pune. He was recently conferred the 2023 Setu Award for Excellence. He lives in Mumbai, India.
X/ Twitter @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems

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Press. Excerpts from Seasons in the Sun. Winter’s Breath 3 Poems by Annest Gwilym

by 
Days like this to be read as honey

For the child I never had

    
I would give you:
the honeydrip of low sun on the horizon;
a cold that sugar-coats mountain tops,
collides cells and atoms;
all the tree-lined hours of your dreams;
a moonsuck and sunstruck
clock stuck at youth;
four seasons in a day.

In my witchery I would
line up jars of bright starshine
on your windowsill;
conjure Caravaggio days, 
raining pomegranate seeds;
trap it all in amber.

And if you ever lived, 
you could live it too.


First published in the PK Project Quixotic Travellers, December 2018.
Also published in Caught in the Net, November 2019.


In the Immensity of Night


    
Things with invisible hands
unlatch the doors unseen

Creep on silent feet
around my floating bed

Tap their long, strong nails
on my wooden headboard

Whisper poetry in my sleep
which evaporates at dawn

A crinkle of leaves gathers
at the base of the bed

While the sea laps at my front door
lost and miles from home

Baby crabs with tiny pincers
knock, want to enter

The herons are watching
as gulls tear candy-floss clouds

Outside is dangerous, static-filled
inside is better

I pull the duvet under my chin
I think I’ll stay here


Winter’s Breath


    
Winter’s breath is snow-dust prophecy,
humus and moss-scented ache 
of leaf mould from autumn on the floor.

Under the cold, clear fire of stars
its wind corrugates the sea’s iron
in the silent meadows of the night.

Winter’s woods are antlered, dark,
fox-sharp, full of long, wolfish shadows
that follow you home.

Its eye is pale, glaucous; air salted 
with frost, whose sharp proboscis 
probes every crack and crevice.

Winter is a black and white country.
The old know this: it strips flesh
from trees, flowers, bones.


https://carreg-gwalch.cymru/seasons-in-the-sun-3008-p.asp

Annest Gwilym is the author of three books of poetry. Surfacing (2018) and What the Owl Taught Me (2020), were both published by Lapwing Publications. What the Owl Taught Me was Poetry Kit’s Book of the Month in June 2020 and one of North of Oxford’s summer reading recommendations in 2020. Annest has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, both online and in print, and placed in several writing competitions, winning one. She was the editor of the webzine Nine Muses Poetry from 2018-2020. She was a nominee for Best of the Net 2021. Her third book of poetry – Seasons in the Sun – was published by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch in September 2023 and was Poetry Kit’s Book of the Month in November 2023 as well as being one of their Christmas reading recommendations. She has been nominated for the Wales Book of the Year Award 2024/Gwobr Llyfr y Flwyddyn 2024. Seasons in the Sun is available from Amazon and other places. It is also available from all bookshops in Wales.

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5 sonnets from the poetry of R.W.Haynes

by 
1]

The Knife and the Retreat

One awaits the knife, not that that
Is all that dramatic, cathartic, or just.
But anticipation can miss surprise in the dust
And there it pops up, wagging its hat.
And that’s the great crisis right then, of course,
That jolt of suddenly being unprepared
To cope with emotion one had never cared
To consider might land with unexpected force.
“I’d rather be a Stoic,” old Wordsworth might say,
His teeth clamping down on his old corncob pipe,
“Than be clotheslined to whimper and to gripe
While my sweet fantasies evaporate away.”
Now retreat and recover, live, do not die.
Be that imagined hermit, lonely by the Wye.


2]

The Cliffside Stroll

Her sonnets struggled along the cliffside path,
Shells and flowers tracking her aimless way,
As a dark spirit followed in shadows of the day,
And blue jays whispered, choking back their wrath.
But the bright sun vanquished in the blue sky,
And earthquakes held themselves in control
As she nibbled wafers and prayed for his soul
A little, and watched the hungry seagulls fly.
Below her, breakers gnashed at the rock,
And old prayers ascended upward as mere mist,
And memory quietly reft how they’d been
One sweet time, never to come again,
Since they’d looked at each other and kissed.
But now the jays can resume their clamor
And earthquakes swing their devastating hammer.


3]

Barks

So there is madness in exaggeration
And some cold, bold sanity, too.
Get unexcited by unthinking silence
Till the dogs start barking madly at you.
They know, these dogs, what’s in your mind.
They hear everything, and they’re not blind.
They smell all the aromas of violence
And long for the bite of imagination.
It is the bark of time that philosophy
Avoids waking us with to keep us free
From madness and unleashed disorientation,
One kind of wisdom, our mortal enemy.


4]

Last Conversation

Do we mix admiration and regret
For prudence managed half-heroically?
For half-blind pleasure felt half-painfully?
Ha ha, no paradise has come here yet,
Nor has a fatal drama played for us
With gestures, shouts, soliloquies,
Devastating recognitions—no, none of these
Has come, no, no bother, no fuss.
One turns away, right, when warning lights
Blink in the guts, and one’s breathtaking act
Of false control works to distract
Destructive impulse as it wildly fights.
And, O you craven philosophic Judas,
You let the grinning Fates come burn and loot us.


5]

The Quicksa-a-a-and of Laughter

One cannot keep writing sonnets.
			Tennessee Williams

The double-Debbie’s dud dude did
What he could and whenever he could
And sped sometimes up to no damn good,
And they all laughed hard wherever they hid,
Laughing like lobsters with haha like crows,
In musical moonlight uttering chuckles and snorts
And torrents of turbulent hilarious sports
In musical starlight until the sun rose.
“The operation of masks,” he nervously spoke,
“Is best done by women, whose all-wily wits
Confound men’s arguments and logical fits
Like music the mad game of mirror and smoke.
Get away, Cassandra!” he shrieked in agony.
“All right, brother—have you no faith in me?”

R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, has published poetry in many journals in the United States and in other countries. As an academic scholar, he specializes in British Renaissance literature, and he has also taught extensively in such areas as medieval thought, Southern literature, classical poetry, and writing. Since 1992, he has offered regular graduate and undergraduate courses in Shakespeare, as well as seminars in Ibsen, Chaucer, Spenser, rhetoric, and other topics. In 2004, Haynes met Texas playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote and has since become a leading scholar of that author’s remarkable oeuvre, publishing a book on Foote’s plays in 2010 and editing a collection of essays on his works in 2016. Haynes also writes plays and fiction. In 2016, he received the SCMLA Poetry Award ($500) at the South Central Modern Language Association Conference In 2019, two collections of his poetry were published, Laredo Light (Cyberwit) and Let the Whales Escape (Finishing Line Press). His Latest collected works are Heidegger Looks at the Moon (Finishing Line Press 2022 ) The Deadly Shadow of the Wall (finishing Line Press 2023)

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Review Press Release Gary Beck’s Double Envelopment Collected Poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop

by


 
Double Envelopment is a page poetry book. Available in paperback with a retail price of $14, ISBN: 978-1-910718-58-2. Published by Purple Unicorn Media.
 
 
Gary Beck has long been a contributor to Poetry Life and Times Artvilla.com over the last decade. In his recent collection of poems Double Envelopment, a collection in response to harsh conditions affecting many of our people, who only want a better future for their children, to quote the author, we already feature some of his poems under the title heading Liberty in Ashes. Beck is a prolific writer, his output over the years is awe inspiring. But what is notable about all his work is his unswerving adherence to style, a particular style, which he never varies from. And this is what is, in my view, one of the most intriguing factors about his works as a poet. It is of course an impeccable style crafted with an expertise at the medium he wishes to portray. His stanzas, often minimal are succinct and pointed directly at the critique he adopts. In fact it is true of most of his works that I have read they are a socio cultural critique viewed from many different perspectives, but always with a compassionate reflection towards the underprivileged and their hardships. Reading his work you follow stanza after stanza in a crisp terse deliberation, that superficially may look simplistically written but in fact are profound and more easily accessible in the form he reaches in them for the reader. Again Beck is a citizen of the USA and much, all in fact of his work centres around its socio cultural milieu. Yet his work is wider than that and finds an appeal and reach of a common humanity that we all embrace. It is a form of poetics that is highly original in its content, because at first glance you are forced to question is this poetry or merely a narrative prose. It is only as you follow the way he develops a theme leading it in its subject matter to deeper enquiry, that you begin to see the subtlety of turn in each stanza poem, of which he seems to have become an adapt of past master, rather easier to test than you might imagine, as when you would attempt to imitate one of his own renditions. Double Envelopment has recently been published and is available at…. http://www.purpleunicornmedia.com/double-envelopment-gary-beck.html 

Urban Sight

The creaky, old homeless woman,
ravaged by unmet demands
pulls her cart of broken dreams
as she trudges unkind streets
that do not welcome outcasts,
concrete without compassion
for relics of once normal lives.

Removal

Winter winds blow harshly
on the abandoned homeless
marooned on city streets
‘til rain and snow drive them off,
no choice but to leave behind
cardboard signs imploring aid,
cardboard mattresses, cardboard blankets
decomposing from the torrent
that washes away the last hope
for primitive survival
before eradication.

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The great divide
between haves and have nots
is never wider
then at Christmas,
when the wealthy celebrate
on their super yachts
with epicurean pleasures,
while many huddle
in pubic housing
without heat, amenities,
each day a struggle
to endure poverty,
while only a few
can better the lives
of their disadvantaged children

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 3 poetry collections, 14 novels, 3 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 5 books of plays. Published poetry books include: Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order, Contusions, Desperate Seeker and Learning Curve (Winter Goose Publishing). Earth Links, Too Harsh For Pastels, Severance, Redemption Value, Fractional Disorder, Disruptions, Ignition Point, Resonance and Turbulence (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Double Envelopment). Motifs (Adelaide Books). His novels include Extreme Change (Winter Goose Publishing). State of Rage, Wavelength, Protective Agency, Obsess, Flawed Connections and Still Obsessed (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Call to Valor). His short story collections include: A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing). Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Essays of Gary Beck (Cyberwit Publishing). The Big Match and other one act plays (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume 1 and Plays of Aristophanes translated, then directed by Gary Beck, Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume II and Four Plays by Moliere translated then directed by Gary Beck (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume III). Gary lives in New York City.
 
 
 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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St.Francis. A Poem by Peter Mladinic

by 
St. Francis

Katie Zwerling, leave everything behind
and come with me to St. Francis,
a little town way up in Maine, way up
there, way out there. When people say
out in the middle of nowhere they mean
this place, surrounded by logging roads

cleared a hundred years ago so trucks
could haul logs to populated places.
You’ve seen roads surrounded by trees.
These roads are really surrounded by trees!
You drive on, it’s a bit scary. Nothing’s
around these winding dirt roads but trees

and this town, where we could settle
in a house with heat, air conditioning. 
Would the house have central air?  Maybe.
But it would have electricity, plumbing,
and we’d be close to the logging roads,
get to know them so we wouldn’t get stuck

or lost. People want to be near the ocean,
or a lake or a golf course. I’d take these
logging roads any day over a golf course
or a mall, roads with trees around, pines,
evergreens, no vehicles, except us in ours,
my jeep with a GPS, so as not to get lost.

So much snow in winter, a snowmobile
would be needed.  I could buy one!
Snowsuits to keep us warm. Go out 
on those roads, not too far, and come back
to our house in St. Francis. Both of us
stripped naked I could kiss you all over.

We could make love, then go to a local cafe,
come home, watch Reign on Netflix.
St. Francis has WiFi. We could call people
on our cell phones. When logging roads
were made, did they had telephones way up 
there?  It’s way, way different from here.

 

 
Peter Mladinic has published three books of poems: Lost in Lea, Dressed for Winter, and Falling Awake in Lovington, all with the Lea County Museum Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico. His fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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Liberty in Ashes excerpt Poems from Double Envelopment Collected Poems by Gary Beck

by 

Liberty in Ashes

So many want to be president.
So few know that it should be
the protector of the people,
guarding them from oppression.
Instead, these wannabe servants
eager for indenture
to the capitalist masters
who have established control
of the future of America
having successfully removed
the stout-hearted blue collar class,
the only group determined enough
to resist the blatant tyranny
of voracious oligarchs,
refusing to give a fair share
to the people who toil for them
while they consume the fruits of the earth.


Growth Spurt

The march of civilization
has improved life for many,
who live longer, healthier,
with luxuries unimagined
a few hundred years ago.
As we evolved
from family, to clan, to tribe,
then made the great leap
to nation states
we devoured the resources
of a bountiful earth,
until we are poised
to destroy the world
in extravagant consumption.


High Crime II

The prison industry,
the most unproductive industry
in this ailing nation
currently incarcerates
more then a million men,
a lot of women,
more than the population
of some small countries.
The system employs
guards, cooks, teachers,
psychologists, doctors,
the list goes on,
all to maintain
adjudicated criminals,
innocent or guilty,
custodians or confined
another pustulant body
in diseased America.

Similar or …

New Year’s Eve 1968,
a terrible year for Vietnamese,
while only some Americans
lost loved ones,
as the nation consumed
vast amounts of treasure
that the oligarchs believed
would be wasted on the people.
Despite growing inequality
most of us didn’t notice,
unless our sons were killed
in distant jungles.
We still didn’t realize
that the lords of profit
were abandoning our factories,
eliminating blue collar workers,
the last group to defy the bosses.
Yet I seem to remember
it was a good year for Haut Brion.

New Year’s Eve 2018,

the revelers no longer hulk
in one congested mass
jammed crammed together,
thousands drunk, stoned,
muggers, pickpockets, hoodlums
visiting their neighbors,
who still had a great time.
Now people stand
in isolated groups,
regimented in the Age of Terror.
But despite the lack of drink, drugs,
they still have a good time.


Beset

A semblance of normality
pervades the land,
even for the disadvantaged
struggling as usual
to make ends meet,
feed, shelter, clothe
their needy children,
who will never understand
why they can’t have
the same things
as everyone else.

‘Double Envelopment’ is an unpublished poetry collection in response to harsh conditions affecting many of our people, who only want a better future for their children.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 3 poetry collections, 14 novels, 3 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 5 books of plays. Published poetry books include: Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order, Contusions, Desperate Seeker and Learning Curve (Winter Goose Publishing). Earth Links, Too Harsh For Pastels, Severance, Redemption Value, Fractional Disorder, Disruptions, Ignition Point, Resonance and Turbulence (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Double Envelopment). Motifs (Adelaide Books). His novels include Extreme Change (Winter Goose Publishing). State of Rage, Wavelength, Protective Agency, Obsess, Flawed Connections and Still Obsessed (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Call to Valor). His short story collections include: A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing). Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Essays of Gary Beck (Cyberwit Publishing). The Big Match and other one act plays (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume 1 and Plays of Aristophanes translated, then directed by Gary Beck, Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume II and Four Plays by Moliere translated then directed by Gary Beck (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume III). Gary lives in New York City.
 
 
 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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Heidegger Looks at the Moon. Collected Poems. RW Haynes. Reviewed by Robin Ouzman Hislop

by

Heidegger Looks at the Moon is the latest volume of poetry by RW Haynes, who is well known to us at PLT (Poetry Life & Times), where as well as being Interviewed, his various previous works,
as well his poems have been hosted. Haynes is an individual of many abilities, a scholar of Greek language, he is versed in the Classics, a playright, novelist, a biographer on the Texan Playright Hoorton Foote & poet, he teaches at A&M International University of Texas, Laredo, USA, where he’s been a lecturer for the last 30 years in Anglo Saxon Literature, Dramatics in Chaucer, Shakespeare & Ibsen’s plays amongst other activities.

It is not surprising, perhaps, that his poetics are in the classicist metric style and form. Almost inevitably, I find, we see, surrupetitiously appearing in verses a tightening of form in Shakespearean vogue. I think he will be the first one to admitt that he is almost in bondage to the sonnet and drawn by the fascination and challenge of being able to render a vast scope of vision into such a compact and condensed form. Also what we learn from Haynes is his overwhelming admiration for theater, but more so for the actual actors who perform theater, he literarily stands in awe and reverence of them as artists in their medium. I mention this because it is reflected, I believe, in his works as a poet, which introduces many varied persona as mediums for his poetic voice. Of course both history and place, he is from the deep south USA, figure extensively in his writing, an example features in his sonnet Downtown Waco. Midnight. Heidegger Looks at the Moon. In it’s opening line The Bush Library really ought to be here! Apparently Waco was on the list but it got removed to Dallas ‘The loss of the Library was the worst blow to hit the city since the 1953 Waco Tornado killed 114 people’ he comments in another text.

I might say that he views as the same conflicts and conditions of the human species over time as intrinsic to their existence, passion, love, hate, grief, despair from antiquity to the present are fundamental in the human make up. And his poems intensifiy in a contemporary idiom and context this phenomena. Having said all that, I would add, that his poems by no means make for easy reading, if the reader believes it can just pick up the volume and flipantly peruse it for a couple of hours and come away gratified, it’s in for another think. It is a work that you have to go back to again and again. These are poems that demand you give them attention, that you work at them, because in their own genre, they are masterfully crafted. I personally found in reading them, that just at the moment you feel most comfortable with the verses, stanzas, you are saying to yourself, yes I am with it, what appears to be a harmless snug line tucked away in a stanza rivets you with its complexity and plunges you into new depths, which is what a poem should do, imo.

The very title Heidegger Looks at the Moon, Heidegger is a complex philosopher and Haynes believes that poetry should be philosophical (in this I share his viewpoint) he believes in the etymology of the word Sophia, as the love of wisdom ( a hope, which I would also like to share in). Heidegger thought of humans as linguistic beings, language is the house of being, but he also feared that language could be our own entrapment, that the way we spoke about a certain object or event made it into what it was and also alienated us from what it really is. This of course is a great simplification but I think i could say that his concern was that instead of talking about nature, we end up only talking about ourselves, which prevents us from being activated, acted upon or impacted by anything, which in the end makes us become – the living dead. So accordingly, if philosophy (wisdom) is the task of poetry, it must be to awaken us by the use of poetic language to recover the world which is ours and to which we belong. Haynes poetry in its idiom both ancient and modern, in it’s scope and intensity, it’s range of variety and mood, in its quest, is perhaps a kindling beacon towards that lost light. Below are three poems selected by the editor from the reviewed work.

HEIDEGGER LOOKS AT THE MOON R. W. HAYNES w w w . f i n i s h i n g l i n e p r e s s . c o m
$ 1 9 . 9 9 / P O E T R Y

Glad to be a Stranger

It is good to be a stranger where society
Reflects like twisted mirrors the solipsistic
Projections of emptiness, grinning foolishly,
Mentally overpowered by the simplistic,
Empowered by gadgets and electricity,
Delighted by dim superficiality.
The lotus-eaters’ half-stoned colloquy
Achieves at best a specious affectation
Sustaining complacent juvenility
Inflated greatly by bogus education,
So nothing should make anyone want to be
More familiar in this situation:
Regret is best where mindlessness prevails
And humanity overwhelmingly fails.

Barking and Sparking

Dogs do play politics, but their machinations
Laughably  proclaim their devious conniving
More transparent than the representations
We think necessary for surviving.
Applying, though, proportionality,
Envisioning an abler evaluation
Viewing us likewise, does our acuity
Do us more credit than the canine situation?
Cerberus! Are two heads better than one
When both are empty? Are all fools the same
When all is finally said, or barked, and done
And final justice weighs our praise and blame?
Is the difference between eloquence and barking
A mere matter of a few more neurons sparking

Black Friday in the Texas Thrift Store

The man with the outraged voice
Gripped a black plastic clock
Shaped like a modernist pretzel.
It looked like it had been found behind
A burnt-out garage, after too much time.
“The price is too high,” he complained.
“And the time is wrong,” I replied,
With more sympathy than intended.
“No, no,” he said, “the time is fine.
All it needs is batteries to work.
But just look at the shape of it:
I think it’s perfect for time, don’t you?”
“Um, yas,” I philosophized slowly,
“I see what you mean. Time and pretzels,
You’re quite right. But do you think it works?”
He glanced sharply at me. “Of course it works.
The shape is right, the time is right,
It’s just the price that’s wrong.”
“But everything’s half off today,” I tried,
Not that the honor of the Texas Thrift Store
Mattered greatly to me, but time still does.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” he complained.
“The time is fine, but still the price is wrong.”

R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, has published poetry in many journals in the United States and in other countries. As an academic scholar, he specializes in British Renaissance literature, and he has also taught extensively in such areas as medieval thought, Southern literature, classical poetry, and writing. Since 1992, he has offered regular graduate and undergraduate courses in Shakespeare, as well as seminars in Ibsen, Chaucer, Spenser, rhetoric, and other topics. In 2004, Haynes met Texas playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote and has since become a leading scholar of that author’s remarkable oeuvre, publishing a book on Foote’s plays in 2010 and editing a collection of essays on his works in 2016. Haynes also writes plays and fiction. In 2016, he received the SCMLA Poetry Award ($500) at the South Central Modern Language Association Conference In 2019, two collections of his poetry were published, Laredo Light (Cyberwit) and Let the Whales Escape (Finishing Line Press).

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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