VI.Sonnet.Poem.Barbara Crooker

by

 

300px-Jan_Vermeer_-_Girl_Reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window

 

One word, and then another, falls in line

like geese wedging their way down the sky,

a vast scroll of paper yet unwritten. I

Roll a sheet in the typewriter, and begin

again, to try and pin down what’s elusive,

some insistent bird that whistles from a bush,

“Here, here, here I am,” then vanishes,

while I am left to struggle with the narrative.

Like “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window”,

I wish the light would flood in from the left,

paint me slickly gold, tell me what comes next.

But I am in the dark, no map, no text,

just following my heart as night falls soft,

covers us with her obsidian wing.

 

“VI” by Barbara Crooker. “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window”. The reference is to the painting of the same title by Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). See also “Still Life”, by Annie Finch.

 

Barbara Crooker’s sonnets have appeared in magazines such as The Schuylkill Valley Journal, riverrun, Poets On: and Fringe. Largely a free verse writer, she believes that sonnets are another tool in the writer’s paintbox. Her work has been widely anthologized, in places like Poetry: an Introduction (Bedford/St. Martin’s) and Good Poems for Hard Times (Garrison Keillor, editor,Viking Penguin). Her book, Radiance, was winner of the 2005 Word Press First Book Award, and Line Dance (Word Press, 2008), won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. Her forthcoming book Gold. Barbara Crooker appears (2013 or 2014) in the Poeima Poetry Series of Cascade Books, a division of Wipf & Stock. Website: www.barbaracrooker.com

 

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire. Friesen Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

 

300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian. Selected sonnets are pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information. http://vallance22.hpage.com/

 ***

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Schindler’s List.Poem. Sonnet. Corey Harvard

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Schindler’s List *

“ for the dead and the living, we must bear witness. ”

 ― Elie Wiesel

 

I see the aching words of Elie Wiesel

born in black and white: the metal eyes

of Nazi Germany on Israel,

the numbered numberless, the animalized

who once were men — whose children will not know

the innocence of childhood again —

and still, the falling ash, the burning snow,

the deep, remorseless appetite of sin.

 And there am I, entirely, one of them,

lost in the heavy silence of the room

without the power to conquer or condemn

the tyranny, the terror, or their doom.

Too many think of hell and live in fear

of death, and never know that hell was here.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler%27s_List

Corey Harvard (1987 ― ) from Mobile, Alabama, (B.A. English & Philosophy, University of South Alabama, 2012), is a young American musician, pianist, vocalist and poet. He began writing verse at age 10 and music at age 12 when his parents bought him a keyboard. He went on to win his 8th grade talent show by performing an original song. Since then, he has published poetry and prose in journals including Tales of the Talisman, Pirene’s Fountain and Sense Magazine, and he has also been featured in Alabama’s prestigious Literary Mobile, an anthology of established (historical and contemporary) southern writers. He has served as associate editor of Sonnetto Poesia and Editor-in-Chief of Oracle Fine Arts Review. In 2009, he was a Pushcart Prize nominee.

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire. Friesen Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian. Selected sonnets are pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information. http://vallance22.hpage.com/

***

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editor@artvilla.com

 

 

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Again, Kneeling Before Anubis, Lazarus Wept (New Refrain).Poem. Joseph Armstead

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Lazarus

… Truth is a mansion, a many buttressed cathedral,
Notre Dame de Despair au Île de la Nuit, a gothic sprawl
of unending night where the light from a single dim candle
burns, beckoning, but the blind faithful do not see,
no one comes …

Armored in its solitude, it is a sanctuary built on screams.

i) Godforsaken and Estranged

At sunset, will the rain stop falling?

There are shadows dancing across the freeway,
ghosts of Promises Past, reminders
of All the Things We Could Have Been,
both evolution and mutation,
both supposition and deduction,
no answers,
racing to and from the recesses of memory,
leaping the gaps between ganglia,
tracing tortured neuropathways,
and as they slide grayly over the racing bodies
of personal destiny, they dissolve these seeds
of the future, leaving only quicksilvered ash
on the road haunting the edges
of the map of the soul.

A soiled and dirty penny lost
in the dark folds of a trouser pocket,
Fate drizzles across the pitted pavement
falling from clouds stained
by disillusionment,
the disenchanted deprivation
sends lightning down a dead spine.

Cold water puddles shallowly…

ii) Anno Corporealis: The Bondage of Flesh, Cold and Dark

The Dreamer, staggering under his load of Sins, awakens… 

Frightened, yet triumphant,
the broken marionette dares to rise,
legs shaking, atrophied musculature straining,
sightless eyes locked
onto the face of the Godhead,
the inscrutable divinity laughing
in a whispery croak,
and
the imprisoning cloak of flesh
enveloping the Dreamer
splits and cracks,
unable to completely contain
so much promise at last galvanized
into trembling, unsteady motion —
the Road to Utopia
and the Road to Ruin
converge —
the Divine Source vomits forth
a Promise of Eternity,
a shop-worn brand of immortality,
sold at discount prices.

Sunset finally settles over the rainswept cathedral,
a sanctuary, where each prayer ends in a scream.

http://redroom.com/member/joseph-armstead

http://www.amazon.com/Condemned-Of-Heaven-Joseph-Armstead/dp/0578013665
anubis

***

BIO
 
Joseph Armstead is a suspense-thriller and horror author living in the United States’ San Francisco Bay Area.   Author of a dozen short stories and ten novels, his poetry has been published in a wide range of online journals, webzines and print magazines.   A mathematician, Futurist and computer technologist, Mr. Armstead’s poetry often defies easy description, but frequently includes neo-classical imagery, surrealist viewpoints and post-modern themes.

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The House of the Idiot. Poem.Sonnet. R.W.Haynes .

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Dosteyoevsky

 

 

 When Dostoyevsky seemed so pessimistic,

 I smiled to think he’d viewed society

as though the false, the foolish, and the sadistic

established the patterns of human propriety,

with demons hovering over each decision,

winking and leering, clouding calculation

with appetite, with decency in derision,

annihilating honesty in negotiation.

Wondering at his marvellous naïveté,

I recognize that diabolic brood,

and ask myself how he could write all day

depicting evil with exactitude.

Age brings these recognitions, it seems,

as nightmares shove aside our foolish dreams.

 

 

 

R. W. Haynes (1951 — ), Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, has published sonnets and other poems in numerous journals, including Ampersand Poetry Review, Lucayos, Off the Coast, The Queen City Review, The Resurrectionist, Lucid Rhythms, Kritya, Willows Wept Review, Sixers Review, Sonnetto Poesia and Tertulia. He teaches early British literature and Shakespeare, with occasional courses on Ibsen and on Horton Foote.

 

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire. Friesen Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian. Selected sonnets in this anthology are to be pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information.

http://vallance22.hpage.com/

 ***

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Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear.Poem.Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

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Vincent-van-Gogh-Self-Portrait-with-Bandaged-Ear-and-Pipe-Oil-Painting

 

the reed of a loom

the guideways, of a loom, or

 

when suddenly, when suddenly

this is spring, and this is summer

 

and this, this is open sky.

the birds resemble a man.

 

dandelion. giddying.

budded. spree.

 

roundly, with joy

for nothing and for everything

 

the day, with my own heart

too soon, arrayed. this haste

 

this pasturing. this coffee companion.

this cup. this yellow sky.

 

 

“Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear” by Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino. The Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh left us a series of self-portraits, among them the bandaged ear self-portraits, upon which this sonnet is based.

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino (1958—) was born in Greenwich Village, New York, and was raised in both the city and in the country across the Hudson River in New Jersey. He was educated at home, eventually to enter Fordham University where he received a degree in philosophy. In 2009 he received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Doctor of Arts in Leadership program at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire. His poetry and prose have appeared in OCHO, Barrow Street, Poets and Artists, jubilat, Verse Wisconsin, Pindeldyboz, Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics and EOAGH. About the sonnet form (“that perfect thought-form”) he maintains that it is still a viable form whereby the imaginative poet may flaunt his technical and stylistic virtuosity. His poems will often take the form of two or three sonnets in string and one of these, “The Archaeology of Palestine,” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His works include the e-chap, The Logoclasody Manifesto (Eratio Editions, 2008), and a book of poems entitled, The Valise (Dead Academics, 2012).

 

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire. Friesen Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian. Selected sonnets are pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information. http://vallance22.hpage.com/

***

robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com

 

 

 

 

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Antitheism.Poem.Sonnet.Andrew Belsey

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So, God, if your existence should be proved

I’d still insist that I would not bow down.

No matter what, I never would be moved

To genuflect before your thorny crown.

No, worship’s no thing for a human being

To get mixed up in. Any risk I take

Is very much a worthwhile hazard, seeing

That dignity and freedom are at stake.

It’s rumoured you became a man once – well,

If you should come again and stay a man

I don’t think I could possibly foretell

What good you might do in your natural span:

But try this world, with equals be an equal,

Just live this life, with no thought for a sequel.

 

Andrew Belsey (UK), born in the Fenlands of East Anglia, England, a graduate of Cardiff University, still lives in Cardiff, Wales, where he teaches philosophy at Cardiff University. With Ruth Chadwick, he jointly edited Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media (Routledge, 1992). He has composed poetry in many genres, both free and formal, for over forty years. His formal verse includes sonnets, some of which he considers as slightly experimental, since he sometimes allows controlled irregularities of rhythm or rhyme. His poetry has appeared in many journals and E-zines, including New Headland, Peer Poetry International, Philosophy Now, Above Ground Testing, Poetry Life and Times, Comrades, Sonnetto Poesia and Snakeskin. He is the author of Anaximander (Outposts Publications, 1974) and A Collection of Four-Line Poems 1962-1999 (Llwynywll Press, © 2000). Andrew’s imagery tends to draw much from concrete and visual elements, examples of which have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, and in Going Round in Circles [and a Square]: Concrete Poems which Might or Might not be Circular Arguments (or Vice Versa) (Llwynywll Press, 2nd ed., © 2002).

 

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire. Friesen Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

 

 300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian. Selected sonnets in this anthology are to be pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information. http://vallance22.hpage.com/

***

robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com

 

 

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1980.Poem.Sonnet.Mitchell Geller.

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1980

 

Before the South End had been gentrified

and not a single latte had been brewed

on Tremont Street’s still raffish, dodgy side

there was, on Union Park, an interlude

 

of wanton joy we later saw collapse;

a brief, Edenic interval of grace

before the second-hottest guy at “Chaps”

bore lurid lesions on his handsome face,

 

and soon, in weeks too sickeningly swift,

required ― at thirty ― that bony white cane.

Six short months and his mind began to drift,

in gaunt, enfeebled, piteous waves of pain.

 

We soon, alas, grew used to sights like this,

the idyll having changed to an abyss.

 

 

“1980” by Mitchell Geller. This sonnet was previously published in Desert Moon Review and Sonnetto Poesia.

 It was one of the winning poems on IBPC: Interboard Poetry Community: Winning poems for February 2008.

Felda Brown of IBPC has this to say about this sonnet, “When a sonnet is good, it holds in a great deal of passion, using the struggle of the lines to keep it from flying apart in anguish. Here is a poem, maybe the only one like this I’ve seen, that eulogizes the “Edenic interval” before AIDS began its rampage in the gay communities. The voice in the poem is authentic, the language interesting (“Tremont Street’s raffish, doggy side”) and sometimes perfect–“that bony white cane.” Although the couplet feels weaker than the rest, the end-rhymes “like this” and “abyss” do exactly what they need to do, pull us into the darkness.”

Mitchell Geller (1951— ) is a poet and essayist. Born and raised in Greater Boston, where he still resides, he has a BA in English Literature, and did his graduate studies in Children’s Literature. His work has appeared in The Melic Review, Sonnetto Poesia, WORM, The Loch Raven Review, Umbrella and 14 x14. In 2009 his poem “Monarch Nmemonic” won the annual New England Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Competition.

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire. Friesen Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

 300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian. Selected sonnets are pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information. http://vallance22.hpage.com/

 ***

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Francisca Aguirre Nana del desperdicio de la tristeza Lullaby for Sadness Amparo Arrospide Robin Ouzman Hislop Translated Poem

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Francisca Agirre

 

Nana del desperdicio de la tristeza

 

 Al abrigo de la arboleda de Soto del Real

   y cerca de María Fernanda y Emilio Barrachina

 

Tengo delante de los ojos

el asombro de la arboleda

que me abraza.

Miro los fresnos susurrantes,

 los callados abetos,

los sauces melancólicos

 y no sé bien qué hacer

con el desperdicio intangible

 que llamamos tristeza.

 La tristeza es quizás

 el mejor animal de compañía,

 

la fiera más doméstica,

 pero también la más hambrienta.

 

La tristeza es un hueco que nos sigue

y que al menor descuido nos alcanza,

se sitúa delante de nosotros

y nos canta su nana de desdichas,

su lamento de fiera abandonada,

su machacona relación de oprobios,

su quejido de bicho que se empeña

en pegarse a nosotros

 y decirnos

que no la abandonemos

 a su suerte,

que nuestra obligación es adoptarla.

El viejo desperdicio de la pena,

tan opaco y radiante a un mismo tiempo,

nos va reconociendo con su hocico

y nos lame las manos con su lengua

y se acurruca manso a nuestro lado:

conoce palmo a palmo

 el territorio.

Sus lágrimas nos lavan con modestia,

mientras el animal nos sigue terco,

 con la amable seguridad

que da el abismo.

 

***

 

LULLABY FOR SADNESS

 

 Sheltered by the Soto del Real grove

 and close to María Fernanda y Emilio Barrachina

 

Before my eyes stands

the sheltering grove´s amazement

 which embraces me.

I look at the whispering ash trees,

 the still firs,

the melancholic willows

 and am at a loss

with the intangible remains

 we call sadness.

Sadness is perhaps

 the best pet to keep you company,

 

the most domestic beast,

 but also the most ravenous.

Sadness is a vacuum that pursues us

that leaps out on us unawares

to confront us

to lull us with its lullaby of wretchedness,

its lament of a forsaken beast,

and its monotonous list of injuries,

its plaintive creature´s groan insisting

in attaching itself to us

 and imploring us

not to abandon it

 to its fate,

that it is our duty to adopt it.

The old remnant of sorrow,

so opaque and bright at the same time

that starts by recognition through nose

then the licking of hands with tongue

tamely curling up at our side:

bit by bit it takes hold

 of the land.

Meekly its tears wash us

whilst the beast pursues us stubbornly,

 with that gentle assurance

offered to us by the abyss.

***

Translated by Robin Ouzman Hislop & Amparo Arrospide

***

 

Francisca Aguirre was born in 1930 in Alicante, Spain, and fled with her family to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War, where they lived in political exile.  When the Germans invaded Paris in 1942, her family was forced to return to Spain, where her father, painter Lorenzo Aguirre, was subsequently murdered by Francisco Franco’s regime.  Aguirre published Ítaca (1972), currently available in English (Ithaca [2004]), when she was 42 years old. Her work has garnered much critical success, winning the Leopoldo Panero, Premio Ciudad de Irún, and Premio Galliana, among other literary prizes.  Aguirre is married to the poet Félix Grande and is the mother of poet Guadalupe Grande.

 

 
Robin Ouzman Hislop (UK) Co-editor of the 12 year running on line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. (See its Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_Life_and_Times). He has made many appearances over the last years in the quarterly journals Canadian Zen Haiku, including In the Spotlight Winter 2010 & Sonnetto Poesia. Previously published in international magazines, recent publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian University N Carolina, Post Hoc installed at Bank Street Arts Centre, Sheffield (UK), Uroborus Journal, 2011-2012 (Sheffield, UK), The Poetic Bond II & 111, available at http://www.thepoeticbond.com and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes a recently published Anthology of Sonnets: http://bit.ly/1lIL0jF. He has recently completed a volume of poetry, The World at Large, for future publication. He is currently resident in Spain engaged in poetry translation projects.robin@artvilla.com and you can also visit Face Book site at www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 
WIN_20140415_213447
 

Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish poet and translator. She has published four poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and Presencia en el Misterio as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards. Together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, she worked as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, an E-zine.

 

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