anthology

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

by

 

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/

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Antitheism.Poem.Sonnet.Andrew Belsey

by

 

 

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/

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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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À une jeune Aphrodite de marbre. Sonnet CXCI.Poem.Thierry Guinhut

by

 

 

Suis-je pour toi Orphée, babilleur de clichés,
Ramasseur de vieilleries et de métaphores,
Hyperboles usées, lyrisme peu sonore,
Bibliothèque d’illusion et vanités ?

Une Muse m’appelle où je suis son cercueil …
Se peut-il que de la poussière du recueil,
Ta blondeur, ta joue rose et ta langue fertile
Jaillissent en robe printanière et fragile ?

Erato nuageuse, Aphrodite ivoirine
Ont étreint tous leurs doigts pour nous unir, torrides,
Et gaspiller mes dons en un ruban d’épines

Où roses flétries du corset des vers anciens
N’atteignent pas ferveur d’une cuillère vide,
Ni jeu labile des poètes de demain.

 

 

Thierry Guinhut, born in Poitiers, France, in 1956, is an art and literary critic, who has frequently contributed to the journals Art Press, Calamar, La République des Lettres, La Revue des Deux Mondes, Encres Vagabondes and Edelweiss. Lately, his articles researching literature in foreign languages have appeared in Le Matricule des Anges, Europe and L’Atelier du roman. He has also exhibited his photography of the ponds of la Brenne and la Montagne Noire (The Black Mountain), and has held vernissages of his paintings and collages he calls “geographical triptychs”. His photograph, Le Marais poitevin (The Poitiers Marsh), well received by the press, was acclaimed winner of le Grand prix Hippolyte Bayard de Photographie 1991 (The Hippolyte Bayard Grand Prize in Photography 1991), earning him his place among the 70 modern Masters of Right Brain Left Brain Photography (Amphoto, New York, 1994). As a prose writer, he is working on a huge “polymorphous” novel, La République des rêves (The Republic of Dreams), and another novel, Les Métamorphoses de Vivant (The Metamorphoses of one’s Life), which is a mixture of fantasy, social criticism and philosophical dialogue. We are publishing a few of his lovely sonnets in his series, À une jeune Aphrodite de marbre (To a Young Aphrodite in Marble) from his anthology, Muses Academy, TBP. For more information, visit his blog,

http://www.thierry-guinhut-litteratures.com/

http://www.thierry-guinhut-litteratures.com/article-a-une-jeune-aphrodite-de-marbre-ccxxix-78879977.html 

http://www.artvilla.com/plt/a-une-jeune-aphrodite-de-marbre-sonnet-cxci-poem-thierry-guinhut/

 

Thierry Guinhut (1956— ) né à Poitiers, est critique d’art et de littérature, qui a souvent collaboré à Art-Press, Calamar, La République des Lettres, La Revue des Deux Mondes, Encres Vagabondes et Edelweiss. Aujourd’hui, on lit ses articles et ses études principalement consacrés aux littératures étrangères dans Le Matricule des Anges, Europe et L’Atelier du roman. Photographe, il a réalisé des expositions sur les étangs de la Brenne et sur la Montagne Noire, en y ajoutant les peintures et collages des « triptyques géographiques ». Salué par la presse, Le Marais poitevin fut couronné par le Grand prix Hippolyte Bayard de Photographie 1991 et lui valut de figurer parmi les 70 Modern Masters of Right Brain Left Brain Photography (Amphoto, New York, 1994). Écrivain, il prépare un vaste roman polymorphe, La République des rêves, et un roman mêlant fantastique, critique sociale et dialogue philosophique, Les Métamorphoses de Vivant, ainsi que Muses Academy. Dans cette anthologie, nous vous présentons quelques-uns de ses beaux sonnets tirés de son recueil : À une jeune Aphrodite de marbre à paraître. Pour plus de renseignements, veuillez consulter son blog :   http://www.thierry-guinhut-litteratures.com/

http://www.thierry-guinhut-litteratures.com/article-a-une-jeune-aphrodite-de-marbre-ccxxix-78879977.html 

http://www.artvilla.com/plt/a-une-jeune-aphrodite-de-marbre-sonnet-cxci-poem-thierry-guinhut/

 

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. 30 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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Today, Noon Traffic Crowding.Poem.Sonnet.E.M.Schorb.

by

 

 

 

Today, noon traffic crowding, heat appalling,

I saw the double of someone I knew.

A face from long ago, I heard it calling

as plain as I might now be hearing you.

 

Thank God I’m not a king, or Canon Law

would have me married to the woman yet!

Pathetic creature! Not the one I saw.

That woman looked like one I would forget.

 

I mustn’t be unkind! Resentment speaks.

So many years to hold a useless grudge!

Life’s like a faulty sink from which love leaks.

Would you believe I stopped and couldn’t budge?

 

-Forgive my grief, then, when I turn aside.

-I have at heart what I had thought had died.

 

 

E.M. Schorb (1935 ― ) began writing poetry when he was a teen and has never stopped. He has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the North Carolina Arts Council, along with grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and the Carnegie Fund, among others. His poetry has appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Chicago Review, The Deronda Review, The Formalist, Measure, Lucid Rhythms, The Lyric, The New Formalist, The Sewanee Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Yale Review and many other publications. His collection, Time and Fevers, was a 2007 recipient of an Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing and also won the “Writer’s Digest” Award for Self-Published Books in Poetry. One collection, Murderer’s Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press. Other work is listed and reviewed at: emschorb.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. 30 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/http://vallance22.hpage.com/

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“Mendocino Moonlight” Poem. Sonnet.Stephen Morse(1945-2010)

by

 

 

The waves of water suck the exposed land.

The ocean rocks non-stop midnight to noon ―

 low to high to low; rocks of salt and sand,

 some black, some white, a saturated boon

 of organic soups & pools; a small cat

 stalks hermit crabs in the surf. A donkey

 ― held by a man in a white straw hat ― sat

 too far away to be broken, honky

 white; dark, live ― labeled at the hollow door,

 noose wrapped in the fork of an old tree

 root starved in the sand; the edge of the poor

 creek filled by loose stubble moss shadows of me;

 -a wave falls fly-body green and foams white

 -in a cold moon Mendocino midnight.

 

Steven Morse (1945―2010), who studied at the University of Oregon, California State University (Hayward) and at San Francisco State University, was the publisher of the small print poetry journal, Juice. The Toronto Quarterly: Literary & Arts Journal (Jan. 30 2010) refers to him as “Stephen Morse: the Last American Beat Poet”. The author goes on to say:

 I fondly remember listening to him read his poetry on the Jane Crown blog radio show, sharing a few laughs and remembrances… passim… I remember how excited he was when I told him the news of an interview he’d done a while back with Louis Bourgeois and Zachary Bush would be published in The Toronto Quarterly … passim… He was deeply supportive of small print literary journals like mine, having run Juice with his wife Judy for years, he knew that world well and he often told me, “keep going and don’t listen to the critics, never give up, you’re doing great things, and we need journals like yours around.”

As Editor-in-Chief of this anthology, I deeply share such sentiments about Stephen, whom I always found extremely likeable, personable and approachable. I also find his sonnet, “Mendocino Moonlight”, one of the most remarkable in this anthology.

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 & Persia, 30 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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