Melville on War
Read about Herman Melville and consider Battlepieces and Aspects of the War (free Google eBook). Here is an excerpt from “The March into Virginia”:
Read about Herman Melville and consider Battlepieces and Aspects of the War (free Google eBook). Here is an excerpt from “The March into Virginia”:
An excerpt (the last stanza) from a poem by Robert Hayden:
confess i am curiously drawn unmentionable to the americans doubt i could exist among them for long however psychic demands far too severe much violence much that repels i am attracted none the less their variousness their ingenuity their elan vital and that some thing essence quiddity i cannot penetrate or name
This poem is by Liu XiaoBo, translated by Jeffrey Yang. Here are the first two stanzas:
15 years ago a massacre took place at daybreak I died then was reborn 15 years have passed daybreak bayonets dyed red is still a blade fixed in the eyes
This lovely poem is by Henry David Thoreau:
My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.
This is a wonderful idea:
“I Am Writing A Letter Each Day to My Brother Who Is In Prison For 4-15 Years”
Here are posts.
Love these investigative multiple-page articles.
“A poem is a sword.” -Saheera Sharif
“Making love to an old man is like
Making love to a limp cornstalk blackened by fungus.”
-Gulmakai, 22, an Afghan woman whose father made her marry an old man at 15
Today I saw my first published poem in VISIONS, at their release party! Here it is:
On Air
What if the world was a feather and we were lost on a piece of dirt?
Infinite landscape of bushes and rough-leaved trees.
What if my breasts could kiss the clouds?
Wet air clinging to warmth.
What if my tongue were to lick the dusty sweet surface of the moon?
Stars setting fire to my skin as the Milky Way wrapped me up with black softness.
What if a melody of light filled me with deep strokes of night sky?
Dimension becomes a synonym for displacement.
What if gravity melded me heavy to the raindrops so I became the sum of my falling?
A weighted speck of dust, lying on the landscape stretched out.
“I thought, I can’t, I can’t allow myself to be trained to kill on orders, to take life on orders.” -Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin, on NPR Fresh Air. Merwin was put in a psychiatric ward in 1946 for being a Pacifist (as he’d enlisted when he was 17 previously), he said.
Maybe poetry is the closest thing to experiencing life again and again. And photography and creating and writing and synthesizing. So maybe experiencing life is a life experienced over and over again. So maybe, then, as all the Buddhist philosophers remind us, living in the moment is the only true way to experience life.
It feels a shame to be Alive—
When Men so brave— are dead—
One envies the Distinguished Dust—
Permitted— such a Head—
The Stone— that tells defending Whom
This Spartan put away
What little of Him we— possessed
In Pawn for Liberty—
The price is great— Sublimely paid—
Do we deserve— a Thing—
That lives— like Dollars— must be piled
Before we may obtain?
Are we that wait— sufficient worth—
That such Enormous Pearl
As life— dissolved be— for Us—
In Battle’s— horrid Bowl?
It may be— a Renown to live—
I think the Man who die—
Those unsustained— Saviors—
Present Divinity—
Emily Dickinson
Look down fair moon and
bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night’s
nimbus floods on
faces ghastly,
swollen, purple,
On the dead on their
backs with arms
toss’d wide,
Pour down your unstinted
nimbus sacred moon.
Walt Whitman
I love the idea of philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis, who dedicated $1 million for 100 Projects for Peace. I also love that the word “peace” is not defined, and left to the individual(s) to creatively interpret. There are so many projects created by so many creative young people, and the best part is that the proposals and reports are accessible by clicking on the title of the project. Here is one college president’s opinion:
“…if the 100 Projects for Peace stimulated as much initiative across other campuses as it did here, it can be declared a success already – it is a wonderfully conceived catalyst for public service in the best sense of the word.”