Category: My Poetry & Fiction

Caveat: Poem #1348 “What they said about Michelle”

A Daily Poem / Book 2 / Ghazal / My Poetry & Fiction 
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The trees surround us. "Find your way," they say.
The stones are singing, night and day, they say.
They sing their geologic dirges, then.
They grasp the roots of trees and play, they say.
A raven might make signs across the sky.
That kind of bird can't see the gray, they say.
You waited but refused to change your mind.
Your ghost just watched and didn't say, they say.
I saw it once out on the tidal flats.
You'd hoped that I could learn to pray, they say.
The orange-hued bits of sun revealed your face.
It seemed to you I'd lost my way, they say.

– a ghazal with six couplets. Ghazal is an originally Arabic poetic form, later popularized and spread through the old world by the Persians. It has a long history of adaptation into different languages, including into English. I was struck by the repeating identical refrain of the second line of each couplet, and I felt it demanded an adaptation to the “second-hand-orality” (my own term) that I’ve seen in a lot of translations of classical Haida and Tlingit literature here in Southeast Alaska. Aside from constraints on theme and voice, and of course the repeated rhyme and refrain, there seems to be some freedom with respect to meter – it only demands that it be in some kind of consistent meter – so I’ve chosen iambic pentameter as fairly appropriate for an English adaptation.
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Caveat: Published

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Poetry & Fiction

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The book is now “live”. Link to Amazon.
This is the first volume, subtitled “Mostly in Korea.” The poems included are through July 21st, 2018, when I left Korea – it seemed a good breaking place. I’ll put together another volume, subtitled “Mostly in Alaska” for poems written subsequently.
I would like to be clear – I would be very pleased if people bought my book. But owning a book is a kind of fetish object, and if you’re simply interested in reading the poems, please don’t feel obligated to give me (and Amazon Corporation!) money. The poems are all freely available online. You’ll have to go back in time to the first page (highest numbered) to see them in chronological order, since the blog format provides them in most-recent-first order.
I made very few changes to them in making the book (mostly in the area of formatting), and that was intentional – I want the “free versions” to still be “canon.”
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Caveat: Not for Resale

Banalities & Journaling / My Poetry & Fiction

I received the “galley proof” for my book today. This is really the last step before the book can go “live” on Amazon. I clicked “publish” for the text, and now must await the censors’ approval (the corporate censors, making sure there’s no content in the book that violates Amazon’s terms-of-use). By the end of the week, I expect my book will be for sale online.
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