Category: Wild Card

Acid test poet: Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

How curious that he should lead the parade. When my own poetry practice was taking root, back in the early ‘70s, I was largely unimpressed compared, say, to Bob Dylan. I didn’t pick up on the gay dimensions, either, only the rage of Howl. In fact, though I had some poetry courses, I wasn’t blown away by much of anything until I encountered Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath’s searing despair. Everything was essentially head, not heart.

Over the years, my opinion of Ginsberg changed. I came to appreciate his lines that stayed close to their source of inspiration and the ways his poems faced current events. While much of his artistic voice is seen as an homage to Walt Whitman, I find his work is much more in the stream of the lives of the prophets in the Bible. I’ve come to love a masterful, righteous rant for justice, which his poems often are. (Just see my Trumpets of the Storm series, starting with Primary Care at my ThistleFinch blog).

I’ve also come to admire the seeming ease with which he presents an observation – his definition of New England as famed for red leaves comes to mind.

His 1973 collection, The Fall of America: Poems of These States, has been the volume I’ve returned to the most.

Despite his role as an avatar of drug highs or gay rights, he strikes me increasingly in his native Jewish robes more than in those of the Tibetan Buddhism he avowed. Maybe for that, you should read the book The Jew in the Lotus by Rodger Kamenetz.

Yeah, here we are already, with one author leading to another. But first, where is my set of Whitman?

Looking forward while looking back

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Somehow, each year here at the Red Barn has taken on a special spin, despite the merry-go-round sequence of postings, categories, themes, and tags. Or maybe because of that.

While I keep looking forward to “retirement” of some kind, new material for this blog hasn’t let up.

Last year, many of my recorded dreams became a regular presentation, but I’ve run out of those. Previously, prose-poems had their run. Newspaper Traditions are now far in antiquity. And many of my poems are available at my Thistle Finch blog for reading or download. Yet I’m living in a newer, much different, world, lucky me.

Many of this coming year’s postings are shaping up as once-a-week series.

Now that the house renovations are actually happening (Huzzah! Huzzah!), you’ll be seeing that progression on Saturdays. I mean, how many times do you get to watch an old house be torn apart and rebuilt while the residents are still within it? As we were or let me say are.

My week out on Penobscot Bay in a historic schooner provided enough text and photos for a series on Sunday mornings. For me, it’s still dreamy. Hope you see it that way, too.

With a presidential election coming up, I’m returning to a clearer understanding of what’s at stake based on the Federalist papers through excerpts you’ll be seeing on Thursdays. It was that or some childish and more current quips of my own. I see this as more principled.

As a break in my Quaking Dover book reflections, I’m turning to a series looking at what’s behind my published novels. See that in contrast to “what they’re about.” That series of posts is set for Fridays.

Add to that is a series on Mondays, looking at authors who have influenced me one way or another. They’re not necessarily my “favorites,” but definitely ones I want to revisit in my years ahead.

Meanwhile, the Tuesday Tendrils, ten items about whatever strikes my fancy, will continue, as will the Sunday night Kinisi.

I promise you these posts will encompass another full year. Please stop by often, and leave comments, especially. I still think your contributions are the best part.

Happy New Year, dear readers.