Tag: Poetry Footnotes

Dreams of publishing poetry bigtime

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the Far East there is a vital, well-read proletariat literature – speaking for a people.

Here, we have intellectuals playing games. Along with populist idiots.

Still, how much of the Far West book scene I knew revolved around poetry-conscious, well-stocked bookstores that were also patrons to readings, broadsides, and small private volumes.

Suppose, now, a poetry journal allied with a bookstore where its authors’ books could be purchased …

This was pre-Internet, which has opened new opportunities, or before I knew of radical publisher and bookseller Giles Calvert and his Black Spread Eagle on Ludgate Hill near St. Paul Cathedral in London, the voice of many early Quaker tracts and volumes.

 

Step by step somewhere into the wild

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Walking unrushed, meaning outdoors, in fresh air, releases something within me: I feel freer. When I begin, I’m like a slightly out-of-tune violin. I enter the woods full of thoughts, problems. The office is still with me, along with many worries. The wind may scurry up leaves, and I jump and then freeze, startled that I may have scared up a large animal of some sort. Or perhaps it’s be a twisting item that resembles a snake. Sometimes the sun stings my eyes. I adjust, from one system of time and timing to another.

As I fall into a rhythm, my mind clears. Poems begin.

In the hills or mountains or along the water, the world is always fresh: sunlight on branches or water.

 

Regarding my Endless Prairie project

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Prairie as a symbol of America [make that U.S. and Canada], the middle or bread basket or heartland. I kept trying to envision the openness, wonder, even terror when white pioneers found her, back before she was ripped apart for farming. Even the Interstate highways coast-to-coast. The middle land of Protestants without heritage, too blind to see clearly the potential of balance and healing before them.

Somehow, that poetry project never found root.

 

As a stab at transplanting a sensibility

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Four Noble Plants [and a quest for American equivalents]

  • Bamboo, bends but never breaks in a storm = Oak, with its acorns
  • Plum blossom = Apple
  • Orchids = Sunflowers
  • Chrysanthemums = Dandelions
  • Now, to play with those starting with classic Japanese or even Chinese poems and substituting the equivalents. This could be weird.

Too bad those book collections are still in storage.

As for “noble,” in America? Even that needs an equivalent.

 

As my poetic voice took shape

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The odd syllable counts of my poetry lines: quite female! And quite flexible. Contrast to “maleness” of iambic pentameter or other club-feet.

The luxury of wasting a whole notebook, an entire sketchbook. [Oh? Did I pitch that out already?]

Good poetry takes leave of tight meaning … pointing to “lunatics” as “originals” … the way flames do.

 

How strange that so much later, these lines still stir up conflict within me

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I am surprised how much the seemingly disjointed distillations of the prose-poem experiments I’ve been publishing here still capture my experience of my first years in New Hampshire some 35 or so years ago. All the hope, confusion, redirection that accompanied the upheaval.

And so much that evaporated, for the better, after meeting the woman I adore.

The weekly series continues, all the same. As I say, thanks for the memories, to all those who have been companions and positive influences in my zig-zag journey through life.

What are you thinking and feeling, looking back and looking ahead?