Henry Phipps (by Edgar Lee Masters)

Henry Phipps
by Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology [1915]

I was the Sunday school superintendent,
The dummy president of the wagon works
And the canning factory,
Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;
My son the cashier of the bank,
Wedded to Rhodes' daughter,
My week days spent in making money,
My Sundays at church and in prayer.
In everything a cog in the wheel of things-as-they-are:
Of money, master and man, made white
With the paint of the Christian creed.
And then:
The bank collapsed. I stood and looked at the wrecked machine--
The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;
The rotten bolts, the broken rods;
And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again
In a new devourer of life, when newspapers, judges and money-magicians
Build over again.
I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages,
Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe,
And knowing "the upright shall dwell in the land
But the years of the wicked shall be shortened."
Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered
A cancer in my liver.
I was not, after all, the particular care of God!
Why, even thus standing on a peak
Above the mists through which I had climbed,
And ready for larger life in the world,
Eternal forces
Moved me on with a push.
[To read more Spoon River Anthology click here.]
		

			

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Cameron Conaway reads at PoetryElyria, part two – 12/26/2010

The second half of Cameron Conaway‘s featured reading during PoetryElyria
recorded 12/26/2010 at Jim’s Coffeehouse & Diner, 2 Kerstetter Way in Elyria, Ohio

Cameron Conaway was the 2007-2009 Poet-in-Residence at the University of Arizona’s MFA Creative Writing Program. He is 2-0 at 155lbs as a mixed martial arts fighter. He has trained with Renzo Gracie, the London Shootfighters and will be studying Muay Thai kickboxing in Thailand for the next year. An MMA fighter and an award-winning poet; an MMA Trainer at Gold’s Gym and a creative writing instructor for Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth; a certified personal trainer through the National Strength and Conditioning Association and a dynamic anti-bully spokesperson, Cameron is quickly becoming known worldwide as the warrior poet. Tuttle Publishing will release Cameron’s memoir Caged: Memoir of a Cage-Fighting Poet in fall 2011. Salmon Poetry will release his book of poems, Until You Make the Shore, in January 2012. The book of poems grew from his experiences teaching poetry inside an all-female juvenile detention center. For more information visit www.CameronConaway.com.

You may also follow his blog at http://cameronconaway.blogspot.com.

Cameron Conaway reads at PoetryElyria, part one – 12/26/2010

The first half of Cameron Conaway‘s featured reading during PoetryElyria
recorded 12/26/2010 at Jim’s Coffeehouse & Diner, 2 Kerstetter Way in Elyria, Ohio

Cameron Conaway was the 2007-2009 Poet-in-Residence at the University of Arizona’s MFA Creative Writing Program. He is 2-0 at 155lbs as a mixed martial arts fighter. He has trained with Renzo Gracie, the London Shootfighters and will be studying Muay Thai kickboxing in Thailand for the next year. An MMA fighter and an award-winning poet; an MMA Trainer at Gold’s Gym and a creative writing instructor for Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth; a certified personal trainer through the National Strength and Conditioning Association and a dynamic anti-bully spokesperson, Cameron is quickly becoming known worldwide as the warrior poet. Tuttle Publishing will release Cameron’s memoir Caged: Memoir of a Cage-Fighting Poet in fall 2011. Salmon Poetry will release his book of poems, Until You Make the Shore, in January 2012. The book of poems grew from his experiences teaching poetry inside an all-female juvenile detention center. For more information visit www.CameronConaway.com.

You may also follow his blog at http://cameronconaway.blogspot.com.

Ippolit Konovaloff (by Edgar Lee Masters)

Ippolit Konovaloff
by Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology [1915]

I was a gun-smith in Odessa.

One night the police broke in the room

Where a group of us were reading Spencer

And seized our books and arrested us.

But I escaped and came to New York

And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River,

Where I could study my Kant in peace

And eke out a living repairing guns

Look at my moulds! My architectonics

One for a barrel, one for a hammer

And others for other parts of a gun!

Well, now suppose no gun-smith living

Had anything else but duplicate moulds

Of these I show you-well, all guns

Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit

The cap and a barrel to carry the shot

All acting alike for themselves, and all

Acting against each other alike.

And there would be your world of guns!

Which nothing could ever free from itself

Except a Moulder with different moulds

To mould the metal over.

[To read more Spoon River Anthology click here.]

The Hosting of the Sidhe (by William Butler Yeats)

Yeats [by George Charles Beresford, 1911]

The Hosting of the Sidhe
by William Butler Yeats
from The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ‘twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.



* * * * *

To read more Yeats in the Online Library, please click here.
For still more, we suggest these volumes from Amazon:

   

Villonaud for This Yule (by Ezra Pound)

Villonaud for This Yule
by Ezra Pound
from A Lume Spento (1908)

Towards the Noel that morte saison

(Christ make the shepherds’ homage dear!)

Then when the grey wolves everychone

Drink of the winds their chill small-beer

And lap o’ the snows food’s gueredon

Then makyth my heart his yule-tide cheer

(Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone!)

Wining the ghosts of yester-year.

Ask ye what ghost I dream upon?

(What of the magians’ scented gear?)

The ghosts of dead loves everyone

That make the stark winds reek with fear

Lest love return with the foison sun

And slay the memories that me cheer

(Such as I drink to mine fashion)

Wining the ghosts of yester-year.

Where are the joys my heart had won?

(Saturn and Mars to Zeus drawn near!)

Where are athe lips mine lay upon,

Aye! where are the glances feat and clear

That bade my heart his valor don?
I skoal to the eyes as grey-blown mere

(Who knows whose was athat paragon?)

Wining the ghosts of yester-year.

Prince: ask me not what I have done

Nor what God hath that can me cheer

But ye ask first where the winds are gone

Wineing the ghosts of yester-year.

* * * * *


     

Three haiku by Kobayashi Issa

[from] The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku
by Kobayashi Isaa
English translation by Sam Hamill

So much money made
by clever temple priests
using peonies

Kane moke
jozu na tera no
botan kana

Once snows have melted,
the village soon overflows
with friendly children

Yuki tokete
mura ippai no
kodomo kana

All around my house,
pond frogs, from the beginning,
sang about old age

Waga io ya
kawazu shote kara
oi wo naku

[The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku by Kobayashi Issa, translated by Sam Hamill, published in 1997 by Shambhala Publications, Inc.  Visit the publisher at http://www.shambhala.com.]

Note for the Day 2 (by Russell Salamon)

NOTE FOR THE DAY 2

 

It is raining. New grass lights

green rooms where angels split

light into red colors and shout

green trumpet slogans: time,

time, delirious vortex, simmer

water, sight reverberations.

 

If this is presence, it must be

presence of soul, wash of slick

green water carrying sky time–

if these are real then real is souls

breathing animate stones. And

if this is imagination then life is

present in your eyes.

 

If this is rain then it must be

thoughts falling clean, clean;

light falling transparent water,

steam angels, green grass minds.

If you are with me then this must

be the eternal moment in your

consent to see universes.

 

And if it is time falling in drops

of known water, then wet skin

and cold winter define how

miracles drive green time.

 
–Russell Salamon

December 18, 2010



* * *

Recommended Russell Salamon works include Descent into Cleveland (1994, Words & Pictures Press), Woodsmoke & Green Tea (2006, deep cleveland press), and Ascent from Cleveland: Wild Heart / Steel Phoenix (2008, Freedonia Press).  You may contact the author at thesalamons@earthlink.net.

Dead Horse (by Cornelius Bent) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGmATRlw4ek

written and spoken by Cornelius Bent (Dan Kellet)
with art by OBX Minigoddess & Jamey Franklin
video courtesy of http://www.youtube.com/user/dkell1713
included in the Crisis Chronicles with the poet’s permission

The Book of Disquiet, text 97 (by Fernando Pessoa)

The Book of Disquiet, text 97
by Fernando Pessoa, 1888-1935

The truly wise man is the one who can keep external events from changing him in any way.  To do this, he covers himself with an armour of realities closer to him than the world’s facts and through which the facts, modified accordingly, reach him.

* * * * *

Text #97 appears in Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet
Translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith & published by Penguin Classics
Original text (c) Assírio & Alvim and Fernando Pessoa’s heirs, 1998
Translation (c) Richard Zenith, 2001 – All rights reserved

Included in the Online Library in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law
We encourage you to buy Pessoa’s work either directly from the publisher,
from your local independent bookstore or through the links below: