
- Carlos Fuentes, 1987
Carlos Fuentes passed away on May 15th, 2012, at the age of 83. He will be remembered by this avid reader for his novels The Old Gringo and The Death of Artemio Cruz, along with his wonderful short stories, especially those in Burnt Water. His non-fiction is also very strong (This I Believe & Myself With Others), and pairing it with Milan Kundera’s heightened the effect of both for me. Both men being advocates of the democratic voice in literature, with many of the same literary “precursors.”
Fuentes was one of the chief contributors and promoters of the Latin American “Boom,” along with José Donoso, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez and Juan Rulfo, his fellow Mexican novelist.…
[More...]
The Sleeping Gypsy, by Henri Rousseau. 1897
Gypsy
The sadness of the dance
Between two opposites
The sadness of the work
Involved
No metaphors needed
Male and Female
Strong and weak
Yin and Yang
No metaphors needed
Because this is all
Delusion
And comfort food
Combined
Though the combination
Is a hopeful thing
A blessed thing
A dove sent
A plant thrusting upward
To the sun
From within desert sand
From within
Once barren minds
The act of combination
An act of liberation
Or may be
If we cross over
…
[More...]
The Eiffel Tower. Photo by Douglas Pinson. 2007
Spinozablue has new poetry, fiction and phởtography on tap for May. Valentina Cano, Emily Ramser, Christina Murphy and Ben Nardolilli grace this site with their poetry; Penelope Mermall with her fiction; and Eleanor Bennett with phởtography. Emily and Eleanor have something in common. They are both in their teens. Their work, however, along with those already mentioned on this fine May Day, combines future promise and present achievement.
* * * * *
So, I’m reading The Three Pillars of Zen, by Philip Kapleau, and it’s kick-started all kinds of thought-trails. The book is quite good, though it lags at times when it shifts to interviews with adepts. Lags for me, because too many of the stories are similar.…
[More...]
Filed in: Front Page, Poetry | 0 comments
Lockdown
I turned to stone
that Saturday morning.
It wasn’t slow.
There were no gasps
as my fingers dried like corn husks,
or as my hair locked in place,
never to feel the breeze again.
There was no time for that.
In one second, I was staring
out of eyes sewn to our walls.
There was no blinking.
I was alone,
staring out into a room
I could no longer shut out.
In Amber
Softly, you turn.
Your face is a mask of ash,
drifting with the currents,
with my moods.
You peer at me out of cottonwood eyes
that reflect fires I’ve not yet set.
Cares I’ve not flung at you
like dirty clothes.
Stay like that.
Just like that, for an instant,
while I bring out
my words and boil them alive.…
[More...]
Filed in: Front Page, Photography | 0 comments
(Click on the individual phởtos to enlarge and start slide show)
Eleanor Bennett is a very young and gifted phởtographer, whose art captures a stunning range of landscapes, people and other animals, along with the purely conceptual. It is obvious that she intuitively understands composition, drama, angles, lines, shadows and color. It is also obvious that she has command over her subject matter and a voracious interest in the world surrounding her.
The above is but a small sample of her work, which is best seen on her own website.…
[More...]
Filed in: Front Page, Poetry | 0 comments
Green
green is circuitous and certainly cubic, and you need ask
only Magritte, Beckett, or Monet for the certitude
that green has nothing to say of flatness, whether
horizontal or vertical or even in planes — nothing at all
as silent as the game of spring hiding behind blue winter
green — playing the complement of magenta and seldom
hiding from sight in trees and sprouts and stems
green — shining as an impulse in the new and yet to become
green — as the élan vital or the end of joy as jealousy
when the green-eyed monster claims its bounty in envy
green invites, cajoles, makes us believe in youth and rebirth
lingers in emerald seas and rivers of regeneration as the god
Osiris bids us to believe; but nothing gold can stay, as Frost
knows and eternity echoes — and nothing green can stay
before the endless fading to gold and eventual decay
in the twilight, in the fall of evening, green is a kiss, a dance
spun by the faeries, who know that, within each shamrock,
is a beating heart of the mystical, the celestial, that blesses
the poet, the bard, with voice and song; green as the holy,
green as everything complex and lovely and nothing sorrowful
– by Christina Murphy
Copyright© 2012, by Christina Murphy.…
[More...]
Filed in: Fiction, Front Page | 1 comment
Baby Jesus
I drop in late nights and sink into a place that settles round me in a hush and the sight of bent backs lined up at the counter soothes me some. The waitresses own a toughness that remind me of shoe leather and sweep past at a swift clip with plates piled in the crook of arms.
I sit in a booth looking out on a town where street lamps throw a foggy glow and passersby exchange a pocketful of words. In the wide expanse of glass my hair hangs limp and a ghostly face stares back. I’m no stranger to myself in glass, where I exist neither here nor there. Snowflakes float down and melt like salty kisses and the red neon DINER sign blinks on and off.…
[More...]
Filed in: Front Page, Poetry | 1 comment
Heron Wings
For Justin Heron
heron wings floating
caressing clouds softly, they
glide through hot air drafts
.
shoulders extended
painting shadows, blanketing
ripples and swimmers
.
patterns on water
criss-cross slits of black and blue,
cobalt tipped feathers
.
soaring up into
the palace of the sun, bills
of light sunshine straw
.
cradling newborn and
ancient in the crest of its
eyes. spiritual friend.
.
wing-tips touching souls
of those past and gone, sending
onwards and beyond
– by Emily Ramser
Copyright © 2012, by Emily Ramser. All Rights Reserved.
Emily Ramser is a high school author living part time between North Carolina and California. She has been published in a small school anthology as well as in the online lit magazine, The Crocodile Journal.…
[More...]
Filed in: Front Page, Poetry | 0 comments
The 28th Palace
Plastered in a semi-invented tale
little is recorded
enthralled brothers
starched blouses
eyes as black
as mourning
an endless hour
called to eat
years shall pass
even the lowliest poet
go home
to a meal
surrounded by sneering
skirts at night
one slight man
hiding civil authority
merely lengthens the shadows
on native soil
that deserted road
olive trees
one must be careful
on the shallow grave
a failure
of red earth
evil and the poet immortal.
…
[More...]
Filed in: Front Page, Poetry | 0 comments
PROSTHETIC DREAMS
A bird I can’t identify by its red markings visits me, holding a playing card in its beak. I feel elated to finally be remembered. But when I grab for the card, the bird darts away.
Come back, I yell, and the bird does. I realize then that its markings are actually splashes of paint or maybe even blood. The shock wakes me up.
I once took thirteen years to write a poem, if you count the mass of scar tissue that throbs in our dreams.
ENNUI
Sometimes we talk like characters in the kind of indie film nobody goes to see. To live, I say, dooms us to a life that’s never really ours. You think you know what I mean.…
[More...]