Sister Publication to Poetry Life & Times
Issue of April 2017
Sherry Moments
Daginne Aignend is a pseudonym for the Dutch poetess Inge Wesdijk.
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STEPHANIE
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when this sky now boiling with
The chandeliers splintered
death hyphenated, they
Barbara Crooker: Les Fauves
All the Babble of the Souk
Fault Lines is a poetry collection that examines the disconnect, the unchallenged chaos, and the possible downfall of humanity.
‘Thoughtful, densely rich poems.’ Archers Crown Magazine
‘Excellent, chilling, sobering. Great work.’ – Six Sentences Magazine
One of the poems was a Pushcart Prize nominee by Nazar Look Magazine
Fault Lines.Gary Beck. Amazon.Com
Sherry Moments
a poem by Daginne Aignend
He used to wait for me
when I got home from work
‘A glass of sherry, my dear’
We sat down
as I listened to his stories
The same story
he already told me yesterday
He played Rummy with
his girlfriend, the old bag
A puckish smile
accompanied his words
The old bag was sixty-five,
he already reached
the honorable age of eighty-two
For me, sipping my sherry,
it was the time of day to relax
He wasn’t always an
amiable man
When he was younger
he frightened me with
his abrupt violent bad temper
Aging took the edges off
his tantrums
Nowadays, I have decided
to remember my granddad
by these languid sherry moments
Daginne Aignend is a pseudonym for the Dutch poetess Inge Wesdijk.
She likes hard rock music, photography and fantasy books. She is a vegetarian and spends a lot of time with her animals.
Daginne started to write English poetry five years ago and posted some
of her poems on her Facebook page and on her fun project website www.daginne.com
She has been published in some online Poetry Review Magazines with a
pending publication at the Contemporary Poet’s Group anthology
‘Dandelion in a Vase of Roses’.
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The Cambridge Companion to Academic Dipshits. A Poem by R.W. Haynes
A fat old parrot’s fine impersonation
Of a dean, on YouTube, set our friend a laughing
Which he couldn’t stop. It turned to coughing,
And he died, sort of happy, at his station.
We found in his desk, stashed carelessly,
An ancient manuscript he was translating
From Sicilian Greek, a tragedy dating
From Plato’s time, and indeed relating
To the philosopher, for his great enemy
Dionysius the First of Syracuse
Wrote the play to defend his tyranny
Against Plato’s defense of liberty
And attack on his autocratic abuse,
Tyranny raging against philosophy.
Do we moralize against tyranny,
Although small fish, but not so small
As delicious minnows on whom we fall
With glittering eyes, slobberingly?
Do these ideas–rained upon our minds,
Like mud rain in Laredo–elevate
Consciousness toward the great
Hovering supremacy philosophy finds?
Our dead associate, with his dramatic Greek
Representation of a fictional fight
In which dialogue produced lurid light,
Urges our lethargy to think and speak.
Have we reason to listen to that urgency
Or indeed to reason, whose puritan whine
Is likely at times to somewhat undermine
Its specious claim of authority?
“I’d rather be right with Plato,” someone said.
But what does it matter when we all are dead?
So now they have sabotaged a Chaucer class…
Ho hum. They did the same for Tragedy,
And who can blame a stupid clown or an ass
For despising Oedipus or Antigone?
Brainlessness is not some contagion
But, in our non-Platonic academe,
A status quo, the vacuous conversation
Of envious imbeciles with bulging eyes agleam.
The best one can do in this fools’ competition
Is sometimes to put a stick in the machine
And briefly delay the supremely ignorant mission
Carefully strategized by Satan and the dean.
Let no one dying here view with surprise
Dung-beetles circling, with burning little eyes.
R. W. Haynes has taught literature at Texas A&M
International University since 1992. His recent interests include the
early British sonnet, and he is completing a second book on the Texas
playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote (1916-2009). In his poetry,
Haynes seeks to celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
without sounding any more dissonant notes than he has to. In fiction,
he works toward grasping that part of the past which made its mark on
his generation. He enjoys teaching drama, especially the Greeks, Ibsen,
and Shakespeare, and he devoutly hopes for a stunning literary
Renaissance in South Texas.
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STEPHANIE
A Poem by John D Robinson
We could have
been lovers,
but we weren’t,
we could have
been life-long
friends,
but we weren’t,
we could have
been so much
more than a
beautiful exchange
of a brief and
intense light that
scorched us both
with an
innocence that
overwhelmed us
leaving us
strangers for
evermore.
John D Robinson was born in 63; he is a published poet with 2
chapbooks; ‘When You Hear The Bell, There’s Nowhere To Hide’
(Holy&intoxicated Publications 2016) ‘Cowboy Hats & Railways’
(Scars Publications 2016); he was a contributing poet to the 2016 48th
Street Press Broadside Series; his work appears widely in the small
press and online literary publications; he is married and lives in the
UK.
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Shared Closet For One. A Poem by Judy Moskowitz.
A spacious walk in
With built in shelves
And interesting places to hide
I didn’t realize I had so many shoes
Color coordinated clothes
Perfectly aligned on velvet hangers
You can tell so much about a person
The way they fold their clothes
Tell tale signs of intimacy
Rolled up in a draw
Evidence of a once lush life
Hidden in the green of envy
A garden of weeds
Oxygen with just enough poison
Taking over the landscape
No flowers of consolation
Just black smoke inside
A tin box ready to explode
Have I left enough trills in the music
Did I change the sheets
That witnessed submission
Can you feel my authentic bliss
That I once loved you
Judy Moskowitz started playing piano at the age of three, and studied at the Julliard School Of Music in New York City, her native city.
She became a jazz pianist and continues to play jazz. Now residing in Florida, she started writing poetry three years ago, and has been published in the Moonlight Dreamers Of The Yellow Haze anthology, Thepoetcommunity, Whispersinthewind, Indiana Voice Journal. Poetry runs deep in her veins along with Music.
She became a jazz pianist and continues to play jazz. Now residing in Florida, she started writing poetry three years ago, and has been published in the Moonlight Dreamers Of The Yellow Haze anthology, Thepoetcommunity, Whispersinthewind, Indiana Voice Journal. Poetry runs deep in her veins along with Music.
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Jazz. A Poem by Joan McNerney
the kitchen sits
in fruit soup…
steamed apricot
mango shadow
down thru spinning
smoke into hot light
blink beat
body ends dangle
lead eye skin cement
high on tongue
night pasted among
buildings Styrofoam clouds
moon hung beneath billboard
rolling pass wet
rocked streets
soul tramp
diamond panhandlers watch
paper birds slices of
the daily news drift in air
comes cool ether
whispers up door
climbing dusty corridor
tree windows lapping lisp
door slams again noise again
then none void nothing syncopates
noise again door slams tree bare frozen
caught in the image of 7 candles
within 7 candles flames of air
7 light bulbs growing out of each other
7 silver circles coined from 7 silver rings
clear as blazing sheets
of glass yet
vague as dust
an ice cube on wood table
in front of crushed velvet
melt
poured
peeled
when this sky now boiling with
stars is strapped black
in pinched air thru sucked mind
swimming pass spaced time
will be one silent
note up.
note up.
Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, Spectrum, three Bright Spring Press Anthologies and several Kind of A Hurricane Publications. She has been nominated three times for Best of the Net. Poet and Geek
recognized her work as their best poem of 2013. Four of her books have
been published by fine small literary presses and she has three e-book
titles.
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Hostages. A Poem by Ananya S Guha
Had it not been
a hell of a night
I would not know
how chandeliers
had broken
and the gig we did
broke into dawn
till all the people
in the room started
reading those old
books, which memories
had kept stored in rusted
trunks. One started reciting
the others with immaculate
looks read steadfastly.
Silence. Silence was the watch dog.
The reading continued late till
the day. Gunshots woke them up.
They were told they were hostages
but they continued to read.
A war is on ( they were told)
The chandeliers splintered
books strewn,
death hyphenated, they
continued to read.
Soon dogs started barking
the coffins were ready.
The clock ticked
death is a neighbour.
Ananya S Guha has been born and brought up in Shillong, India
and works in India’s National Open University, the Indira Gandhi
National Open University. His poems in English have been published world
wide. He also writes for newspapers and magazines/ web zines on matters
ranging from society and politics to education. He holds a doctoral
degree on the novels of William Golding. He edits the poetry column of The Thumb Print Magazine, and has published seven collections of poetry.
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Idealist. A Poem by Cornelia Păun Heinzel
Editors Note: Translated from Romanian by the author herself, as far as the editor knows.
Cornelia Păun Heinzel is an Romanian writer, journalist, member of International Press, Professor Ph.D. in Robotics with the scientific title of Doctor of Industrial Robots 1998, the Bucharest Polytechnic University, Master in Educational Management and Evaluation, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bucharest, in 2002, Master in Teaching Subjects Philological Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, licensed of Philology, Romanian Language and Literature – French Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, University of Brasov, Diplomat mechanical engineer, specializing in Technology of Machine Construction, Faculty of TCM, Brasov University in higher education and research, a field in which she has worked until today and electrical engineering, specializing in Transport, Polytechnic University of Bucharest. In 2007-2013 she trained experts of the Ministry of Education in Educational Management. She completed three graduate courses and in 2012-2013 received a grant to Germany, MUNCHEN GOETHE INSTITUTE in the area of specialization – MULTIMEDIA FüRERSCHEIN DaF- Das Internet als Quelle FÜR Materialien und Projekte . She has published six books and over 200 articles – published in Romania and abroad.
Anthologie Multilingua. Cornelia Heinzel
You always tell me: you are incredibly idealistic
when you love all people equally, trees and flowers, animals,
without concealing them with the cloak of inequality,
when you are admiring what it is worthy of praises,
without the worm of jealousy eating you whole,
when you do not harm anybody
and the waves of evil do not immerse you,
when you understand every being,
even if you, in this, are enigmatic,
when you help anyone from the kindness of your heart
without expecting something in return,
when you consider money to have no value
and the wisps of greed never daze you,
when you always forgive
without the boulder of vengeance shattering you in pieces,
when you introduce yourself to people the way you truly are,
without performing on the stage of life as a perfect actor,
when you truly are faithful
without the arrows of evil, greed and deception piercing you…
Cornelia Păun Heinzel is an Romanian writer, journalist, member of International Press, Professor Ph.D. in Robotics with the scientific title of Doctor of Industrial Robots 1998, the Bucharest Polytechnic University, Master in Educational Management and Evaluation, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bucharest, in 2002, Master in Teaching Subjects Philological Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, licensed of Philology, Romanian Language and Literature – French Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, University of Brasov, Diplomat mechanical engineer, specializing in Technology of Machine Construction, Faculty of TCM, Brasov University in higher education and research, a field in which she has worked until today and electrical engineering, specializing in Transport, Polytechnic University of Bucharest. In 2007-2013 she trained experts of the Ministry of Education in Educational Management. She completed three graduate courses and in 2012-2013 received a grant to Germany, MUNCHEN GOETHE INSTITUTE in the area of specialization – MULTIMEDIA FüRERSCHEIN DaF- Das Internet als Quelle FÜR Materialien und Projekte . She has published six books and over 200 articles – published in Romania and abroad.
Anthologie Multilingua. Cornelia Heinzel
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Featured Books
Little Dancer — The Degas Poems
by Lyn Lifshin
The newest book from Lyn Lifshin, imagines and explores the world of Marie Van Goethem, the "Little Dancer" sculpted by Edgar Degas. The Degas Poems contains 29 poems.
A Sneak Peak in to the Poem
Now loved, Degas' original wax version of the little dancer was hated, though his paintings had been greeted enthusiastically. His sculpture of The Little Dancer, Aged 14, was considered shocking and unsettling, like a little monkey. It is said one father cried, 'God forbid my daughter should become a dancer.' Many were shocked by her pose and the material used: human hair, beeswax, silk. Degas loved the opera and ballet but this statue was called 'repulsive' and 'vicious,' a threat to society. It forced viewers to look at the seamy side of life since most of the young girls came from very poor slums and working class families. Others were horrified that she seemed to champion ugliness and depravity. Degas never again exhibited the sculpture. And, though he painted ballerinas all his life, The Little Dancer was largely forgotten until it was rediscovered with dozens of other sculptures. His fascination with making sculpture was little known in his lifetime, unlike his portraits, history paintings, scenes from modern life, the world of horse racing, and the theater and ballet.
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Barbara Crooker: Les Fauves
(Paperback) Released on 15th January 2017
on amazon.com
Les Fauves is, as the title suggests, a collection of ekphrastic poetry, meditations on paintings from the Fauve and Post-Impressionist movements. But it also contains poetry’s equivalent to Fauvism, poems that take a walk on the wild side. There are language experiment poems, poems of word play, poems in form both usual (end rhymes, sonnets, ghazals) and unusual (abecedaries, traditional, embedded, and double helix), palindromes, anagrams, and word scrambles. Crazy word salad poems. Crooker’s subjects range widely, from living and working in a small village in the South of France, love in a long-term relationship, food as more than sustenance, faith in a secular age, grammar and usage, the pains and pleasures of the aging body. But always, what engages her most is what it means to be human on this fragile planet, at this time in our troubled history, still believing that “Beauty will save the world.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky).
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All the Babble of the Souk
by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Click book image to visit the seller's page at lulu.com
Poet Robin Ouzman Hislop’s first full-length collection, All the Babble of the Souk, is appropriately titled. With a remarkably consistent ear for the market’s noise, for “[t]he broken lights of the bazaar/spangled] with glistening promise/in the eyes of the dusky beggar …” (Laminations in Lacquer ) Hislop’s poems, many of them cinematic-style montages of sounds and images, show us the metaphoric souk of the world, on the beach or in the street, its glitter, its sadness, its ragtag glory:
“pets, flower pots framed captive in a moment
outside the house of the painter, a robot
in chains with an alms bowl”
(“Departures”) ...Read more of this review by poet Miriam C. Jacobs
“pets, flower pots framed captive in a moment
outside the house of the painter, a robot
in chains with an alms bowl”
(“Departures”) ...Read more of this review by poet Miriam C. Jacobs
More Reviews for this book:
Aquillrelle. Press Release. All the Babble of the Souk
Richard Vallance Reviews All the Babble of the Souk
Reviewed by Marie Marshall All the Babble of the Souk
Richard Lloyd Cederberg Reviews All the Babble of the Souk
Adam Levon Brown Reviews All the Babble of the Souk
Further comments and reviews on Motherbird
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Fault Lines:
A Poetry Collection by Gary Beck
A Poetry Collection by Gary Beck
Fault Lines is a poetry collection that examines the disconnect, the unchallenged chaos, and the possible downfall of humanity.
Symphony of the City
Discordant orchestra
rent by untuned instruments,
the underlying hum of engines
sound the theme of endless din.
The clack of workmen moving pipes,
the bumpthump of delivery trucks,
the unrhythmic thud of hammer,
the voices of children
cavorting in the playground
serenade the senses,
varied sensual sounds
interrupted by crash and bang,
handymen, repair crews,
horn-blowing motorists
aspiring to be soloists,
daytime throb of labor.
Nighttime crack of gunfire,
shrieks and howls
of citizens in torment
under constant assault,
reveal the melody
of your anguished composition.
‘Thoughtful, densely rich poems.’ Archers Crown Magazine
‘Excellent, chilling, sobering. Great work.’ – Six Sentences Magazine
One of the poems was a Pushcart Prize nominee by Nazar Look Magazine
Fault Lines.Gary Beck. Amazon.Com
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100 Thousand Poets for Change
Leeds 2016
Since 2011, 100 Thousand Poets for Change has been working with poets, writers, artists, musicians… to help organize events around the world for peace, justice and sustainability. Now, more than ever mobilization is crucial so we have created theGLOBAL ACTION CALENDAR open to EVERYONE to post Creative Actions around the world.
Editor’s Note: On January 14th 2017 at the Inkwell Arts Centre Leeds UK Transforming with Poetry presented this collection of poems by local Leed’s poets & contributors editited by Tony Martin-Woods & Siobhan Mac Mahon. Their Editor’s preface scrolled down provides further elucidation on the purposes & intentions of this compilation of poets’ works. Once opened simply simply access the enlarge monitor on the bottom bar & follow the forward arrows throughout.
Click the image to find out more about this anthology
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FEATURED VIDEOS
Sweet Little Sperm / Tony Martin Woods
for The YouTube Poets TV pilot project
The Meow of Now / a video poem by Paul A Toth
to be included in The YouTube Poets TV pilot project
Rediscovered Darkness by Ian Irvine
for The YouTube Poets TV Pilot project
Sample intro style for The YouTube Poets TV pilot project
for The YouTube Poets TV pilot project
to be included in The YouTube Poets TV pilot project
for The YouTube Poets TV Pilot project
