25 writers

More for National Egotism Week....  25 fiction and poetry writers who have influenced me.


1. William Tenn 
2. John Brunner 
3. Robert Benchley 
4. Pablo Neruda 
5. Robert Anton Wilson
6. H. Beam Piper 
7. Andre Norton 
8. John Dos Passos 
9. Spike Milligan 
10. Edison Marshall 
11. Clifford Simak 
12. Tom Sharpe
13. Steven Saylor 
14. S. J. Perlman 
15. Seamus Heaney 
16. Cordwainer Smith 
17. Robert Heinlein
18. Sinclair Lewis
19, Bernard Cornwall
20. John Mortimer
21. George O Stewart
22. Anthony Burgess
23. Mary Oliver
24. H.G. Wells
25. Alan Furst

Poem of the Day

The Poet in the Box by Martin Espada
 
  for Brandon
  
We have a problem with Brandon, 
the assistant warden said.
He's a poet.
  
At the juvenile detention center
demonic poetry fired Brandon's fist
into the forehead of another inmate.
Metaphor, that cackling spirit, drove him to flip 
another boy's cafeteria tray onto the floor.
The staccato chorus rhyming in his head
told him to spit and curse 
at enemies bigger by a hundred pounds.
The gnawing in his rib cage was a craving for discipline.
Repeatedly two guards shuffled him 
to the cell called the box, solitary confinement,
masonry of silence fingered by hallucinating drifters, 
rebels awaiting execution, monks in prayer.
  
Then we figured it out, the assistant warden said.
He started fights so we'd throw him
in solitary, where he could write.
  
The box: There poetry was a grasshopper in the bowl of his hands, 
pencil chiseling letters across his notebook
like the script of a pharaoh's deeds on pyramid walls;
metaphor spilled from the light he trapped
in his eyelids, lamps of incandescent words;
rhyme harmonized through the voices
of great-grandmothers and sharecropper bluesmen 
whenever sleep began to whistle in his breath. 
So the cold was a blanket to him.
  
We fixed Brandon, the assistant warden said.
We stopped punishing him. He knows
that every violation means he stays here longer.
  
Tonight there are poets 
who versify vacations in Tuscany, 
the villa on a hill, the light of morning; 
poets who stare at computer screens 
and imagine cockroach powder 
dissolved into the coffee
of the committee that said no to tenure;
poets who drain whiskey bottles 
and urinate on the shoes of their disciples;
poets who cannot sleep as they contemplate
the extinction of iambic pentameter;
poets who watch the sky, waiting for a poem
to plunge in a white streak through blackness.
  
Brandon dreams of punishment,
stealing the keys from a sleepy jailer
to lock himself into the box, where he can hear
the scratching of his pencil
like fingernails on dungeon stone. 
  
from Alabanza: New & Selected Poems

Poem of the Day

 
Joy, Shipmate, Joy! by Walt Whitman
  

  Joy! shipmate--joy!
(Pleas'd to my Soul at death I cry;)
Our life is closed--our life begins;
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last--she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore;
Joy! shipmate--joy! 

The lyrics

An English translation of the Bengali lyrics for the Dancing video below:

Stream of Life

by Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

Memorial Day, 2008

Memorial Day reminds us to support the troops in the best way possible by BRINGING THEM HOME NOW!!!

Do not be misled.

This war is about oil.

It is about once again having the poor die to grow the wealth of the rich.

The powerful have cynically chosen to kill the weak to gather a few dollars more.

We need to stand tall and not back down.

The troops are being misused, mistreated and mislaid by those in power.

We must not forget their sacrifice and we must honor their service.

Bring them Home Now!

Support the New GI Bill.

And never forget the fools who chose money over their precious lives.


(I found this poem on a public poetry site. It expresses its truth so much better than I can.)

______________________________________________


The Patriot Game by kendall thomas

~I am the grass that covers all
And sucks summer through their teeth~


I come to his grave beneath its bright pennon,
but I do not wonder why he went. I know.
It is because he was young and didn’t believe that old men lie.
That’s why young men die.

I stand by his grave and want to hold his hand once more,
as I did when he was a child, to stare into his eyes and to see his
smile.
But that can never be, for the game is done.

I do not wonder why he went. I know.
Because he heard the siren call and believed it was Liberty that called.
And being young and naive, he wanted to fight for Victory and Glory-
but only the mountebanks have won.

I cannot speak to him; for he no longer hears; so I whisper to the grass
which covers all young men and sucks summer through their teeth:
It is not your fault for having gone.
It is ours who kept silent and let you go for fear of drawing attention
to ourselves.
It is to parents who would not say “No more; not this one, you evil
bastards! ”

But all are cowards when ‘Liberty’ raises her flaming sword,
and the wealthy, like jaded whores, get richer off the blood that young
men pour.
And we pretend on Memorial Day that some great deed was done.
But I stand above this grave and know that nothing’s won.

One smile again from my dead son would cancel out all the bombs
that madmen have ever flung. But the game is done.

Ah,
how little I must have valued those trusting arms around my neck when
he was young.

No more kisses for your daddy now.
No more my warm, soft son.

In Memory of Pooka Morrow

Pooka Morrow with her Boss



A Dog Has Died

by Pablo Neruda
Translated, from the Spanish, by Alfred Yankauer



My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

Today's Spam Poem

Good day, MacAdams

That doctor offers her a bribe.
That farmer leaves her a couple of books.
That farmer rows a boat.
That farmer strikes him a heavy blow.
That flight attendant calls him a taxi.
That flight attendant finds the box empty.

That flight attendant kept the milk cold.
That flight attendant leaves the door open.
That flight attendant orders her a new hat.
That garbage man keeps the milk cold.
That garbage man lifts weights.

Your past records aren't a problem.
Furthermore, if you have owned your house
For at least 5 months,
You've already been approved.

Goodbye,

Saturnia antifermentative

Poem of the Day

Sympathy by  Paul Laurence Dunbar 

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
     When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
     When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
     Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
     And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
     When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
     But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

Poem of the Day

 Now Winter Nights Enlarge by Thomas Campion

Now winter nights enlarge
     The number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
     Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
     And cups o'erflow with wine,
Let well-tuned words amaze
     With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
     Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
     Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
     With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defense,
     Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
     Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
     Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
     And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
     They shorten tedious nights.

Poem of the Day

Dover Beach by Mathew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

A Connotation Of Infinity by e e cummings

a connotation of infinity
sharpens the temporal splendor of this night

when souls which have forgot frivolity
in lowliness,noting the fatal flight
of worlds whereto this earth’s a hurled dream

down eager avenues of lifelessness

consider for how much themselves shall gleam,
in the poised radiance of perpetualness.
When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thought

is like a woman amorous to be known;
and man,whose here is alway worse than naught,
feels the tremendous yonder for his own—

on such a night the sea through her blind miles

of crumbling silence seriously smiles

Poem of the Day

In Mars, What Avatar? by Don Marquis

“In Vishnu-land, what avatar?”
—BROWNING.

Perchance the dying gods of Earth
Are destined to another birth,
And worn-out creeds regain their worth
In the kindly air of other stars—
What lords of life and light hold sway
In the myriad worlds of the Milky Way?
What avatars in Mars?

What Aphrodites from the seas
That lap the plunging Pleiades
Arise to spread afar
The dream that was the soul of Greece?
In Mars, what avatar?

Which hundred moons are wan with love
For dull Endymions?
Which hundred moons hang tranced above
Audacious Ajalons?

What Holy Grail lures errants pale
Through the wastes of yonder star?
What fables sway the Milky Way?
In Mars, what avatar?

When morning skims with crimson wings
Across the meres of Mercury,
What dreaming Memnon wakes and sings
Of miracles on Mercury?
What Christs, what avatars,
Claim Mars?

Poem of the Day

 The Dead Man Walking by Thomas Hardy

They hail me as one living,
But don’t they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute’s warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time’s enchantments
In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death …

—A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died yet more;

And when my Love’s heart kindled
In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
One more degree.

And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day,

Yet is it that, though whiling
The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
I live not now.

Poem of the Day

New Dreams For Old by Cale Young Rice

Is there no voice in the world to come crying,
“New dreams for old!
New for old!”?
Many have long in my heart been lying,
Faded, weary, and cold.
All of them, all, would I give for a new one.
(Is there no seeker
Of dreams that were?)
Nor would I ask if the new were a true one:
Only for new dreams!
New for old!

For I am here, half way of my journey,
Here with the old!
All so old!
And the best heart with death is at tourney,
If naught new it is told.
Will there no voice, then, come—or a vision—
Come with the beauty
That ever blows
Out of the lands that are called Elysian?
I must have new dreams!
New for old!

Poem of the Day

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I loved—I loved alone—
Thou—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by—
From the thunder and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Poem of the Day

The Mystic by Cale Young Rice

There is a quest that calls me,
In nights when I am lone,
The need to ride where the ways divide
The Known from the Unknown.
I mount what thought is near me
And soon I reach the place,
The tenuous rim where the Seen grows dim
And the Sightless hides its face.

I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the sea,
I have ridden the moon and stars.
I have set my feet in the stirrup seat
Of a comet coursing Mars.
And everywhere
Thro’ the earth and air
My thought speeds, lightning-shod,
It comes to a place where checking pace
It cries, “Beyond lies God!”

It calls me out of the darkness,
It calls me out of sleep,
“Ride! ride! for you must, to the end of Dust!”
It bids—and on I sweep
To the wide outposts of Being,
Where there is Gulf alone—
And thro’ a Vast that was never passed
I listen for Life’s tone.

I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the night,
I have ridden the ghosts that flee
From the vaults of death like a chilling breath
Over eternity.
And everywhere
Is the world laid bare—
Ether and star and clod—
Until I wind to its brink and find
But the cry, “Beyond lies God!”

It calls me and ever calls me!
And vainly I reply,
“Fools only ride where the ways divide
What Is from the Whence and Why”!
I’m lifted into the saddle
Of thoughts too strong to tame
And down the deeps and over the steeps
I find—ever the same.

I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the stars,
I have ridden the force that flies
With far intent thro’ the firmament
And each to each allies.
And everywhere
That a thought may dare
To gallop, mine has trod—
Only to stand at last on the strand
Where just beyond lies God.

Poem of the Day

 I Wake And Feel The Fell Of Dark, Not Day by Gerard Manley Hopkins


I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decrees
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

Poem of the Day

Absence  by Amy Lowell

My cup is empty to-night,
Cold and dry are its sides,
Chilled by the wind from the open window.
Empty and void, it sparkles white in the moonlight.
The room is filled with the strange scent
Of wistaria blossoms.
They sway in the moon’s radiance
And tap against the wall.
But the cup of my heart is still,
And cold, and empty.

When you come, it brims
Red and trembling with blood,
Heart’s blood for your drinking;
To fill your mouth with love
And the bitter-sweet taste of a soul.

Poem of the Day

Eurydice by H.D.

Why did you turn back,
that hell should be reinhabited
of myself thus
swept into nothingness?

Why did you turn?
why did you glance back?


So you have swept me back—
I who could have walked with the live souls
above the earth.
I who could have slept among the live flowers
at last.


so for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I am swept back
where dead lichens drip
dead cinders among moss of ash.

What was it that crossed my face
with the light from yours
and your glance?


What was it you saw in my face—
the light of your own face,
the fire of your own presence?

Poem of the Day

Chicago Poems. 1916. Carl Sandburg

At a Window


GIVE me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.