poetry

Literary Zen XV

by

For many people art means rose-coloured windows, and selection means picking a bouquet for Mrs. Grundy. They will tell you glibly that artistic considerations have nothing to do with the disagreeable, with the ugly; they will rattle off shallow commonplaces about the province of art and the limits of art, till you are moved to some wonder in return as to the province and the limits of ignorance.

Henry James

Long, Too Long America by Walt Whitman

by 
Long, too long America,
  Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and
            prosperity only,
  But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,
            grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
  And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse
            really are,
  (For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse
            really are?)

From Drum-taps, 1865

Creatures and Things

by 
That tiny creature there
the one having just alighted on my arm
and having just pierced my skin
and which is now drawing nourishment
from my very essence

How brave it is
how strong it is in its desire to survive
feeding from that which may end its own diminutive essence
with the slightest
indiscriminate flick of the finger

Aye, the power I possess
I, possessing over this tiny creature
nothing less than the determination
of its life
of its death

Surely, of its death

But why bother
Why not just let it be
For if I were to end its being
it would soon enough return
in the form of any other number of creatures
or things

Returning once again and forevermore
to feed on me
to suck away my life source
and make it its own

Poe[try] in Motion

by

I’m a big Poe fan (Who isn’t, am I right? I mean, does anyone even know anyone who isn’t a Poe fan? or anyone who knows someone who was told once a long time ago about someone who isn’t a Poe fan? Exactly.), so when I got the latest book recommendation from Amazon for yet another collection of Poe’s greatest works, this one illustrated by Edward Gorey no less, I was all over it.

Learn more (ad)

But then I saw it was a Kindle in Motion book and my heart sank.

Yeah, I’ve been seeing these types of newfangled in-motion titles pop up every now and then and my initial reaction to them was pretty much the same as was my initial reaction to the dawn of Kindle books.

Not in my library, no way. They would have to pry the r-book (real book) out of my cold dead hands before I would ever take hold of an e-book.

But then of course, with way leading on to way, I came to love e-books and they have become indispensable to my well-being and I no longer feel guilty when walking past my long-ignored bookshelves only annoyance because they are so damn dusty..

I mean, back to Kindle in Motion books, if I had the desire to watch pictures that move, then I would watch either a motion picture or get up early on a Saturday and watch animation/cartoons (are there still such a thing as Saturday morning cartoons?).

Anyway, long story short, since I’m no Luddite (stay tuned for my upcoming AI confessional post, btw) and since it has Gorey as the illustrator I checked out the Poe in motion book post-haste – figuratively and literally since as part of the Prime Reading offerings it has to be checked out, and found it to be pretty frikkin’ awesome.

Okay, of course it isn’t illustrated by Edward Gorey, how could it be since he’s been residing in weird genius illustrator heaven for nearly 2.5 decades. It was only wishful thinking on my part and my eyes saw what they wanted to see.

The actual illustrator’s name is Corley, M. S. Corely to be precise, and by the looks of his resume he’s had a pretty good career cranking out book covers.

And I must admit, Mr. Corely did a bang-up job on the Poe book. The pictures in motion are very cool with the likes of swinging pendulums and ravens flying ominously across the page.

So yeah, check it out. The good news is if you have an Amazon Prime account (and who doesn’t, right?) it’s free.