HEArt Online- "Promoting the roll of artists as human rights activists." I LUV this Publication. Check it out.

HEArt Online — Contemporary literature & art that challenges discrimination & promotes social justice.

The arts educate, inspire and entertain us. Words, images and sounds have the possibility to alter the human psyche for a moment or for decades. The arts show us who we are as a society and as individuals.  The arts show us what kind of personal or public space we have created and want to create.

We are bombarded by words, images and sounds daily much of which is from advertising on TV,  our computers and phones. It is powerful stuff and as people in a society it benefits us to understand how all this shapes our views and consumerism, our relationships, everything. Being conscious consumers of images, sounds and words is important so we can make our own decisions about our lives and not be subconsciously directed by the power of sound, words and images to embrace their underlying message if it is not in harmony with how we feel or what we want to create.

Do you react  first with a feeling? Do you react  by thinking?  Do you listen to the tone of a politician's voice and ignore the content if the tone is sweet or powerful or angry ( if you like anger)? Do you vote for him or her because you like how they dress? Do you gather information about what foods to eat not by the nutrition content on a label but by the color or texture of the food or an ad that shows smiling happy people eating the food? Are you an intuitive person who just knows what is right for him or her and your choices are much of the time right? If you are an intuitive you are fortunate. On the other hand are you  totally influenced by others and never give your choices a thought?

What does this all have to do with the online magazine HEArt? For me this publication focuses on the idea that we do have choices and we need to consciously choose. We need to consider choosing  "fairness and equality"  if we want peace in this world. What "fairness and equality" means can be different things to different people. For me it means recognizing our shared humanity and the suffering discrimination can bring to those whose humanity is not respected. I believe poetry and fiction, all the arts- dance included, can humanize people awaken them and hopefully when this happens encourage us all  to create a  peaceful world where respect and fairness ( basic human rights) for all exists. When you see or read that another person is just like you, you begin to see them less as an enemy or force to oppose than as a fellow human being living on this "crazy" planet who is trying to survive and live a life of happiness or at least one where the struggle for daily survival is not so all consuming there is room for nothing else.

HEArt online has a mission.  It is a one of a kind publication.

Fall Frigg Issue 42 is Online! Powerful Fiction and Poetry- Four Poems by Elizabeth P. Glixman

http://friggmagazine.com/images42/elizabethpglixman.jpg

Poems
http://friggmagazine.com/issuefortytwo/splashpages/ElizabethPGlixman.htm

Interview by Lynn Alexander at PRATE with Novelist, Poet, Small Press Publisher, Editor Leah Angstman

"Leah Angstman has been at this for years, producing books and spaces and relationships between writers and artists. Some of the answers cover things you know, and some might just surprise you. We threw Leah a few curve balls here because we knew that she would rise to the challenge and we knew that she would bring her independent spirit to the process and we weren’t disappointed. Interviewed by Lynn Alexander, for Full Of Crow, December 2012. 
LA: I’m sure many people want to know, in your words: Why do you want to be part of the small press?..." 

Read the rest of the interview at

http://www.fullofcrow.com/prate/2012/12/leah-angstman/

"This date in science: Pablo Neruda and the beauty of the universe" from EARTH SKY

"September 23, 1973. Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). Michael West, Director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory, sent this image. He wrote:

Astronomical imagery often figured in Neruda’s poetry, for example one of his poems begins: Every day you play with the light of the universe. Another poem titled “The Future is Space” describes black space with room for many dreams.
In the attached composite image (made from photos I took in Chile) I’ve included a portion of Neruda’s poem titled “La Poesia” in which the Nobel Prize winner described the feeling of discovering poetry as a youth, comparing it to the beauty of the universe."

 Read the rest

http://earthsky.org/space/poet-pablo-neruda-and-the-beauty-of-the-universe?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=9ca9a884ac-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-9ca9a884ac-393817421

9/16/13 If You Enjoy Reading Short Stories, Check This Site Out! Go Read Your Lunch. Today's Story If Only Her Husband was a Member of The Brotherhood of Flying Things- by Elizabeth P. Glixman

"Go Read Your Lunch  is an online journal of excellent, kick-ass, thought-provoking, tear-jerking, hernia-inducing, side-splitting, gruesome, wholesome, inspiring, heartbreaking literature by various authors, delivered lovingly to you every Monday, at just the perfect length to last you your twenty-to-thirty-minute lunch period. We want to make your lunchtime meaningful and put some feeling into your weekday mastication! Check back with us every Monday for a new piece."

http://goreadyourlunch.blogspot.com/2013/09/ifonlyherhusbandwereamemberofthebrotherhoodofflyingthings.html

Guest Poetry Editor Linnet's Wings Summer 2013

There is a lot of good writing  and art in the summer issue of Linnet's Wings: flash fiction, short stories, micro fiction, photography, creative non-fiction, poetry. I was the summer Guest Poetry Editor.  Poets included in this issue are:

 Sheila Black
 Changming Yuan
 Howie Good
 John Saunders
 Joan Colby
 Larry D. Thomas
 Steven Jacobson
 Paul Hostovsky
 Colm Scully

 Diana Ferraro wrote an article Buenos Aires: A Literary City .
 I now know about the literary richness of Buenos Aires and the Tango Poets. Don't miss  this read

 http://www.thelinnetswings.org/?pageno=2

 About Linnet's Wings

"The Linnet's Wings was inspired by the ideas and writings of Maria Edgeworth, Lord Byron , Oliver Goldsmith, Jonathan Swift, Padraic Colum and many of the other fine voices-of-old who once lived in and graced the surroundings of this small village.

The Linnet's Wings is supported by an international team of editors who are based in, Republic of Ireland, US, UK and Canada.

Their aim is to showcase writers and artists whose work stimulates and challenges the sensibility and imagination of its readers, and to provide a seedbed of inspiration for writer/artists and readers both, just, as was done by the voices of the past."

Watersongline- Music, Prayer, Indigenous Sacred Songs- All Poetry

Indigenous music (including prayers and chants from many native traditions) is poetry to me.  Prayers, chants, blessings come from the heart of the creator and are presented in ceremonies with clear intentions to fill a need, to extend hope, to connect with the spirit of the land, the air and  water to uplift. They are clear sound from the yearning human soul. In this way they connect the person saying or singing them or hearing them to what is true and "real" about human need and desire, about connection and co-creation.

 Indigenous people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples

"SACRED SONGS

Sacred songs have always been away of our ancestors communing with the all above, giving gratitude, calling in the healing and renewal of self, family, friends, loved ones, communities and all our relations.
Many sacred songs are learned in ceremony. Some have been passed down for millenniums and others arise from the heart of the person. Many of the songs words may not have exact meanings, the meaning is in the intention behind the sacred sound. It is the vibration of that sound combined with the intent of the singer that holds the healing. Therefore, know that we all have sacred songs in our hearts. We can ask for them to come forward through our  prayers, meditations, and dreams. When a sacred song comes forward always remember to give gratitude to the divine source from which it sprang.
The following sacred prayer songs have been kindly shared with us. Look out as more are added."

 Read the rest and Listen....
http://watersongline.com/media/wisdomcorner/resources/

Tony Hoagland Poems

Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet
by Tony Hoagland
At this height, Kansas is just a concept, a checkerboard design of wheat and corn no larger than the foldout section of my neighbor's travel magazine. At this stage of the journey I would estimate the distance between myself and my own feelings is roughly the same as the mileage from Seattle to New York, so I can lean back into the upholstered interval between Muzak and lunch, a little bored, a little old and strange. I remember, as a dreamy backyard kind of kid, tilting up my head to watch those planes engrave the sky in lines so steady and so straight they implied the enormous concentration of good men, but now my eyes flicker from the in-flight movie to the stewardess's pantyline, then back into my book, where men throw harpoons at something much bigger and probably better than themselves, wanting to kill it, wanting to see great clouds of blood erupt to prove that they exist. Imagine being born and growing up, rushing through the world for sixty years at unimaginable speeds. Imagine a century like a room so large, a corridor so long you could travel for a lifetime and never find the door, until you had forgotten that such a thing as doors exist. Better to be on board the Pequod, with a mad one-legged captain living for revenge. Better to feel the salt wind spitting in your face, to hold your sharpened weapon high, to see the glisten of the beast beneath the waves. What a relief it would be to hear someone in the crew cry out like a gull, Oh Captain, Captain! Where are we going now?
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15516

Hyperbole- Big White Lies

I am sure you’ve all met people prone to exaggerating who aren’t  intentional writers or poets.  In  conversation they use hyperbole to emphasize the largeness or smallness of  their feelings and observations, to comment on  a situation, to get attention and to entertain. They make an overstatement. They may use hyberbole to express the need for  immediate action. I will pee Lake Michigan in this car if you don't stop at the next rest stop. 

I think tantrums (usually overstated cries for immediate action) can also be hyperbolic. Is that a word?
Oh yes it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic 
Nice sound to it.  Hyperbolic tantrums are something to think about when you are with a three year old. Tell the crying kid he or she sounds like a poem having a hyberbole. I wonder if that will get you anywhere. It may if the kid likes poems.

Children's stories and poems are filled with hyberbole.  Pre- schoolers often laugh themselves silly listening to poems where whales are as big as a house ( reverse hyberbole) or where someone  says I am so hungry I could eat a horse. How about when a kid says I  love this story so much I could listen to it one  million five thousand seventy- two times?  Then they tell you their love for you is bigger than the distance to the moon.Young children  laugh because they are making sense of the world and know the comparison  is an exaggeration and they realize the silliness or the "realness" of the emotion behind the stretching of truth

Sarah Cynthia Slyvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out!
She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
And though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
And so it piled up to the ceilings:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown Bananas, rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the window and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Grisly bits of beefy roasts...
The garbage rolled down the hall,
It raised the roof, it broke the wall...
Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Globs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from green baloney,
Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold french fries and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
At last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky.
And all the neighbors moved away,
And none of her friends would come to play.
And finally Sarah Cynthia Slylvia Stout said,
'Ok, I'll take the garbage out!'
But then, of course, it was too late...
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate.
And there, in the garbage she did hate,
Poor Sarah met an awful fate,
That I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late.
But children, remember Sarah Stout
And always take the garbage out!

Sheldon Allan Silverstein

Love poems are also home to hyberbole. Those overcome with love can't help themselves. Give them time. Then they will write he or she done me wrong or how much money I got or didn't get from the divorce settlement hyperbolic poems and what's love got to do with anything anyways poems.

Here is the dictionary definition of hyperbole

"A hyperbole is an extreme exaggeration used to make a point. It is like the opposite of “understatement.” It is from a Greek word meaning “excess.
Hyperboles can be found in literature and oral communication. They would not be used in nonfiction works, like medical journals or research papers; but, they are perfect for fictional works, especially to add color to a character or humor to the story.
Hyperboles are comparisons, like similes and metaphors, but are extravagant and even ridiculous."

http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-hyperboles.html

Here is all you want to know about exaggeration and the answer to my question about  psychological  hyperbole.  Thank you, Wikepedia. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaggeration

Aphrodisia 
by Richard Hoffman

   

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/244324

Endless Love
 
I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
(W.H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening," 1935)

Lyrics as Poetry-Joni Mitchell

Where is poetry in our lives?  I think it is everywhere. One obvious place is in song lyrics. I chose to make this post about Joni Mitchell since she has a book out (well, its been out a long time) entitled The Complete Poems and Lyrics of Joni Mitchell. I've  linked a You Tube video of her singing one of her songs/ poems (not sure if it is in the book).   Read  All I Want.  Then listen to the song. Is it the same experience? If there was no music to the words, is this a poem?

 An Amazon Editorial  Reviewer  wrote 


" The sweeping imagery and confessional tone of Joni Mitchell's lyrics have made her a pop icon for decades. Her writing, like that of Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, helped legitimize song lyrics as poetry by adding sophisticated shadings and nuances that earlier rock and folk music often lacked. What's more, as a woman writing in a medium dominated by men, Mitchell became an important role model for young women trying to make sense of their lives during turbulent times.Given her importance as a pop poet and the care and craft with which she approached her craft, it is a treat now to have her work compiled in one volume. Mitchell's has been an aural art, but having the words to read on the page without benefit of melody heightens one's appreciation of the lyrics as poems."


 

Joni Mitchell: The Complete Poems and Lyrics

 

http://www.amazon.com/Joni-Mitchell-Complete-Poems-Lyrics/dp/0609600087/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_7


 Lyrics and Video from You Tube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq2jhs19_V8

  All I Want by Joni Mitchell

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be
Oh I hate you some, I hate you some
I love you some
Oh I love you when I forget about me
I want to be strong I want to laugh along
I want to belong to the living
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive
I want to wreck my stockings in some juke box dive
Do you want - do you want - do you want
To dance with me baby
Do you want to take a chance
On maybe finding some sweet romance with me baby
Well, come on

All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too
All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you
I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you
I want to renew you again and again
Applause, applause - life is our cause
When I think of your kisses
My mind see-saws
Do you see - do you see - do you see
How you hurt me baby
So I hurt you too
Then we both get so blue

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Looking for the key to set me free
Oh the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling
It's the unraveling
And it undoes all the joy that could be
I want to have fun, I want to shine like the sun
I want to be the one that you want to see
I want to knit you a sweater
Want to write you a love letter
I want to make you feel better
I want to make you feel free
Hmm, Hmm, Hmm, Hmm,
Want to make you feel free
I want to make you feel free

"Life is a Mess and Art is Form" Conversation With Poet Billy Collins (Cortland Review Link)

Is life really a mess as someone told Billy Collins?  An enlightened being once said life is how you see it. Then there is that old familiar line about its not what happens to you but how you react to it that determines the quality of your experience. I think both are true. I also think personality, genetics, family systems and some luck play into  how we react to our lives. I do think it is hard to change basic things about yourself like if you are a half empty person or a half full one. Some people get rattled by everything, other people are laid back about  most things. The laid back people call the rattled people over- reactive and the  over- reactive people call the laid back people simple or procrastinators or insensitive. Is life a mess? I  go back and forth between the half empty and half full glass. In a "good"  poem the glass of life is always full for me. That is why I read and write poetry. It is an affirmation.

So where is my rambling leading me when it comes to the Billy Collin's interview?  When he mentioned that writers spend their time lying to people in a way to make them think the work is about the reader when it is really about the writer set me to thinking. When he said poets need only one story (their own) that they  vary  in each poem bells and whistles went off. That is what I do.  I tell my story over and over again with few exceptions. If I am not telling an actual story of mine every poem reflects my pov on all things.

Recently I  have been reading lots of  current poetry and find I don't like much of it.  Why? Well, I am not really into poetry that is so dense you need a jungle guide to plow through it or poetry that waxes poetic about life and death or poetry that is nature oriented that describes the breezes blowing or narrative poetry that could have been written as  prose.  Then there are the extremely crafted poems, I feel like they are in a straight jacket. I am looking for something new. I yearn for newness, freshness of language and vision. Not everyone feels this way about the poetry that is out there today. I don't mean to sound like the styles or themes of poetry I mentioned can't be inspiring or even great.  I meant to say that it is originality  within the style or theme I am seeking. Sometimes I find that newness or originality in prose poetry with its element of magical realism and sometimes I find it in Billy Collin's poems. He often just gets to the heart of an emotion and experience and it is clear and plain. I feel  yeh, that is life.

 Poets need to energize the word.

If anyone wants to suggest a poet to me, I'd be grateful. I want to find some nitty gritty down to earth poets or poets who are so sublime in their use of words or vision that I am  left breathless for a moment. The element of surprise is what I am seeking in a poem  these day.

The form  of a poem is vital as Collins said in the interview. That is perhaps what I am writing about, how to make the form vital and new and connect it to relevant content. It is a difficult task. It is often what is left out of the poem, the silent part that holds the most surprise. It is the part the reader has to fill in and this is where the poet  artistically lies to the readers skillfully pulling them into the poem until  they are almost hypnotized.

Poems, Never Read Them. They Have No Relevance to My Life.

 I want to ask people who never read poems or think poetry is some wacky esoteric thing, what is it in your life that fills you with happiness, peace, curiosity, anger, rage, envy if only for a moment? Because in that moment there is poetry and a poem. You have to be kidding.  No, I am not. Poetry is  about  how we respond to the moments of each of our lives whether it is about our reactions to external events or our inner feelings and thoughts. Isn't poetry about things no one thinks about like the significance of flowers and daffodils? It could be but it doesn't  have to be and anyways what is so irrelevant about thinking about flowers? Remember the time you bought a bunch of flowers at the grocery store or from a  florist or you picked them outside in  a field or you planted them? Flowers are part of existence and everyone has an opinion about them if only they would stop and smell the roses.

I think people are uncomfortable with poetry because  they have to stop and be thoughtful when confronted with language that is not a sentence or in a song. Granted some poems have so many metaphors in them and the language has no obvious or any content or the sound is more important  than the content that it is a hard to grasp what the writer is saying. Even readers  who enjoy poems  just close the book or website. I mean if you need a book to decode a poem , well, I agree who needs poetry unless you  like intellectual challenges. The poetry that works for me and I think for anyone who will give it a chance expresses universal feeling, thought or experiences. These poems are like great songs that you can't stop singing and of course one song or one poem is one person's treasure and another person's huh?

I'm going to write more posts about poetry and why I believe people avoid reading it or go blank when asked about a poem they've read, deciding it is not  relevant to them.  I think it is a cultural thing and it is also the result of the educational system that does not encourage students to value the arts. By devaluating the arts we are devaluating our humanity. I am not saying everyone needs to read poems or love them. Everyone has valid priorities.  But it is like beets. When I was young I hated them. I  never tasted them. I didn't like the color. I was beet prejudice. Perhaps poetry has been cast typed like the beets. Poetry is for people who have a lot of time and beets are for people whose mothers make them eat them.  That is so far from the truth.  I love beets now that my mother stopped telling me to eat them. If you have the time to watch the  news you have the time to read a poem.. Poetry has been at heart of many cultures even our modern one. It is just that not everyone knows it.


< a href=http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/WordsworthDaffodils.htm>poemaboutdaffodils

Spring is Coming

 Yesterday I  heard a cardinal singing.  What a beautiful sound.


http://birdsandbloomsblog.com/2012/01/03/video-the-cardinals-song/