Lee Herrick...A Thousand Saxophones

(This poem blew me away when I first read it on cafecafe and Lee Herrick's blog (see links to both blogs in my links column. He graciously permitted me to reproduce it here on my blog. Thank you, Lee!)

A Thousand Saxophones

After Hurricane Katrina — A Poem for the Living and the Dead

You can live by the water and still die of thirst.
I said you can live by the water and still die of thirst
or the worst nightmare come true:
that body of water taking over the bodies.
Sometime, tonight, see which echoes most—
a whisper or a scream. Make it something beautiful,
like, we will endure or Yes, I love you. Sometime,
tonight, think of water—how it purifies or terrifies,
cleanses, gives and takes away—think how fast
some things can rise—water, fear, the intensity of a prayer.
Officials in New Orleans said they want to save the living.
I hope they do. But I hope they can also honor the dead.
On Bourbon Street, there were over 3,000 musicians employed
on any given day. Last night, before I fell asleep,
I imagined what a thousand saxophones
would sound like if they all played together—
one thousand saxophones, different songs,
different tempos, Dixieland, Miles Davis.
Maybe it would sound like birds or bombs,
planes or preachers praising the Word
on a hot Sunday and the congregation saying Amen,
some people whispering it, some people screaming it.
Maybe it would sound like lightning tearing
open the sky or a thousand books slammed shut after
a horrible conclusion, or a thousand children crying for their
mothers or fathers. Last night, I thought, how far
would a thousand saxophones echo from New Orleans or Biloxi?
Would we hear them in Fresno? Could we imagine the sound?
Could Baton Rouge? Could Washington D.C.?
I don’t know what I should tell you.
But I feel like the saints are marching.
They are singing a slow, deep, and beautiful song,
waiting for us to join in.



Lee Herrick
(c)2005

Memoirs of a Banana

Men creep around,
take my measure,
denigrate my size,
discuss Freud's theory
about penis envy
in loud voices
ad infinitum.

I ignore them.

Women peel me
with gentle hands.
Swallow me
with warm mouths.
I have given my life
many times
for the love
of a good woman.

Once I starred in a movie.
W.C. Fields.
Mae West.
Lord, that woman
adored me.

That was my finest hour!


Pris Campbell
(c)2004

Lyle Daggett on Anya Achtenberg's poetry

Read Lyle Daggett's August 30 blog entry to see his review of The Stone of Language by Anya Achtenberg (published 2004 by West End Press, PO Box 27334, Albuquerque, NM 87125). I just read her book and it has brought me to my knees. She's mind boggling. She's superb. Her language is beautifully cruel. Read her. You won't regret it!

Pris

Two more hurricanes loom....

(click to make larger)
I'm in Southeast Florida, to the right of and slightly below the large lake shown in the map. Phillipe is already generating winds here from its outer bands. The Keys are being evacuated as Rita heads off across the bottom of our state and is projected Northwest to Texas. Rita is of far more concern since, with the slightest chance, she could hit the Gulf states hit by Katrina. I don't even want to think about that happening! The other part of that is that the vast majority of Katrina survivors have been taken to Texas and many aren't in stable structures if it hits there.

Pris

All the Web Search Engine

Click the post title for the latest search engine out and recommended by the Kim Komando newsletter as an alternative to the current bigger ones.

In trying it out by checking my name, I found one link to this collaborative poem with Tim Deer, published two years ago in Blackmail Press, a good New Zealand based journal. I hadn't looked back on this collaboration since we did it.

I also found that by clicking on photos in the search box in this engine, I found, to my horror, tons of photos of myself that I had used in the past as profile photos and discarded (with good reason:-), as well as photos, haigas, and artwork found on my website.

Pris

National Museum of American History

The current issue of Smithsonian magazine includes an article entitled 'Snapping Up The Past'. The curator is searching for casual snapshots of servicemen from earlier wars to include with the more formal war photography. She wants originals, but I'm loath to part with the original posted here. I'll send her a couple of jpgs and see if printing it out works, if she's interested.

This was my cousin, Dolph, taken in New York City, while on leave from World War II. My parents raised him from age 10 to 18. I was born the summer he left for war. He made it through the war safely, only to be killed by a drunk driver at age 26. My memories of him, of course, are dim, but I remember him as the most handsome man I'd seen and had plans to marry him when I grew up:-)


(click to see full size, as the photo above). This was my Uncle Harry, at age 19, taken during a break in action in World War I. Uncle Harry was so attractive as a boy and young man that he received the nick-name of 'pretty boy'. Ironically, he never did marry. Family lore is that the woman he loved married someone else and he could never settle for second best. He did live with someone in his later years, dying of a heart attack at age 60.

If you have photos to contribute, email the curator, Michelle Delaney at DeLaneyM@si.edu

Pris

Poets Who Support Survivors

Click on the post title for the link. If you're a poet and haven't seen this site, you might be interested in participating.

Pris
Sunday PS..Absolutely neat! I just got word I have a poem on the site. So does Michael Parker, I see, with a stunning one.

If you have a blog....

http://www.google.com/blogsearch is the latest tool.

I'm making it a hot link, so type the name of your blog HERE and see what appears. I was surprised to find some entries from mine I'd had up for a day and deleted.

It also tells me that whatever I say in my blog is gonna be out there for a while. Okay, here's my chance! I confess. I was the one who threw the darn cornbread under the table in the cafeteria in third grade. Milton Griffen didn't do it. It tasted like mush and was hard as a brick, but I let him take the rap. Sigh..I feel better.

***BLOGGER.COM WILL BE DOWN FOR ONE HOUR TOMORROW AT 6 PM PACIFIC TIME FOR MAINTENANCE!***Our blogs will disappear during that time.

Pris

Can you use an apostrophe correctly?

I thought I could until I took THIS QUIZ. It's only ten sentences and takes less than a few minutes to do. I scored an abysmal 63 percent. Shame on me. How did you do??

Pris

Blackflash Dreams in Ochre Nights

Luke struts into Sully's on fifty-fourth street
East side. Upscale Manhattan.
All spruced up and ready for the kill.
Best gray suit. Red silk tie.
He snaps thin fingers to a Phil Collins
beat. Checks out the room.

Under the strobe, breasts bouncing
in and out of her black beaded dress,
Kim swivels her hips, stomps her feet,
figures Charles, Keith, and maybe even
William already argue over who will try
to take her home to strip off that hot
one hour dress and fuck her.
She figures the old creep in gray wants it, too.

Chardonnay in hand, Anthony Chee Emerson
sits in the corner, knees upraised
as his easel, painting the crowd.
He watches this wild woman lift proud
shoulders high, hands stroking
the air, black hair swaying, reminding
him of the buffalo he loves to paint.
He digs out a older canvas,
swishes black over the dried ochre.
Buffalo Bloodbath he plans to call it.

The music segues to a tortured guitar
and Kim kicks off her shoes, hikes up her skirt.
Anthony Chee's brush glides faster.
Did one pink rose peek out of that
blurred beaded gown?
Sweat pours down Luke's neck,
staining his collar dark. He swallows
hard, joins the men already circling, but,

in sweeps Meg wearing bo peep blue,
puffed sleeves, pleated bodice and
grabs Kim's hand. Red lips against pale,
blonde hair swirling with black,
the women weave and grind through
two crotch-to-crotch dances, then split,
Kim already biting Meg's damp pale neck.
Loaded guns drop, unused and limp.

Anthony Chee chuckles, dapples black
running legs across his canvas bottom,
imagines those earlier buffalo stampeding
through empty black nights to find their freedom, too.

Pris Campbell
©2004

Art: Fire Woman by Marques Vickers
copyrighted and used with permission

Also, see the art of Anthony Chee Emerson, the artist mentioned in the poem.

The photos people take in their spare time...

See Fuzzy Squid for some of the more unusual photos you'll encounter all in one group. These are submitted to the site and posted as they come in. The woman tied to the....well, I don't want to spoil any surprises but, as Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman (paraphrased,)'people surprise the hell out of me all the time':-)

Pris
PS I just discovered that the photos change fairly rapidly. You'll likely not see that woman!

Here's one from my today's visit to the site (Thursday):





A minute later that batch had gone and I found this photo in the new display:-) (I can hear you saying right now, 'why doesn't that crazy woman get a life?' lol)

Frida Kahlo

I've done a previous post on self portraits, but found this one recently. It's outstanding. For those of you not familiar with Frida Kahlo, a bulk of her art was self-portraits, partially due to her illnesses during most of her life. She was a beautiful woman and courted by many men. She was also a determined and talented woman.
This portrait came from The Hammond Gallery, a site filled with art that can be purchased as posters or sent as e-cards. The title of this one is 'Diego on my Mind'.

Pris

Calling Grammar Experts

A friend and I got into a dispute over a particular word usage in something we're writing. He feels he's right. I feel I'm right, but I can't find a reference in the Good Writing and Grammar book that I use. I've googled with every combination of words and can't find an online reference, either. If you can find a link to show which usage is correct, I would appreciate it.

The sentence refers to a dry cleaner named Jack. The word controversy is in bold.

And she had no intentions of losing the only dry cleaner that/who seemed to know what he was doing

I say 'who'. He says 'that' is correct. I say 'who' because the modifying phrase refers to a man/person. He says 'that' because it sounds correct to his ear (a method I often use, myself).

I need either a link (preferably) or an explicit explanation. I'm a real stickler on grammar and, at this point, want to know out of curiosity if I'm wrong.

Pris

NOTE***I wrote a childhood friend who teaches Creative Writing at the U. of Colorado and has his Ph.D. in English. I figured he would know, if anybody did:-) I just got this reply.

This is the kind of answer I LOVE to give: both of you are right.

Check out the following link:

In general, "who" is preferable when referring to a person or to people; but "that" is also considered correct. Personally, I would use "who" in the sentence that you quoted: not only is it more personable and human: it also works better with the sound of the rest of the sentence: the "oooo" sounds in "losing," "to,"and "doing," plus the aspirants at the beginning of "had," "what" and "he."

I did a google of "that / who"--typed just that way--and it turned up several links. I cited the second one above. If you want to go deeper, just google "that / who."

In Memory of 9/11

This article in The Jeruselem Times describes today's commemorative plans in New York.

...and a poem by Sylvia Plath.

Edge
by Sylvia Plath

The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

**********************8

I would also highly recommend the very moving poem posted on Chella's Blog today.


Pris