PREFACES TO USE IN SOME WAY- 🙏✍️🙋♀️2018 (maybe a book in themselves)
General Prefaces (the I-don’t-know-which-collection-yet)
-Wentz in his preface to Tibetan Yoga & Secret Doctrine said, “This volume is meant at once for the exact scholar and for the general reader”. This lead me at once to an understanding of and need to say this volume is not meant for the scholar.
There are no textual sources, few annotations, a very few footnotes intended to take the reader out of complete darkness into my referential world.
Some references are never explained. They meaning for me, the poet – and I dare to make the giant assumption that this meaning will trickle out, drop into or leak into your mind as well because an authentic thought is, well, authentic and therefore universally accessible, albeit with a little work on the reader’s part.
I keep the dates I to help the reader and myself in understanding the development of the poet and his skill, to help both to take part in the mind-set the poet had while writing; as a mnemonic aid. Instead of bothering with a lengthy autobiography, a short poem with a date does the job just as well.
If sometimes I use foreign words, Yiddish idioms, Swedish words and expressions, it is because they are a living part of my brainwork – and when they fit, I must honor them as being neither artificial, false or wrong.
Whatever I read, see or hear finds its way in the poetry: ideas transposed from sources any which way.
Preface For Future Books Based on Years (instead of themes)
Putting years behind me is a nice feeling. The what-I-wrote to what –I-write , (for I continue writing). In fact that is the problem – I continue writing and if I’m ever to get everything out – the long ago, the was-not-ready to the getting-better-onsome-levers, then it must be done in this format.
In a way, it is a handicap to never run out of ideas. One doesn’t want to die with publishable material left unpublished. There is some primeval need to share – knowing that somebody out there can use it, enjoy it. it doesn’t feel like hubris, but then what does hubris feel like? It may, in fact be an antonym: humility.
So what would ordinarily have been published under themes will never be published under years – a more transparent way of doing it; braver, naked: autobiographical.
Universal Preface
I always think I’m writing universally, no matter how personal the subject. Always surprised if a reader doesn’t get it. then I remember my own ground message: everything is projection – interpretation. Why should I expect my poetry to be understood as I understand my poetry when I myself don’t always understand it after years of not reading it. “Did I write that?” “What on earth did I mean there…?”
Yet, I knew exactly what I meant at the time.
So take it as you will. Go away. Come back. It’ll be there, same as before – but you’ll be different.
Preface Notes 7.22.2011
(Definitely Didactic)
Prefaces are important, no, vital. They enable the author to declare intention, background without spending hours on form. Content, yes. But the form and rhythm required for the poet, no.
Preface notes 7.27.2011
(Birth Death & In Between)
I’m not sure that people think enough about death. When young, until I don’t know how old, one thinks of oneself as invincible. A brush with death, a friend dying – these sometimes bring us to our senses, those senses being the fear of dying, the realisation that it is quite nice to be alive, no matter what. ‘Our senses’ – how far do they take us, brought to them or not? We have to be brought to a sense of disappearance, nothingness, silence total, or immortality. A sense of, not the senses.
Preface note 9.28.2011Our Times, Our Culture
I never thought that I, of all people, writing about love and nature, god and wrinkles, vanity, creativity and thinking would discover that I’d formulated 206 poetic thoughts directed at global goings on. It seems I take in more than I realise.
As I read it over, Our Times, Our Culture sees to concern itself with a greed→corruption→downfall syndrome. Observing and reacting, I’m not sure I offer much in the way of cure except by inference. But inference is didactic enough. We can find out what to do by seeing the wrongs of what not to do. Also I like to think that the poems stands by themselves.
There is a Sanskrit phrase neti-neti. It means not this, not that: reaching truths by pushing non-truths out of the way. The process of elimination. We do it all the time.
General notes for all my prefaces 9.29.2011
In general, there are only two things I wish for: that the reader can identify with the theme; that the reader appreciates the construction or the humor, sees levels, nuances. The poetry is visual – there are puns only the eye can understand. The poetry is aural: puns fun of sound; one phrase building on another. Small details make the whole. What a miracle if write and reader marry on these.
The mind is quirky. One wants the reader to notice and like that. Its development is not sequential. One writes about…where one is at the moment.
Prefaces Notes
6.18.2011
When I started to write about time, my intention was to examine time literally. Where does it start? What is it? All too soon, I reached my limits. And so Time began to take on new dimensions. (that’s not a joke). Therefore, the collection Time became Circling Round Time.
Generally speaking, all my collections circle around… I know so little, and everything I feel compelled to say, to examine winds up circling around something, with the exception of the few things I dare to have more certainty about.
Preface Notes
10-8-2011
As you notice, I write in spurts. The thoughts must be running around my head unconsciously. They seem to come to the surface when they will. Therefore, I hope the reader understands the higgledy-piggledy coming together of the preface. In the end there is a preface that says what I want to say to you in preparation of reading.
Preface Notes
1.29.2011
This collection is possibly the last I might have chosen to publish in my desire to get my poetry out into the world. But these latest days – Tunis, Egypt – seem to have pushed ”Our Time…” to the forefront.
Going on my underlying principle – that there is a cover for ever pot – I’ve decided to publish the collection.
I’ve always considered my self apolitical. But eyes have I and ears – to read, see, hear and listen. How can I not react ? Even detached observation evokes reaction. And when I react I write. And when I write, I come to conclusions – or don’t -itself is a conclusion of sorts. At any rate, the results have been x number of poems which I early on called Our Times, Our Culture.
Instead of sitting in the cyberspace of files and folders, or printed out on A4 paper in collected piles around the house, it may be a help.. Propaganda is it not!
They’re observations, subjective and probably flawed. But poetry.
Preface Notes
9.11.2011
Why have I never written about 9/11 ? I’ve written about everything else (well, almost) that’s shocked and saddened. Madrid, Estonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Holocaust, storms and hurricanes, homicide and genocide, earthquakes, tsunamis- felt, described: I’d no idea I’d written so much. The ten year memorial anniversary ceremony tomorrow – may now it’s time. The cliché “It’s all been said” as valid as can ever. I feel mute.
But with technology through TV, film and articles, I’m forced to look and suffer once again. I’m older. Perhaps I suffer more, feel more, compassion more awake. Perhaps I feel the desperate choice between a window jump and death by flame.
My stomach drops from thinking.
9.22.2011
I must remind myself to remind you that all the poetry has a base in real events, even though they may not be named. If you are interested in the event and are historically oriented, look at the date at the bottom of the poem.
Circling Round Time
8.17.2010
I think that I’m beginning to see myself as nothing but an example of Western woman: vain, worried about wrinkles, looks and ageing, and spiritual-seeking sometimes holding in my hand that companionship of a nice, conscious all-knowing Absolute. Me, I blend of both. In the past (like yesterday) I was lightly flustered by this anomaly, the oxymoronic set of traits. That’s probably why it’s taken so long (75 years and 9 months as I write) to put my poetry ‘out there’. Seventy-five years and five months! That’s a long time to be dithering. Oy! Do they call it a lack of confidence or what!
This isn’t just a collection about time. These are thoughts about wrinkles, birthdays, tick-ticking minutes, death, illusion and illusions. This circles around time and Time, the all-embracing
Preface to God Book 2014
In this book you’ll see my theology and my cosmology. You’ll see, as I see in the editing, methods/ideas I’ve used in the past and still use. God Book is, in some places very like ‘“To The Child Mystic! only more stripped, more direct. God Book is about God. Full stop. Period.
In each new book, this being the 13th, I find myself revising and updating. Each new edition seems to bring me one step closer to whatever it is I am as an author. God Book has had so many poems altered I can hardly keep count. Starting out at 276 poems, I’ve managed to whittle them down to 168. Each new book really is a new book – even with the fact that some of the poetry was written as much as 55 years ago. I have to keep telling myself that Whitman wrote, published, rewrote, published again, re-re-wrote and published yet again. It’s such a comfort: Johnny Mercer, Leo Tolstoy, both re-writers. One could do a doctorate on re-writers.
I am traceable through my poetry. The changes, the development, the evolution – I [happily] see it myself as I edit.
Sometimes I’ve addressed a personal god, sometimes an impersonal one. A 4) or$50 depends on my need of the moment. Truth is supra-linguistic – all pronouns suit. It is the relationship that counts.
Truth knows exactly what it is doing. Not that it ‘does’ in the sense of actively participating in movement. Not that it ‘knows’ in the active sense either. It’s an operating law, this truth with a big T. Not doing, not knowing, but producing effects.
You’ve got to see things in the cosmic sense –hugely; causes way-in producing effects way-out, producing in turn, causes way-out which produce effects way-in. And you, who see catastrophes, human and natural – you, who want to affix blame on something, someone – for you (I,we) there is only one personal alternative in the absence of answers: distancing in the form of seeing things as they would be seen way out in the cosmos, the only pre-supposition being this: There is such a thing as truth that is not dependent on relative values. It is Truth with a big T. I’ve got friends who, when we talk about truth, say things like “Whose truth” or “What do you mean by truth?” To them I say, don’t read this.
Laws work but they don’t do anything themselves. They are more like rules of the game, bases from which things operate. You can’t get any more basic than Truth, big T: all encompassing truth. God.
Off-the-cuff and finally, it’s your happiness and peace of mind we’re talking about here.
Preface To The Child Mystic
2010
The mystic poems sometimes come out in a formal language that must lie somewhere in the unconscious. Words one would hardly choose in real life. A kind of supra-respect. In the beginning when I was unused to writing, the language outdo be a little archaic. I noticed it especially when I was editing the “Ah Love” series. (I might work on that one day.
Although it does show me who I’ve developed since using language that is more and more colloquial.
When looking at the early poems – those from 1960 when the experience was newborn, I see how super sensitive I was to what was happening. Some of the poems seem formal, hard to understand. I’ve included them. Good poetry or bad, the accurately and concretely select the depth of what was happening.
To The Child Mystic was begun in a period of insights, revelations and personal revolutionary change. Fear was replaced by courage. Inaction and laziness replaced by determination, energy, trust in my actions and in action itself. Worry left. I could newly and actually express myself in ideas. Every moment was blissful. ugliness in things, circumstance and people became beautiful in my eyes.
Life became serendipitous, gifts coming in every form fulfilling every need. Synchronicity seemed the fact of life. There was no longer accident. Connections were everywhere apparent or sensed. Spontaneity, warmth cemented itself in my person. I broke rules. Convention no longer bound me.
And most of all, a living relationship with something outside myself, a source that allowed the best and the worst, but whose worse was still the best became my primary relationship.
It was 1959 when I had the first of my mystical experiences. I began to write – and write and write. Had to tell them to someone. no, had to share them. Then, on written and re-reading, even chatting with others about something which seemed star-brights to me, I began to understand that few knew what I was talking about. At least in my circle. Emerson, Bucke, Whitman knew. But not the rabbi and the priest I’d visited.
I decided that I’d write metaphorically for children as a child – to a fourth I might never see. Eventually, I ran out of children’s language, retuned to the grownup world as the experiences continued, left, were understood/not understood.
Years went. The writings get. And I was left with my original title – “To The Child Mystic”. It seemed to contain all the levels I’d meant in the first place.
I’ve been self-indulgent. With no editor but myself, I’ve sometimes allowed 2 versions fo the same poem. To me they seem worth the printing. I beg your indulgence and hope you see what I see. The whole story’s there – the unfolding, the whole a sequence of blindness and understanding, however inconsistent the appearance.
As I edit, I see that this is part self-help, part naked autobiography, aimed at the spiritually minded or the poetically interested. As I read, not having read many of these in years (once I write, it’s off my chest forever until the newest period of motivation and inspiration, which send I’ve not read some sine the day it was/they were finished), I think, “Great!” Or “How formal – did I really think like that”? “What did I meant by that?” “Sophomoric!” You may react in one of those ways. Still I go by the motto that there is a cover for every pot, and that someplace someone out there will like it. So I leave it in.
I’m blabbering, trying to justify every poem between these two covers. An amateur editor or self-indulgent.
I want to call attention to the poems written from 1959 and 1961. You’ll see the years at the bottom of each. Poem. I was in a kind of ‘mystic madness’ and can justify this manic looking condition b referring to the life of Ramakrishna. It was the period of breakthrough so startling, a giant understanding which saw beauty all around, I found myself smiling and smiling and smiling. In edition a poem called “sometimes I See, Or Hee, Hee, Hee”. I was laughing for the first time in my life. The illusion of what seems to be over what is had been penetrated, and it produced a joy impossible to describe, (although I kept on trying.). it must be what is meant by bliss. Perhaps the 59’ 60’61’ grouping shows the purest mysticism I’ll ever experience.
Some very few are dark poems. Some are didactic. The vision was always clear; the problem was to whittle down. Or expand. It still is.
Sometimes I think I’ve said all I have to say. But then it comes again in a different form and I write some more. When I began to write I began to see that I was writing a lot. It was then that I started to date the stuff. I seem to have the need to chronicle, record the order of things, collate and chart. To what use, I’ve no idea.
More sporadic Notes for “To The Child Mystic”
7.20.210
It was a problem to organise a book whose theme has been repeated for 50 years. Poems – just poems but reflecting the graduation from first dramatic insights through doubt and vanity to now – whatever stage now represents, for one thing is sure, every insight, revelation, realisation has its day, the day lasting weeks, months, years, but always going on with tiny alterations, tiny variations, minuscule steps. Forward? Who knows? I like to think so, but who knows? I still see vanity. I still observe doubts, take part in them, suffer for them.
Yet, I would dare to say that from 1959 to 2010 I could be descried as a happy person. That’s quite a nice thing to be able to say. Trusting that a) there is a God, an absolute, no arms, no legs, but reachable and b) that God never makes a mistake. It’s a different take on karma. The cause and effect principle is also absolute, but my particular standpoint is always: everything that’s happening is happening for my good, hence yours, his, hers, theirs…it’s back to the God-never-makes-a mistake principle.
It sounds simplistic, naive, but it seems to have helped me through think and thin – in times of confusion, suffering and indecisiveness. One develops a cosmology, and the cosmology takes its form in the poetry.
So whoever likes diaries, history, mystery, psychology, contradiction – whoever cans universally in individuality – that’s the person I’d like to see read this book.
Goodness, I hope don’t sound pompous.
Lastly, I want to say that when I first thought of the title To The Child Mystic, I was knee deep in my sometimes spectacular first insights. And drawn irresistibly to writing them down. In their newness they seemed like something I’d always inlay. In their simplicity I addressed them to children. Now I realise that there was more truth in the title than I knew. I am that child with ‘promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
Preface Two Years of Poetry
2015/2016
I write. 2015 is over and the result is some 170 odd poems. Edit, whittle down – poem, edited, some carried over into 2016. I search for a title for the book. I’ve never published a collection by year, always by theme.
Now 81 years old with over 30 thematic collections. I want to get the all out into the world before I go, a project which seems almost impossible, the life work still on the go. 30 some odd collections – that’s nearly 3,400 ‘itiem’ and still growing.
the writing started in 1949. It’s now 2016. “should I do it by this year?” It seemed a reasonable format since each year represents a phase, a different Arlene – well to different, bu an Arlene with newsies, new sight; new phase, new face seeing life from new angles.
This pose, that phase: I’ve brooded over every phase to find a title for the book; how to describe and what to call a year of lie, a year of thought’s collections in poetic form.
For the moment, the book will be called Life Is Phases Only: 2015/2016 A Book Without Theme. Below are titles I was playing with; a reflection of what was going on in my mind 2015/2016, some of which may well wind up as poems themselves.
Half of Life is Cleaning Up; Fed Up; Rough Cut; Luck Favors The Prepared Mind; The Slightest Movement Produces Change; Too Young To Appreciate; In The World Of 2015;From 2015 to 2016; All Of 2015 & Part Of 2016; All In A Day’s Work; Giving Titles To Everything; Printing Press of the Mind; Anything Can Happen In Nature; A Little Autumn In The Air, A Little Winter too; Attracted To Things I Don’t Understand; Invisible Ocean of Energy Suffusing Everything In the Universe; Talk Eats Your Energy: Silence; Continuous Transformation, That’s What You Want; The Atman Is A Homogeneous Silence; Somewhere In The Back Of My Head (lies an inner ear, always waiting for the pregnant phrase to catch me); In The Word World Of 2015; It Was 2015; Only Phases; Title Collector; A Book Without Theme;
As is my practice, I’ve placed the name of the poems, the date, the collection or collections into which I believe it belongs, my name and any other small detail I want to remember, at the bottom of each poem (revised, re-worked, re-written, found on a scrap…) to remind myself that each collection is intended to be or has become a book. On top of which, I’ve this irresistible need to keep track of myself
If some of he poems, especially the ‘birthday’ poems, the ‘occasion poems seems superficial it’s not because I haven’t given them thought and attention. It’s just that there are times when a sense of duty outweighs the more perspicacious one.
I’ve included the text for a lecture called yoga For Te Mature because the yoga theme reappears relatively often as poetry, and as prose it’s just a good piece of advice.
As for the weight and thickness of the book, it’s a thick one. I’m trying to squeeze in as much as possible in this is a self-published book and I’m allowed 799 pages for the same price as I would pay for a slim volume of poetry. And volume is what I have, hoping hat there is enough quality to warrant a bedside book, one that you can will go back to time and again.
More possible Prefaces
I just love this poetic urge. It never seems to leave. In fact, it’s where and how my mind travels almost all the time, on all occasions. More than a hobby, not quite a profession – I’ve always considered myself a musician first – yet an ever growing, never stopping underlay.
I just re-read the poem (on the way to ffiling it). It was quite good, I discovered. More than quite. As a poem, meter, rhyme scheme, content itself – more than good. Not for children, of course. But then, I don’t write for children. I started once in my book “To The Child Mystic”, but soon discovered that it was going to be too hard and not my thing. I needed a more grown up reader.
Preface To Summarise All My Collections
5.9.2013
They’re just collections. That’s all they are. They may not match one another, but they come from the same head and somehow have the same thread. Just some collections between two covers. Love, time, God, energy, computers, yoga, nature, jazz…one long poem with
variations.
A preface is as important as the rest of the book. Don’t skip it.
One Long Poem
A list:
That’s all it is, a list.
Variations on a theme.
Phrases, threads,
Anything I deem significant.
A thing-in-one:
Always the same;
A frame poetic, substance
Notwithstanding.
Rhythmed rhyme,
Rhyme and rhythm
In the end, a sack is tied.
Preface 4 Everything
For God Book:
It’s about time. In fact, it’s the right time. For years I’ve been shy about putting out my God Book. Put out 12 others, but not this one – which keeps growing anyway. Then, as I was reading Eat, Pray, Love, a humorous earthy book about decidedly non-earthy subjects, I fastened upon page 13 (Penguin edition). She’s said the word in capital letters. She’s said in one page what I’ve been saying (so far) in 270. I’ll try top whittle that down.
Universal Preface
I always think I’m writing universally, no matter how personal the subject. Always surprised if a reader doesn’t get it. then I remember my own ground message: everything is projection – interpretation. Why should I expect my poetry to be understood as I understand my poetry when I myself don’t always understand it after years of not reading it. “Did I write that?” “What on earth did I mean there…?”
Yet, I knew exactly what I meant at the time.
So take it as you will. Go away. Come back. It’ll be there, same as before – but you’ll be different.
Universal Preface Notes
3.20.2012
I assume,
According to my intuition
That you’ll only read one poem –
One poem of thousands.
We can hardly focus more than seconds
In the rushings of societies.
I duplicate and replicate,
Echo themes that come
In varied nuances.
Same, same, things
Repeated,
Validated
By experience and shadowing.
Prefaces ad infinitum
Careful in the sculpting
Each poem valuable.
Take a look.
And change.
Preface Notes To Birth, Death & In Between
1.24.2007
I have a feeling that this collection is for the mature – whatever that implies about age or experience. Who, at twenty, even thirty thinks about death? It’s far away. It’s for the others.
8.22.2010
It’s been three years since I started to write about this collection. More friends, more relatives, more funerals. I have passed the three quarters of a century mark. The InBetween has shortened for me. I’ve become no wiser about the physics of the end. The beginning, well, I like to believe that the beginning is a continuum of what was before. New beginnings, new chances. I’m Gita influenced.
I’ll come back to these notes when I’m feeling more inspired and more insightful. The poems, of course, speak for themselves.
4.20.2011
Maybe there’s nothing more to say.
4.22.2011
One more thing: at the bottom of each poem is the date it was written and the collection or collections into which it was placed. Therefore, in further books and in the past ones, there may be some that are repeated in that they suited that particular category.
5.17.2011
My daughter Jennifer tells me I ought to publish the collection in order of their dates so that the reader may be privy to my growth and evolution. She has a point.
I prefer to list them alphabetically in that the dates will always appear at the bottom for those readers interested enough to see the climb up or down.
All the poems have been worked and re-worked. I tinker, with not enough self-confidence to assume that a poem is ever perfect.
In general, my suggestion for reading is to open the book. What it stands is where you read. If what you read doesn’t suit your intellect or mood-of-the-moment, close the pages and reopen – then or another time.
Nothing is so important in poetry that it has to be read sequentially.
A novel it is not!
5.5.2011
You don’t put together a collection overnight. There is no arbitrary subject. There are threads. A collection is a matter of accentuation.
Birth, Death & In Between came to me as a title when my friends began to die. Not until then. Before, when aunts and uncles, even a first cousin of my own age died, my reactions were vague, inarticulate. I gave no feedback.
A collection comes about at a turning point; in this case one grieved, one wondered at the disappearance, the invisibility, the untimeliness, what was before, what may come after. No longer a matter of death and dying, but of birth, death and the in between.
Happening over and over, one’s generation begins to go. The whole of the sidewalk full of people coming at you will be gone in a hundred years. Not one person you see will be left. If that is not a source of wonderment, what is?
A collection is born.
Preface Notes to Definitely Didactic
7.22.2011
Prefaces are important, no, vital. They enable the author to declare intention, background without spending hours on form. Content, yes. But the form and rhythm required for the poet, no.
I’m not sure that people think enough about death. When young, until I don’t know how old, one thinks of oneself as invincible. A brush with death, a friend dying – these sometimes bring us to our senses, those senses being the fear of dying, the realisation that it is quite nice to be alive, no matter what. ‘Our senses’ – how far do they take us, brought to them or not? We have to be brought to a sense of disappearance, nothingness, silence total, or immortality. A sense of, not the senses.
4.30.2012
Since there is more time behind me than in front, I know now I must get all these 2,000 and still growing poems out in a world for I-know-not-what reason. But whatever the reason, an irresistible drive that I have slowly come to respect.
I have friends well into their seventies who have never contemplated and still do not think about death. Are they better off than me, I who have intermittently reflected for over fifty years? I don’t know. They may be the lucky ones who live and die and never agonize over it, like my cat Albert.
So here it is: birth, death & in between – the whole cycle in all its inadequate, adjectival 400 poem-ness.
10.31.2012
This is a thick book because it’s devoted birth, death and the in between time – and what doesn’t come under that category.
Themes overlap, of course. The reader may find poems that have appeared in other of my books. If you’ve got any of the others may feel over-poemed. As writer, I cannot assume that those who read this book have ever read an of the others. I come to each new book assuming new readers, and thus want them to have the most complete – all the poetry I feel covers each them. If a poem you’re reading has covered another theme and is placed in another collection (made clear at the bottom of each poem), I apologized for the overlap. It’s all in an uncompromising consideration for the reader and the art.
Preface Note to Birth, Death & In Between
5.17.2011
My daughter Jennifer tells me I ought to publish the collection in order of their dates so that the reader may be privy to my growth and evolution. She has a point.
I prefer to list them alphabetically in that the dates will always appear at the bottom for those readers interested enough to see the climb up or down.
All the poems have been worked and re-worked. I tinker, with not enough self-confidence to assume that a poem is ever perfect.
In general, my suggestion for reading is to open the book. What it stands is where you read. If what you read doesn’t suit your intellect or mood-of-the-moment, close the pages and reopen – then or another time.
Nothing is so important in poetry that it has to be read sequentially.
A novel it is not!
General Preface Note
6.17.2012
Because I am a jazz musician, and a yogin and believe in God, I improvise my way through life. Candide trusted. I trust. Candide was naïve. I am not. Our grounds are different.
Preface Note
8.30.2012
This is a thick book. This is a thick book because it is devoted to birth, death, and in between. What else is there? What doesn’t belong to this category one way or another?
Themes overlap,of course. You, the reader may find poems I this book that have appeared in other of my books. If you’ve got the others you may feel over-poemed and cheated. As writer, I cannot assume that those who buy this book have ever read any of the others. I come to each book assuming new readers, and thus want them to have the most complete of each of my collections, each a different theme.
If a poem has covered another theme and that theme has become another book, I apologize for the overlap. It’s all in consideration of the reader and of the art.
Preface Notes to Definitely Didactic
7.22.2011
Prefaces are important, no, vital. They enable the author to declare intention, background without spending hours on form. Content, yes. But the form and rhythm required for the poet, no.
Preface notes to Birth, Death & In Between
7.27.2011
I’m not sure that people think enough about death. When young, until I don’t know how old, one thinks of oneself as invincible. A brush with death, a friend dying – these sometimes bring us to our senses, those senses being the fear of dying, the realization that it is quite nice to be alive, no matter what. ‘Our senses’ – how far do they take us, brought to them or not? We have to be brought to a sense of disappearance, nothingness, silence total, or immortality. A sense of, not the senses.
Preface Notes Our Times, Our Culture
9.28.2011
I never thought that I, of all people, writing about love and nature, god and wrinkles, vanity, creativity and thinking would discover that I’d formulated 206 poetic thoughts directed at global goings on. It seems I take in more than I realize.
As I read it over, Our Times, Our Culture sees to concern itself with a greed→corruption→downfall syndrome. Observing and reacting, I’m not sure I offer much in the way of cure except by inference. But inference is didactic enough. We can find out what to do by seeing the wrongs of what not to do. Also I like to think that the poems stand by themselves.
There is a Sanskrit phrase neti-neti. It means not this, not that: reaching truths by pushing non-truths out of the way. The process of elimination. We do it all the time.
General notes for all my prefaces 9.29.2011
In general, there are only two things I wish for: that the reader can identify with the theme; that the reader appreciates the construction or the humor, sees levels, nuances. The poetry is visual – there are puns only the eye can understand. The poetry is aural: puns fun of sound; one phrase building on another. Small details make the whole. What a miracle if write and reader marry on these.
The mind is quirky. One wants the reader to notice and like that. Its development is not sequential. One writes about…where one is at the moment.
10.8.2011
As you notice, I write in spurts. The thoughts must be running around my head unconsciously. They seem to come to the surface when they will. Therefore, I hope the reader understands the higgledy-piggledy coming together of the preface. In the end there is a preface that says what I want to say to you in preparation of reading.
1.29.2011
This collection is possibly the last I might have chosen to publish in my desire to get my poetry out into the world. But these latest days – Tunis, Egypt – seem to have pushed ”Our Time…” to the forefront.
Going on my underlying principle – that there is a cover for ever pot – I’ve decided to publish the collection.
I’ve always considered my self apolitical. But eyes have I and ears – to read, see, hear and listen. How can I not react ? Even detached observation evokes reaction. And when I react I write. And when I write, I come to conclusions – or don’t -itself is a conclusion of sorts. At any rate, the results have been x number of poems which I early on called Our Times, Our Culture.
Instead of sitting in the cyberspace of files and folders, or printed out on A4 paper in collected piles around the house, it may be a help.. Propaganda is it not!
They’re observations, subjective and probably flawed. But poetry.
9.22.2011
I must remind myself to remind you that all the poetry is based on real events, observed and reacted to. Remind myself to remind you that all poetry, with its reality base may not be named. If you are interested in the event and are historically oriented, look at the date at the bottom of the poem.
Why have I never written about 9/11 ? I’ve written about everything else (well, almost) that’s shocked and saddened. Madrid, Estonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Holocaust, storms and hurricanes, homicide and genocide, earthquakes, tsunamis- felt, described: I’d no idea I’d written so much. The ten year memorial anniversary ceremony tomorrow – may now it’s time. The cliché “It’s all been said” as valid as can ever. I feel mute.
But with technology through TV, film and articles, I’m forced to look and suffer once again. I’m older. Perhaps I suffer more, feel more, compassion more awake. Perhaps I feel the desperate choice between a window jump and death by flame.
My stomach drops from thinking.
| Acknowledgements
Thanking. I understand those Oscar winners who bubble near hysteria. One is so unlimitedly grateful – from the company who manufactures your ink cartridg- es to the genie of your household: both invisible, both without-which-nothing. Thank you darling Kent, my soul mate, for reading all this stuff when you are tired, watching television or playing piano. For commenting and engaging yourself even when the language is clearly Brooklyn, Jewish Eng- lish, yours being Swedish. Thank you Ulf Magnusson who photographs me favor- ably, even as I grow old and wrinkled and who, after my working endlessly at the computer to convert Kent An- derson’s painting into a cover for this book. finally got it to the right resolution for my perfectionist publisher. Thank you cousins Jeff, Herb, Marilyn, Rita, Roz out of whom some invisible bond has kept my grownup love alive and well. Thanks to my super supporter friends Anna Sandham, Judy Magnay, my bookclub sisters Lena Sahlqvist, Bar- bro Roos, Ingegerd Lörqvist, Lena Valkonen, Elizabeth Sandberg, Anna Marie Nilsson, Eva Bergström. What they don’t know is that they’ve been the subject of many a poem – not necessarily in this collection but in some of the 20 or so others. Thank you my children Jonathan Corwin and Jennifer Council. It’s really you for whom I’ve written. |
Arlene Corwin Poetry 