I’m just checking in today to make sure we’re still covered here by the SBU (or as we would say here in the United States, the FBI). Yep, we are. Beware, miscreants and evil-doers! VLB
Two Flashes, Two Different Styles of Life-c. 5/24
Dear Readers,
I’m resuming my work on fiction after a hiatus in which I’ve been writing only some–not much–poetry, usually featured on my account for the poets’ collective, @PoetsonThursday.
In these two flashes, written within a few days of each other, I am examining two different styles of life through fictional accounts, as I have become familiar with them from fact and fiction.
The first is “‘Internal Difference[s] Where the Meanings Are,'” a title taken from a somewhat mournful poem by Emily Dickinson. It’s about a woman very different from myself, and set in a fantasy, but reality- and history-based landscape and culture and time (some many years ago, I’d think, but not absolutely, as many women in the world today still live in cultural chains). It was my attempt not only to imagine what her life might be like; I also derived some satisfaction and relief from writing about a feeling of deep repression of impulses and emotions that is occasioned in any of the many sorts of cultural captivities and binds that people, particularly women, and emotionally at least myself, find themselves in sometimes.
The second flash, “Aufstein Flimmerschwamm,” is a playful sendup of the spy culture that more and more we come to be accustomed to in our modern world.
I do hope you will enjoy these two stories, two flashes, and won’t find them too cumbersome to read, as they are very short.
Best wishes for now,
Shadowoperator (Victoria Leigh Bennett, 6/12/24)
“The Certainly Certain Cat and Squirrel,” a new poem about facts of nature, human nature, what-have-you–copyright 4/12/24
Dear Readers,
Yet another nature poem, but this one has a human-story complement or addendum, just briefly. Think if you know what I’m talking about. Best,
Shadowoperator (Victoria Leigh Bennett)
For Admirers of Nature and the Ridiculous in Poetry, “A Sestina by Sesna the Wombat”
Dear Readers,
Here’s a post of a poem I wrote back in 2023, copyrighted on 3/28/2023. Please read and enjoy! (Note that the facts of wombat life are mostly really true, though teatime may be a stretching of the truth!)
Shadowoperator (Victoria Leigh Bennett)
Filed under lifestyle portraits, What is literature for?
Paul Brookes’s Etho-Eco-Poesis in a Simple Statement: Poetic Rhetoric & Influences
Filed under What is literature for?
A Title to Read Before the Lights Go Out in A Winter Storm: “The Meter Reader,” by Victoria Leigh Bennett (copyright 8/1/23)
Filed under What is literature for?
“Seasons in the Sun”–Yet Another Fine Book by Welsh Author Annest Gwilym
Annest Gwilym’s September 2023-published book Seasons in the Sun is a magnificent combination of poetry as natural history, historires of old and new houses which have lives of their own, partly-told love stories, and also a touch of mythology and magic (the death of a mermaid is both that of a mythical person and the fish of the same name). Wales is first and foremost a background, beloved home, and a historical surface for the creative person who would occupy this territory, whether poet or reader.
There are sea captains, sea captains’ daughters, natural adventures along beaches in the surroundings fo sand, tide, and tide pools, old creaking houses which have contained the lives of generations whose lives are also sketched out in brief segments. They have their own stories to tell and contribute to the book, though they do not in general speak directly, with the exception of a sea captain’s daughter. The book, though rejoicing in freedom, is still not without a sonnet and an altered form of a sort of combined villanelle/pantoume, with unique qualities unlike either. There is an elliptical space poem entitled “Insomniac,” which like many of the poems embodies an experience in the form of the poem, and many blank/free verse and also lightly rhymed verse poems (all told, there are thirty-two poems in the book, and three brief notes in the back on them).
The title, of course, comes from the popular 1970’s poet Rod McKuen’s book and song Seasons in the Sun, referred to in one place, and it’s more than worth mentioning that some of the poems are talented polemical, artistic ones on behalf of Wales as a home and landscape. The issues of land-grabbing by greedy developers and rich homeowners is never far from the intense mind of the poet, Annest.
The richness of the poetical/rhetorical surface of the poem in its imagery and tales is kept also simple enough to be enjoyed by any dedicated reader in its commitment to the declarative sentence structure, which seems often to prevail throughout, whle yet the complications of thought on all the issues and the artistry together are brought out by the very beauty of the gifts of the seer-like rhythm.
Annest’s book has only recently been published, as I said, but I would advise poetry-lovers everywhere to celebrate it by a simple purchase (pounds 6.95). Information is available from her for obtaining copies at “X” (formerly Twitter) at @AnnestGwilym. A link also exists and is given on her X account in a post: carreg.gwalch.cymru/seasons-in-the-sun-3008-p.asp. I am thankful to have been a reader of a PDF copy in order to write this review. Thank you, Annest, for sharing your poetical and storytelling gifts.
Shadowoperator (Victoria Leigh Bennett) (P.S.–The cover pages are best seen at 33% before downloading, the brief biography at 50%). This essay is free to read, of course.
Filed under What is literature for?
creativeshadows 