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A Stream of Consciousness Message
at the Junction of These Two Years
1
I really wanted to offer a web-log opportunity
on Desert Moon Review for all members
who do not have technical expertise
or time to keep one up to date. I wondered
why at the time there was such a clatter
of opposition. Over time, since my suggestion
months ago I understand why the opposition;
most of DMR staff have their own web-log.
2
Don’t ever post a poem on a very slow day
or night; if you do, your poem will fall slowly
down the board with one or two quick
jerks. Hooray for the gallant soul
who spies your poem, double clicks, begins
to critique without pressure of guilt or default.
Beware of the neurotic critic who prefers
your history rather than your poetry. You’ll
fall into deep depression when he or she traces
your early unsuccessful years. Lucky
are you if you escape the revelation, at the same
time remembering who you actually are.
3
I admire poets who advertise themselves: self-
publish, announce every time they are published,
point out poems they’ve written while they read
another’s poem and love themselves as much as others.
One will probably never be Poet Laureate
but even more so not, without self publication.
Actually, I’m revealing too much. How will I
ever retain my rep as a nice sophisticated guy?
4.
I remember when I shared my Chap Book,
someone remarked that my poetry
was for the masses. I received the remark
with a certain element of pride
since this world is filled with half-assed sound bites.
Wouldn’t it be fun to read the daily news in brief,
tight, portraying poems? Sounds like the ultimate
design to educate the masses. Here’s to peace, justice
and the Golden Rule.
My best, Jim Corner, Publisher
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About This Issue
A stream of consciousness is more than rattling out the first words that spring to mind, more than tapping out the thought. Take a look Jim's piece, and you'll see -- in the microverse -- the larger macroverse that surrounds and consumes us.
Then, cross the gap with Bill to understand how many of us really see, hear, taste, touch, and then express it in words -- print is so much more than ink on paper. At least when it's done correctly.
Sarah takes us into the past while Chris takes us to the possible future. The past is what it is, and Sarah has a knack for finding all of our accomplishments: Chris's column looks to where we want to be.
Often, where all of us want to be, is in love. Sarah issued an interesting challenge for January, in which you can expound upon love.
Until next month, David Benson
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Across the Gap to Meaning
We write in metaphors. In fact, we think in metaphors; they are basic to the production of thought, to the creation of insight, to the searching coming-to-terms with the world at our hands. Far more than being a way to say something in another way, it is how we say something, period. They are described as mapping one space onto another – say that which is a journey onto that which is life. The name gives us its function: the metaphor carries across a gap to open meaning and insight, awareness and thought.
When we start dealing with metaphors in poetry as a means of talking about something in terms of something else, something we could as well say in “regular” words but want to say in “pretty” words, we begin to find them arbitrary and casual, an extra that really does not matter in any fundamental, basic sense. I hear metaphors considered that way; at one time, I even agreed. But that was before I was told that all I did was talk in metaphors, and found myself treating differential equations in engineering situations as metaphors that were in an organic relationship with the processes involved.
Further, there is an inclination, given a willingness to consider metaphors as something extra, talking about one thing in other terms but not so much in exact terms, to slide into allegory. I recall some years back a discussion of a poem. I made my usual attempt to figure out what the poem was about; the poet responded that I was way off base, adding that the collection of metaphors and images used were there to represent another, entirely unstated set of facts. It was, indeed, intended to be an allegory – on the basis of the supposedly arbitrary nature of metaphors and images.
I don’t want to knock allegory; it is a valuable tool in literary production and in the realm of interpretation. But I do want to affirm that allegories are not merely arbitrary; they do make connection from one realm of experience to another, and in ways that share a feasible similitude. If a writer has developed an intentional allegory and yet needs to explain to attentive readers that it is an allegory and mark out the assignments in an extra-textual manner, then the allegory is not working; everything remains totally arbitrary and the clues to the inside of the writer’s mind must be supplied.
And I want to claim that allegories are something different than metaphors writ large, or ‘come of age’. They become, rather, worlds of their own, opening meaning in direct and fertile ways. Yes, there is often a somewhat wooden linkage between the allegory and the other that it presents in transmuted form. Yet, those linkages in successful allegories take on the pattern of metaphors – lithe language that suggests reality in its almost ineffable freshness: unable to be said or thought except in metaphor – that together become the elasticity of a world of vision … poetic vision.
In the hands of poets, these metaphors and allegories serve to open what cannot be seen so that it can be “seen” or “felt” or “imagined”. Relationship and juxtaposition of things and persons, worlds and emotions, universes and minds – these are unknown until we find them exposed in language. To see them, they need to be named; and names come by metaphor, elastic worlds are born in systemic metaphors that explode to open insight and the beginning capacity for understanding with immersion and compassion. It is what we do … though maybe not what we sell.
Bill Flewelling
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IBPC Nominations for January 2007
Hi all
I am pleased to announce that by your member votes, the three poems going to Interboard Poetry Competition (IBPC) from Desert Moon Review for January are
"Wolf Dreams" by Laurie Byro
"Macallan Memories" by Mitchell Geller
"Stone Soup" by Allen M. Weber
The very best of luck to Laurie, Mitchell, and Allen! Also congratulations to all of the fine poets who were nominated this month. Thank you also to all of you who voted.
No accolades for Desert Moon Review in the December IBPC competition. The results and judges' comments are at WebDelSol. Our congratulations to the winning poets. Also our thanks and congratulations to our December nominees, Johanna Donovan, Mitchell Geller, and Sarah Sloat.
Christopher George
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Mooners in Publication
Editors Chris George and Jim Doss published the winter issue of Loch Raven Review Loch Raven Review just before Christmas. Chris reviews four books in the current issue and Jim reviews Scott Summer’s chapbook “Death Settled Well.”
Poems from a number of Desert Moon members appear in this issue:
Gary Blankenship with “Journey with Rimbaud VI” and “Journey with Rimbaud IX;”
Jim Corner with “O Brother, Do You See;"
Beau Blue with “Purple Ash;”
Laurie Byro with “Artisans,” "Sudden Death of a Sibling,” and “Repeating the MRI;”
Scott Summers with “Misplaced Volume of American Poetry,” “Playing with a Desktop Globe” and “Rather it Should Shine;”
Laura Polley also has an essay in this issue called “Picking up Stitches from the Past.”
Chris and Jim are now working on the annual print issue of Loch Raven Review.
Worm 38, edited by Maz Griffiths, includes poems from four Desert Moon members. Fred Longworth appears with “Mapless.” Guy Kettelhack’s poems “Sort of Man I Am” is also included, as is Laurie Byro’s “Samson” and “Vineyard Nature” (editor’s choice!), and Mitchell Geller’s “Vestis virum facit” (also an editor’s choice!).
The new issue of Autumn Sky Poetry contains poems by Laurie Byro, Miranda and Caliban,” and Guy Kettelhack, “The Worst of One’s Bewilderment.”
Mitchell Geller has also gotten word his poem “The Envelope” has been accepted at the Canadian print journal “Sonnetto Poesia.” It will appear in the upcoming Winter 2007 issue.
Keeping up the oral tradition, Jim Corner read three of his poems on Christmas Eve at Chalice Christian Church: “The Opening of Doors,” “During Advent,” and “Air of Advent.”
Sarah Sloat’s poem “Do Tell” is in January’s Stirring. Juked also picked up her poem “Things my Sister Taught Me” in December.
Sarah Sloat
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January Challenge
Our January Challenge to You: Write a Love Poem with a Difference!
With February, the month of Valentines, coming up fast, we want you to write a Love poem...
to a thing! That’s right. We all know the joys and difficulties of loving another person, so as a special challenge this month, you’re asked to write a love poem to a thing. Please, no hard-working grandmas, no crushes on Hollywood stars, no girls-next-door, no long-suffering husbands. Also no dogs or other producers of saliva.
Do you love the sound the second step in your stairwell makes?
Do you love banjo music?
Do you love a Mao suit?
Do you love the leg of I-95 between Edison, NJ and Philadelphia?
Or something easier to love, like roses?
As with our previous challenges, you may write as many poems as you like. Deadline is midnight, January 28. "Let your love flow," as the Bellamy Brothers would say. The Winner and Honorable Mentions will be featured in the next issue of Moon Notes.
Good luck,
Sarah Sloat
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Do you have an announcement of publication, an essay, a rant, or a letter to the editor?
Send it to MoonNotes.
Moon Notes is a monthly publication of Desert Moon Review.
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