When is too old for passion?

At just the right age to stop trying the usual chit with lip,
  (wondering, Why I'm here?), it'll start to matter--
     nails & tails

 How?

say, like bees who whack into regnal rumps ( or else die), for
  the mass of possessed know, resolved into need,

that no lover flumes between needs who hasn't felt the
 bliss of self-pejoration nor shoved into one, &

   like deers

who cannot be shunted aside and have a good time only
 for the unobtainable roe who's shoved hard, too

(this jagged-edged roe of Life!) by some sweet ab-
  dominal heat-- who's loved hard, too

Praise, the crustal or covered sore til the bliss of the true
  coprolalia as you rub Him that's ahh! one

sweet pierced ahh! of Life pulled as by rings towards Him,
  pulled til it redden, as costume brow & lip swell til
   it redden

And why?

well, in remembrance of the sated bees dropping over us--
  the naughty nances whose jasmines swell, &
   shit nectar!
 

Canada's great Elder Statesman: David Suzuki

"Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism." (David Suzuki)


 I recently heard the annual National Symons Lecture on the State of the Canadian Confederation given by Canada's greatest spokesperson for the environment, David Suzuki. I am both inspired and impassioned to continue promoting (as I have for many years) the man and his views to my students; in fact, I am determined to invite him to our school to address an audience of high school students who never more needed than now to hear Dr. Suzuki's dire prognostications of a modern civilization that has made it impossible to advance without destroying the biosphere that sustains us. Canada's great Statesman will tell the young, in no uncertain terms, that a growing appetite for a lifestyle predicated on more gadgetry, transportation conveniences and urbanization of a once pristine rural environment is incommensurate now with survival as an animal species.

A time was never more ripe for skepticism among our young and a serious reevaluation of what our role is as co-sharers of a very precious non-renewable planet.

Frank Samperi: The New Heaven Now



In 2002 Longhouse Publishers (Bob Arnold, editor) gathered into one exquisitely elegant "accordion booklet with decorative band" a series of Frank Samperi verses entitled The New Heaven Now that had appeared in early Longhouse publications. When I first saw it I happened to be scrolling down the 1990 to 2006 Longhouse Bibliography of published works (each elegantly edited and printed, each respectfully brought back to life from as far ago as 1971). The Longhouse Samperi was a wonderful surprise and I ordered a copy. The simplicity of the Samperi booklet was perfectly suited to the purity and profundity of the verses lying within. I'd like to share my good fortune here.

The New Heaven Now poems come from Samperi's The Repulsion. I recognize here the images of the lonely viator  journeying with difficulty through the world but guided always by visions of a "new heaven": the mystic's lonely vigil in his room or garden, a broken angel held tight by a wife and daughter. And verses that appear to falter and drift the higher they climb to the light and love of divinity.


the in   our love
the out   our light

the new heaven now
heavenly in communion
pro vobis et pro multis


                                              looking to the garden
                                              hearing the bell
                                              from the wind

                                              and  a  ways
                                                                      out
                                              ear to eye
                                              a great tree

                                              hair to sea


returning coming quemadmodum

cloud is number not conversely

draco seven seven (ten)

bestia mare seven (ten ten)

bestia terra (two)    (n)


                                          where did I sit?
                                          what window?
                                          when?

                                          a  bird  a sole  drop of rain
                                          on a branch
                                          of a bush

                                          you  keeping me in view
                                          my hand at rest on
                                          yours


aperto ore suo


in the dark
          I sit

in the light
         I am

                                         since I see thru a veil
                                         the old
                                                    see
                                                          me

                                                                 dark
                                                                         ly

bird dropping effortlessly
tree or sky
hard to say
blades of grass

fluttering

as well

Idle No More

Idle No More

"Whether the Canadian citizens know it or not, Indigenous sovereignty and Treaties are the last stand protecting our lands and waters. It is our task and our duty to inform everyone that this is NOT about us and them. We must do this in a way that is peaceful and collectively done with all people."      (Sylvia McAdam)


"Word-Dreamer" blog is a supporter of the Idle No More movement in Canada. I am dedicated to the preservation of the identity of our First Nations people and, above all, to the idea of establishing an Aboriginal nation with full sovereignty rights. Assimilation means death to our Aboriginal peoples and to Canada itself. It's in my view tantamount to genocide.

I hope I live to see the day of a great Aboriginal nation not assimilated but equal to Canada and other nations, proud, sovereign, spiritually and culturally great. I feel privileged to be a non-indigenous ally.

Frank Samperi Trilogy book launch: legacy and celebration

Frank and Claudia



 

Everything that's ever been said to me about Frank Samperi was always out of respect and affection for a poet who'd been unjustly disprized in his own day. I have Ed Baker to thank for introducing the name to me a few years back, Samperi mentioned within the context of a discussion about the Italo-American experience. In Ed's estimation Samperi is the Italo-American poet. But he was also the orphaned poet temperamentally unsuited to crowds and affiliations; a lover of spiritual Truth who'd served his country in Korea and paid a terrible price in terms of its post-traumatic effects: the poet with the purest lyrical heart heartlessly relegated, as he was bound to be in the Objectivist age of Louis Zukofsky, to virtual non-existence. His allegiance to Dante made him all but ignored. I've never known a poet bowed as low by the hard reality of an almost total literary abandonment.

And I've never been more deeply moved, at the same time, by the filial duties of a daughter who's given considerable time, energies and devotion to the legacy of a parent's both published and unpublished works:  even moved myself  to write my own literary biography of Frank Samperi. I am happy to say I'll be attending the 'Trilogy' book launch in March at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA where I'll join Claudia and friends in what will be a "Frank Samperi celebration". The launch of the new Skysill Press 'Trilogy' will take place on 10 March, Sunday at 4:00 pm. Please see Claudia's blog for more details.




Beyond Baroque