by 
Nirvana
All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought released, the heart from grief,
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema’s vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.
Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still.
Replaces all, – what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite
– Sri Aurobindo
Heads-up: All but one of these have a June deadline.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
DIGGING PRESS, LLC is open for submission of fiction, poetry, or hybrid manuscripts between 16-36 pages. Submission fee. Cash award. Small print run. Deadline: June 15, Details HERE.
COMPETITIONS
THE BLACK RIVER CHAPBOOK FALL COMPETITION (fiction and poetry) is open for entries from September 1 – October 31. Entry fee. Details HERE.
EX OPHIDIA PRESS Poetry Book Prize opens for submissions July 1, 2019 – August 31, 2019. Entry fee. Cash award and author copies. Details HERE. (Thanks to Michael Dickel for sharing this one with us.)
HUDSON VALLEY WRITERS CENTER Annual Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition is open through June 15. Reading fee. Cash award and publication. 10 author’s copies. Details HERE.
JUXTAPROSE LITERARY MAGAZINE Poetry Chapbook Prize is open through June 25. Entry fee. Cash award, publication, and author copies. Details HERE.
PUB HOUSE BOOKS 2019 CHAPBOOK SERIES CONTEST is open through June 30. Reading fee, publication, and author copies. Details HERE.
ABOUT
Recent in digital publications:
* Four poems in “I Am Not a Silent Poet”
* Remembering Mom in HerStry
* Three poems in Levure littéraire
Upcoming in digital publications:
“Over His Morning Coffee,” Front Porch Review
A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 
Greetings i would like to see my poetry appear in Poet by Day
Kind regards Richard Golah-Ebue
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Hello, Richard! Every Wednesday, we offer a themed writing prompt and the poems shared on theme are published the following Tuesday. Other than that you may submit two or three poems along with a bio to thepoetbyday@gmail.com to be considered. Thank you for your interest.
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“Oh!… But that first line is from Sri Aurobindo!!! ”
Attracted, my eye and my mind suddenly linger… and at once find that the whole poem posted today here is indeed that ‘Nirvana’ poem written by Sri Aurobindo – much later – to describe the first major spiritual experience he had, in 1908: and one totally unexpected at that, in its quite unmistakably nirvanic nature!
The nirvanic character of this experience was all the more flabbergasting because it was the result of the mere three first days spent following the spiritual advice of the only guru he ever took to help him, in 1908, in the midst of his political career to free India from the British. Moreover, that specific guru was not at all the ‘jnani’ type (following the Path of Jnana, or Knowledge), but actually the ‘bhakta’ type (following the Path of Bhakti, or Devotion/Love), that is, not at all a guru supposed to be able to give Aurobindo or anybody else any nirvanic experience whatsoever, according to Traditional Indian Spirituality. The poor guru (Bhaskar Lele) was as astonished as his new disciple by the nature of the experience Aurobindo had as a result of what he had told him to do inwardly for those three days, and he soon understood this disciple was so special he (Lele himself) was only being used by the Divine for whatever result needed to be accomplished first in that case. And then, for giving him later on the last, basic advice that served Aurobindo well for all the rest of his prodigious spiritual adventure, pioneering the present New Step in terrestrial Evolution: to always follow directly the Inner Command straight from his own Inner Guide, the Divine Part that he, like all of us humans, did have, deep within.
Aurobindo went on to see that Experience of Nirvana as the only Reality gradually change into the many other spiritual perceptions of Reality that together compose the Total, Whole Divine Reality that includes All There Is, in this Evolutive Manifestation of It just as in its Unmanifested, Eternal Absoluteness…
I hope it is okay that I have explained all this, just to avoid that your readers take this poem as the definitive pronouncement by Sri Aurobindo of his perception of Reality, for it would not be the case at all… Thank you so much anyway for posting it!
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Not at all, Bhaga, and I appreciate it. Yes! I would like to publish it along with the poem. Please send me a short bio and a photograph if you are comfortable, and I’ll prepare a post with the poem, your analysis and background, and your bio and photo. The email address is thepoetbyday@gmail.com. Thank you.
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