the heat and humidity
the day oppressed by the sun
the night sky is overcrowded
the pitted moon superfluous
i’d rather be cool
a blue lotus, floating
on a shimmering pond
a soulful thing,
solitary by day, and
in the cool night
eyes relieved of
the unremitting sun
© 2015, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All right reserved
the autumn world, turning brown
like cascades of wild ivy
living rough, by winter’s door
© 2014, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Ursula Le Guin is still going strong at 85 years. She writes science fiction and science fantasy (novels, short stories), poetry, children’s books.She was first published in the ’60s. In a 2014 article in the Smithsonian, she said, ” … the task of science fiction is not to predict the future. Rather, it contemplates possible futures. Writers may find the future appealing precisely because it can’t be known, a black box where … anything at all can be said to happen without fear of contradiction from a native. The future is a safe, sterile laboratory for trying out ideas in, a means of thinking about reality, a method.”
I enjoyed this video. (Thanks to Michael Dickel.) Le Guin is classy, feisty and sure but not strident as she criticizes the publishing industry and champions writers “who know the difference between a market commodity and a work of art.”
“I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.
“We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality.”
The transcription of this speech is HERE.
photo credit as above
(1921)
the stick stood in the corner of the kitchen
a constant threat; stoking, as it was meant to,
chronic intimidation
he had a man’s right to deliver his blows
to vent his anger and his self-contempt
to cause suffering for the insufferable
someone had to make it up to him,
his loss-of-face to race, creed and poverty
for her part, eve’s daughter was ripe,
shamed by her intrinsic sinfulness,
worn by her constant pregnancies
her femininity: tired and task-bound,
guilt flowing freely, as all-consuming as lava
[relief, only in death]
and the seventh child was born to die
and the man was demanding his bread
she wrapped the girl in swaddling cloth,
placed her gently by the stove, and
while the newborn made busy with dying,
the woman prepared him his meal
© 2015, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; illustration source is the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence, the photograph used here is by moggs oceanlane under CC BY 2.o license
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 