the mindful peace of the cypress beckons,
she bows in the wind but doesn’t fracture,
she knows well the moments, but nothing of time
her poetry is written in presence, not words
in this business of life, of death and of poetry
yesterday is, i think, best forgotten ~
just a figment, after all, an old locked-room mystery,
stored among a million neurons, a trillion constellations,
sound proof, but for the occasional cerebral accident
with its quick crack of a gunshot fading into a yellow eye,
evaluating with a understandable skepticism
life, as it turns out, is a matter of imagination, or folly, nurturing the seesaw of grief and joy,
the contrapuntal pulls of yin and yang
we can reframe, but we can’t rewrite there are no encores
this business of life, of death and of poetry is what it is
and the past is not a salve nor the future a savior,
the same sun that warms words poemed into life
will dry our skin to leather and weld it to bone ~
moss, says Emily, will cover up our names
it’s best then, i think, to mimic the cypress
to let go the days, the clutter and the noise,
to bow from the winds but not shatter,
to know well the moments, but nothing of time
LESSON EIGHT: Stand Out. “Someone has to. It is esy to follow along It can feel strange to do or say something different. But wihtout that unease, there is no freedom. Remembr Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell o the status quo is broke, and others will follow.” Prof. Snyder, On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
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Originally published on The BeZine website, this issue was produced and introduced by Contributing Editor, Michael Dickel (Fragmentarily/Meta-Phore(e) Play). Much thanks to Michael for his work on this stellar poetry issue, which as he said turned out to be – in effect – an anthology. The last hours before putting out the Zine always end up to be an overnight effort. There is some work that can’t be done until just before publication and, of course, things do go wrong. Murphy’s Law. So really double kudos and much appreciation to Michael.
Thanks also to the poets and writers who contributed. We love having so many of you together and we are pleased as always to present established, emerging and talented amateur poets to delight you. Our hope is that you (readers and writers) now have some fine new (to you) poets to follow. You’ll find links to their books and websites in the bio pages at The BeZine.
Youth Chaplaincy Program Founder, Rev.Terri Stewart. (Photo: Christmas at the King County Youth Detention Center, Seattle, Washington) Terri is the minister at Riverton Park United Methodist Church, Seattle and founder of Beguine Again
Also thanks to our stalwart supporters, including Terri Stewart ( Beguine Again), Lana Phillips, Ruth Jewell, James R. Cowles (look for a fab piece by him in next month’s issue) and Chrysty Darby Hendrick.
Much thanks to all our readers who are a valued part of The Bardo Group Beguines (the publishers of the Zine), a virtual arts collaborative. Much appreciation to the many of you who have referred poets and writers and enriched the work of this Zine in doing so. And thanks most of all to readers and writers for your love of the arts and your peacefilled hopes for humankind and our Mother Earth. J.D. – And now here’s Michael with the introduction and the table of contents …
Poetry Month means that we have arrived at
…the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. (T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland)
One of the most famous poems “about” poetry, Marianne Moore‘s poem, “Poetry.” It famously begins with
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
However, she goes on in the very next lines to say
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in it after all, a place for the genuine.
There is much that is genuine in this April issue of The BeZine, which celebrates Poetry Month globally with our celebration of interNational Poetry Month. We are proud to present a wide variety of poets and poetry from all over the world. We have 45 posts of poetry (many with more than one poem), an essay, and one short story. This issue of The BeZine is an anthology!
Over the years, questions of poetry’s health, suggestions of its “death,” and concerns over who, if anybody, might be reading it, continue to swirl around in various articles, essays, and round tables. While many of the debates one might encounter in this bubbling broth come from a perspective of poetry’s decline, it seems to me that the reasons that such questions arise come from two primary sources.
One is an anxiety about how society values what we do, as poets or readers of poetry. It seems that the writers from this vein often worry that, in fact, society does not value poetry—as recorded in statistics about readership or as suggested by some other perceived decline in attention to it. The other vein, in my view, is a more healthy concern with what poetry is and what we are doing when we “do” poetry (read, write, critique).
This past year, a lot of words spilled onto the screen and page regarding Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize—is a song writer a poet? Of course, poetry comes from song, so a song writer is a poet. Is poetry still song, then, or has it gone “beyond”? These articles and essays seem to flow from both of the sources I’ve suggested: anxiety and reflection. If our modest zine is any indication, poetry thrives throughout the world.
While the anxieties and reflections continue—and they are not new, witness the 1919 date of Marianne Moore’s poem—poets continue to write, and readers continue to read. You are reading this, so you are evidence of readers who have an interest in poetry. Whether there are more or fewer readers in any year or decade might fluctuate, or the methods of measuring them might change. However, as there are poets, there are those who read poetry. And listen to it—as in spoken word and slam.
Billy Collins opens his essay, The Vehicle of Language, suggesting that a problem with the reception of poetry is how poetry is taught:
For any teacher of poetry with the slightest interest in reducing the often high-pitched level of student anxiety, one step would be to substitute for the nagging and ultimately pointless question, “What does this poem mean?” the more manageable question “Where does this poem go?” Tracking the ways a poem moves from beginning to end puts the emphasis on the poem’s tendency to travel imaginatively and thus to carry the reader in the vehicle of its language.
In principle, I agree that the emphasis should be on where poetry goes, how it plays with language—not on decoding “meaning.” The same approach could be applied to the concerns expressed about poetry. The concerns need not be about where poetry is as measured against expectations of its current quality, akin to the “meaning” anxiety of its teaching.
Although some express an anxiety about the “quality” of online poetry or spoken word or even “today’s” written word, we would do well to reflect instead on where poetry is going, for us as readers and writers—where we as writers of it want to go with our poetry, and where we as readers of it want poetry to go to be most satisfying.
Poetry invites us to take an imaginative journey: from the flatness of practical language into the rhythms and sound systems of poetic speech. (Billy Collins, The Vehicle of Language)
It is our hope that you will read the poetry here with an appreciation for poetry’s “place for the genuine,” and find satisfaction in the depth and breadth presented here. Whether or not you will have “a perfect contempt for it” as you read, we leave up to you…
—Michael Dickel Contributing Editor
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Celebrating interNational Poetry Month
To Read this issue of The BeZine
Click HERE to read the entire magazine by scrolling, or
You can read each piece individually by clicking the links below.
To learn more about our guests contributors, please link HERE.
Your heart is smarter, my Baruch,
then your head,
which is smart indeed –
and your hands and gnarly fingers
are smarter still.
They fashion bread from
cream-colored flours,
silky to the touch.
Kneading the dough
patiently, patiently
letting it rise
while I sleep – safe, in my bed.
Up at six a.m. we walk sleepily
down a lavender-gray street,
an apricot sun peeking at us
and, rising higher in the sky,
it seemingly follows us to you.
Cheer-filled arrival with greetings
and smiles from dear Baruch and
warm sugar smells, yeasty scents
and the sight of golden loaves,
some voluptuous rounds and
others, sturdy rectangulars.
You have baked cinnamon rolls,
a child’s delight, pies and
sticky buns too…and cookies!
“We’ll take a French bread” my Mom says
pointing to a crispy brown baguette.
“And a raisin bread.”
She adds …
“We’ll need that sliced.”
I watch your hands flit gracefully
like butterflies in a green valley
stopping here and then there
to pull fragrant loaves from display
and slicing them, neatly packaging,
then reaching down over the counter
you hand me a little bag of rugelach.
As I look up, reaching for your gift
I stop breathing, arrested by
a wisp of blue on your forearm.
I am studious, a reader, dear Baruch,
I know what that tattoo means …
Looking down, with a whisper I choke
“Thank you, Baruch!”
swallowing that lump of sadness,
trying not to show my tears. What right have I to tears?
But then you, dear Baruch, come
bounding round the counter
with warm hugs and soft tissues,
as though I was the one hurt.
From that day forever more,
I saw you only in long sleeves.
At lunchtime, I demanded –
“Mom, tell me about Baruch.”
And she does.
I am pensive over our meal,
canned marinara and slices of
of your baguette.
Dear Baruch, with each salty bite
I eat your tears and
the blood of your daughter.
Nights she stares at me from that
sepia photo by your register.
Baruch, did she, like me, assume
a grown-up life
of school and jobs,
marriage and children? And you! You must have assumed
the tender comfort of
her love in your old age.
Do you hold the vision of her
young and happy in your
brave, kindly old heart?
Does your ear still play back
her childish laughter,
the sound of her voice
begging for a story?
Do your warm brown eyes still hold
her smile in remembrance?
When you see little girls like me,
does your anguish grow?
Dear Baruch, our dear Baruch –
how will you set your child free
from that faraway land and
cold, unmarked mass grave?
“The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms”
The Hollow Men, T.S. Elliot
Some mothers’ children stare unseeing
No sweet, wet baby kisses from blistered lips,
. . . . songs unsung
No wedding portraits to dust and treasure
No graduations or trips to the sea
. . . . just their bodies to bury
crushed
beaten
stilled
by the engine of nihilism
Limbs cracked and broken, bellies torn
Faces purpled, hearts stopped
Hearts stopped … . . . . hearts stopped
Some mothers’ hearts have stopped
Some mothers’ children
“It was a slow and brutal death for so many,” Trump said as he announced the attack on a Syrian airbase, retaliating for the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. “Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
“Mistah Kurtz-he [lives] ….. A penny for the Old Guy …
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!”
The Hollow Men, T.S. Elliot
what must it be like for you in your part of the world?
there is only silence, i don’t know your name, i know only
that the fire of Life makes us one in this, the human journey,
trudging through mud, by land and by sea, reaching for the sun
like entering a ritual river without a blessing or a prayer
on the street where you lived, your friends are all gone
the houses are crushed and the doves have flown
there is only silence, no children playing, no laughter
here and there a light remains to speak to us of loneliness,
yet our eyes meet in secret, our hearts open on the fringe,
one breath and the wind blows, one tear and the seas rise,
your grief drips from my eyes and i tremble with your fear
“This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.” The Hollow Men, T.S. Elliot
Regarding the flower photograph: As you may have noticed over the past few days, I’ve been experimenting with special effects for flower photographs. This flower photo put me in mind of Neruda’s poem. (Everything he wrote seems to stay in memory.) Originally the photograph wasn’t meant to be blurry but The Bax was pulling me along as I was clicking away and some photos got “ruined.” In the end, I appreciated the misty mysterious quality that the blurring gave this one. Some of the best things happen by accident – or at least partly by accident.
“In politics being deceived is no excuse.” Leszak Kolakowski
Recommended read: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Left, right or center – American or not – it’s a must read for our chaotic times … and not just the list of lessons but Prof. Snyder’s commentary on each. This book is a rational enlightening little gem and a powerful wake-up call.
Lesson Five: “Remember Professional Ethics When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule–of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.”
the mindful peace of the cypress beckons,
We continue with the current recommended read: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Left, right or center – American or not – it’s a must read.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 