last night, the stars compelled me to wrap myself in the midnight mist, to survive chill and gray and moon craters,to wait silently and with patience for the first sun
© 2016, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Not in my name,
my woman’s name,
not one drop of blood be shed for oil
that makes some billionaires
and sets the Middle East aflame
But in my name,
in every woman’s name, send home great armies
of the black and dispossessed,
warships and frigates turn around.
Peace in my name!
– Joan Williams
Joan Williams (1916-2008) was an Australian poet (a.k.a. Justina Williams) and communist. I believe her poetry would come under this category:
“Proletarian poetry is a genre of political poetry developed in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s that endeavored to portray class-conscious perspectives of the working-class. Connected through their mutual political message that may be either explicitly Marxist or at least socialist, the poems are often aesthetically disparate. As a literature that emphasized working-class voices, the poetic form of works could range from emulating African-American slave work songs to contemporary modernist poetry. Major poets of the movement include Langston Hughes, Kenneth Fearing, Edwin Rolfe, Horace Gregory, and Mike Gold.” MORE Wikipedia
Thanks to Susanne Harford for reminding of this poem and this poet.
© 2016, photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
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Jabberwocky
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
– Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), the pen name of Oxford mathematician, logician, photographer and author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, is famous the world over for his fantastic classics Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Hunting of the Snark, Jabberwocky, and Sylvie and Bruno.
Ruth Jewell (A Quite Walk), a core team member of The Bardo Group Beguines found this delightful reading of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem read beautifully by actor Benedict Cumberbatch. The poem is from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), which is the sequel to Alice in Wonderland (1865). The illustration is from the book and was done by Sir John Tenniel.
abundance lifted on the arc of time
then the folding in ~
the circular successions of creation and negation
forever changing, dark and luminous
nature and destiny, coming and passing
ever active, whole, eternally nameless
the wild river, the still mountain
the wordless mystery
© 2016, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 