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THE BREATH OF SPIRIT – a response to last Wednesday’s Writing Prompt

spirit3This is Renee Espriu’s response to last Wednesday’s Writing Prompt. 

I use to pray when asking or wanting
was all I thought there was
when I used the energy of my being
as if kinetic magnetic waves
to bring me absolute truth

when now with years of searching
I find that closing my eyes
to breathe quietly within
the mist begins to clear as
though sun rays warm my spirit

the dew drops melt on blades of grass
to find me walking a deserted shore
where the ocean winds touch my hair
and the watery brine is lifted thus
to coat my skin with salty jewels

where words are not labels or script
but the beauty of butterflies laced
with birdsong and seeded with pearls
that transcend time and space
filling my soul with balm and peace

© November 2016 Renee Espriu

Renee is tenacious in her study and work and in getting her poetry out to a variety of publications. The charming illustration is hers: “Image Taken From Morgue File & Digitized by Myself.”

Here’s what she has to say of herself:

c796b9e96120fdf0ce6f8637fa73483cRENEE ESPIRU: I am a daughter, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and seeker of Spiritual Peace and Soul Filled Freedom. I have been to graduate school at Pacific Lutheran University and have a Bachelors Degree in Sociology. I have also been to Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary from which I acquired a Certificate in Theology. I have eclectic beliefs that encompass many faiths and believe Nature to be the basis of everything that is and that everything that is is also a part of Nature.

Due to emergent open heart surgery in 2015 I am now retired and devoting more of my time to writing, which includes the writing of a fiction book and one that is solely poetry. I have a Blog site at reneejustturtleflight where I have been posting my writing since 2011. I have been a guest contributor to The BeZine and participated in The BeZine 2016 100,000 Poets for Change virtual event. I also have a passion for art. I draw and paint.

VISIT “THE POET BY DAY” TOMORROW FOR

THIS WEDNESDAY’S WRITING PROMPT

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TECHNIQUE v. SPONTANEITY IN THE ARTS

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There is a dangerous half-truth that has always haunted the practice and the appreciation of the arts: too much technique will inhibit creativity. Despite constant evidence that too little technique will inhibit it worse, the idea never quite dies, because it is politically too attractive. Young women are usually less susceptible, but young men are often pleased to think their creative activities would flourish best if they could spend more time getting up late in the morning and taking a longer nap during the afternoon. Hence the continuing popularity of Blake’s emphasis on just letting art happen, without too much sweat.” Clive James, Poetry Notebook, Reflections on the Language of Intensity

My current read: a thoughtful book delivered with the characteristic taste, wit and insight of Clive James, Australian cultural critic, poet, lyricist, memoirist and essayist.  The book is a collection of essays and “interludes” on poetry, poets, practice and technique.

Included in Clive James’ impressive opus are books of poetry: Poem of the Year (verse diary) and a collection of four mock-heroic poems, The Fate of Feisty Fark in the Land of Media: a moral poem and other collections.

Time with Clive James is always time well spent.

RELATED:

Clive James.com

Bill Moyes talks with cultural critic, Clive James

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STILL TIME to enter your collection for the University of North Texas Rilke Prize

Bohemian-Austrian Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Bohemian-Austrian Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

The deadline for submission of a book for this prize is November 30, 2016. This is an annual competition with “a $10,000 award recognizing a book that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision written by a mid-career poet and published in the preceding year.” Details are HERE. This particular award is for books written in English only by citizens of the United States.

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
– Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke’s photograph is in the public domain

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Blind like us … Two by Charles Hamilton Sorely

CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY (1895 - 1915)
Charles Hamilton Sorely (1895 – 1915)

A version of this post that I put together several years ago and published elsewhere keeps coming up in the stats for that site, a few people each week popping by to read it … and so I read the poems again myself.  Seems we have to learn the same lessons over and over. What Sorely writes still applies …

SUCH, SUCH IS DEATH (1915)

Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:
Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,
A merciful putting away of what has been.
And this we know: Death is not Life, effete,
Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen
So marvellous things know well the end not yet.
Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:
Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,
“Come, what was your record when you drew breath?”
But a big blot has hid each yesterday
So poor, so manifestly incomplete.
And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,
Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet
And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

TO GERMANY (1914)

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other’s dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other’s truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We’ll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

– Charles Hamilton Sorely

Charles Hamilton Sorley was born in Aberdeen in 1894. He was the son of a professor of moral philosophy at Aberdeen University.  When the First World War was declared in August 1914, Sorley enlisted in the British Army. He joined the Suffolk Regiment and after several months training he became Lieutenant Sorly was sent to the Western Front. Sorley arrived in France in May 1915 and after three months was promoted to captain. He was killed by a sniper at the Battle of Loos on October 13, 1915, leaving just thirty-seven poems completed. Sorley’s posthumously published book, Marlborough and Other Poems was as popular and critical success when it was published in 1916. [A more comprehensive bio is provided by the Poetry Foundation HERE.]

Photo credit ~ Charles Hamilton Sorely dated c. 1914/1915. The photo was first published in 1918. The poems came out in 1919 and are excerpts from Marlborough and Other Poems by Charles Hamilton Sorely. You can read the entire book on or download it from Internet Archives HERE.