For writers there is a perpetual flow of ideas; a few are original, most are not. There is a good argument that originality loses its spark if one’s efforts are contrived, or done to gratify personal needs, are overly-influenced by another’s work, or become too intellectualized. Following are some darting thoughts about the process and what, I’m convinced, embodies creativity’s most valuable aspect of being able to think and act independently:
Poetic-prose…
____________________________________________
Those who strive for originality…
those
who purpose
to remain vibrant,
or vigorously focused
without succumbing to some
caricature-of-self; resolving
more as a guileless
voice,
reflective
incendiary
(intellectually),
germane, perhaps,
without looping or lapsing
into mannerism or affectations;
a personal challenge to remain original
without contention, or imitating self, or passing off
an old model-of-self; some contrived effort
to be seen with favor, (or)
to relive the
warmth and joy of
past seasons and victories
by re-hashing what once worked
~
attitude
pulling ideals
out from the ruts,
figuring the perfect-fitness
of what is shared while
defying branching
compromise
(in which)
ones
penned inventions
reflect only the sniveling drivel
of a writer’s beleaguered life…
~
…..luminous light
encircling
achievement in a false nimbus
invariably forces the greatest achievers
to their knees (temporarily) to reveal (to them)
(and to all those watching) that no human
is the full-bottle on anything…..
~
It’s wearying
(at times) finding
health in an art-form
where opinions are like weeds;
where arrogance becomes a shield
(to keep hidden all pecking-insecurities);
where the ceaseless cacophony of ‘me-noise’
refuses to understand why another’s hopeful face,
glowing from within, decays day-after-day,
or why a philosophic man is
obliged to mull a
lake’s health
in winters savagery, or
why faith causes the steadfast to
pause – momentarily – admitting they are
fully content to die in fields of common grass…
~
Knowing
every epoch
has its makers,
as every masterpiece
has (hidden in its guts) some
awful struggle; or perhaps some loss,
or life-altering circumstance, which
addresses the human-condition
with heedful strength as
altruisms-insomnia
bears an ongoing challenge to
palliate human-suffering and – if somehow
blessed to do so – (if only briefly) becomes
more archetypal than all originality
pawned-off with only
the faded colors
of worn-out dollar bills…
“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy
August 2007 Richard was nominated for a 2008 PUSHCART PRIZE. Richard was awarded 2007 BEST NEW FICTION at CST for his first three novels and also 2006 WRITER OF THE YEAR @thewritingforum.net … Richard has been a featured Poet on Poetry Life and Times Aug/Sept 2008, Jan 2013, Aug 2013, and Oct 2013 and has been published in varied anthologies, compendiums, and e-zines. Richard’s literary work is currently in over 35,000 data bases and outlets. Richard’s novels include: A Monumental Journey… In Search of the First Tribe… The Underground River… Beyond Understanding. A new novel, Between the Cracks, was completed March 2014 and will be available summer 2014.
Richard has been privileged to travel extensively throughout the USA, the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan in Canada, the Yukon Territories, Kodiak Island, Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Sitka, Petersburg, Glacier Bay, in Alaska, the Azorean Archipelagoes, and throughout Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Holland… Richard and his wife, Michele, have been avid adventurers and, when time permits, still enjoy exploring the Laguna Mountains, the Cuyamaca Mountains, the High Deserts in Southern California, the Eastern Sierra’s, the Dixie National Forest, the Northern California and Southern Oregon coastlines, and the “Four Corners” region of the United States.
Richard designed, constructed, and operated a MIDI Digital Recording Studio – TAYLOR and GRACE – from 1995 – 2002. For seven years he diligently fulfilled his own musical visions and those of others. Richard personally composed, and multi-track recorded, over 500 compositions during this time and has two completed CD’s to his personal credit: WHAT LOVE HAS DONE and THE PATH. Both albums were mixed and mastered by Steve Wetherbee, founder of Golden Track Studios in San Diego, California.
Richard retired from music after performing professionally for fifteen years and seven years of recording studio explorations. He works, now, at one of San Diego’s premier historical sites, as a Superintendent. Richard is also a carpenter and a collector of classic books, and books long out of print.
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Poet
Thanksgiving Prayer by William Burroughs
-
To John Dillinger and hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day November 28 1986
Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shat out through wholesome
American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killin’ lawmen,
feelin’ their notches.
For decent church-goin’ women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.
Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where
nobody’s allowed to mind their
own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the
memories– all right let’s see
your arms!
You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.
After Dylan on the Ninth Wave. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop
After Dylan on the Ninth Wave.*
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age – Dylan Thomas (1914-53)
Worm’s Head on Rhossili beach’s
Rocky peninsula
Crags that jut in the eye’s squint.
A bellying belly capped by a pixie cone
In a turn around bay, on a turn around tide.
Long levelled backwater mud banks
Bogged to the edge of another shore
Down dusk grey fallen sky
Misted on slow dark billowy waters
Slip to the rippling sand’s brink
Break with a sigh from the far horizon’s
Foggy veil’s sheeting light
That winks in the blink of a squint
As clouds rush down, head on.
Whilst the man on the hill
Beach up from the dune in heather, fern
Cliff path & bleats of rolling flocked wool
Wanders side on against Gods & Goddesses.
The might on high of ancient deities at play
In their buffoonery with the day
As they rollicked & frolicked
Harangued & battled for naught
Other than gainsay for the man on hill.
To push him & pull him, hither & thither
As his shadow swelled & swathed him
Down under into the rock below
Whilst they in their lightning & terrible frightening
Also would fall from their lofty citadel
Although immune from his suffering
To rage, rage against the dying of the light
To like him in their burial.
Worm’s Head on the Gower Peninsular was a well known haunt of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, also known for his prodigious drinking bouts from which he sadly died at the age of 39 in a New York bar. It is recorded he was once stranded on the Worm’s Head when cut off by the incoming tide from the mainland. Origins of the name Dylan in pagan mythology can be found in the Mabinogion, where he is described as the Son of the Wave, a Sea God born of the Goddess Arianrhod. Robert Graves in the White Goddess describes the mythological source of Dylan, as the Divine Child born on the Ninth Wave and sometimes ancient graphics depict a naked man caught by fishermen in a net are held to refer to Dylan. Its etymology variously ascribes the root as ‘The wave that floods’, ‘The flood that recedes’ and ‘The tide that returns’.
Lines in italics from Dylan Thomas’s Birthday Poem at Laugharne Bay & Do not go gentle into that good night.’
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All the Babble of the Souk
Charles Simic. The Monster Loves His Labyrinth
Water Melons Green Budhas On the fruit stand We eat the smile And spit out the teeth. What’s your response, profoundly complex, profoundly simple, absurd, childlike, whatever, it’s one of the Poetry Videos of poet Charles Simic we feature here at Artvilla.
The title, The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks. refers a book of literary criticism and theory together with his own poetry works. In part of it he discusses the relationship of time, space and form in the context of the written word. Perhaps a little dated by today’s standard of cosmological enquirey, as broadly, it seems to me, to refer to conventional Externalism. It comes however highly recommended by this much acclaimed Yugoslavian poet resident in the USA since 1953.
Here at Artvilla, you can find, Poetry Videos of his works in their originals as well as translations, together with personal appearances, readings by himself and other readers, appearances at different venues such as the Robert Lowell Lectures introduced by Robert Pinsky, or reading in English together with Spanish speaking poets Kadri Vaquero and Edgardo Nunez Cabellero. So please enjoy. Editor Artvilla. Robin Ouzman Hislop
Slanting. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Chintz Tambourine clash Smash (music) A piping wail Hoots Day of the Cars A graze of grass sheep Hedgerow making a hegemonic skyline Wires cutting clouds Wonky dyke drive in Nettle Eureka Stacks without smoke Wrought iron window - Blurs a face in pastel blue. Day of the Crane Rocks the hill Lateral this time Just cross over Chevron bypass The high street's as empty as the daytime Every where's empty even out back The sky, the trees with no leaves Noticeable about the playground The sand Following the big black glass At the transport station – I walk into you. The skull in the bramble's Picked clean by scavengers Old before your time. A selfie on the road Skull time is skull time Smashed in a white torrent rolls A giant shining black trunk Cactus wave, nod, interested observers. Now's for the winding Next, you'll dry up But now the lagoon is – action. You're so pretty squatting amongst the rocks Which keep their own rites Remember how clean you look in the forest Nobody's like you. Look down, i'll look up. Back again, every where's deserted Kinda eerie There's a fence between me, the rest. Dense foliage. Smoke on the horizon The enclosures are the worst Because they look like the best then get you. Blow sky Don't diminish more I can scarcely keep you in. A high nest on the lowlands Here come the Imaginals. Watch my stick. Into the mouth of the cave's roar A flood freeze Does time freeze, flood or fall? Nosey Chico. Perspectives unfold Nice profile Chewed up most of that. Day of the Crane Rock cleaver. Leveller. Beauty keep your eyes shut Where's it gone Oh shit Rotate baby Suspicious, wandering abroad without visible Means of support. A white cathedral In a city through the trees with leaves Who could ask for anything more Skip along Moonlight through the pines Hogey. Cakes. Nifty. Hooded. Get the picture! There's something about moss Life's tough Short cuts are stressful, as well Out in, in out That's landscape cheating in the original! Repetition is not completion. Say panter not panther I'm in saliva Wrangle, tangle I bear witness to your fall Helpless before your might It's your deal. Coming back, it's still deserted Day of the Crane. Day of the Car Hood into the snow Much time spent waiting Come over here sweetheart. After the bath Night lights. Skyline a selfie. Scarfed. We come in peace – so what! Grotesque obelisks – endure us It's just days for you! A portrait will do On the street, no one meets first one, last one, beggar man, thief Fame as we all know is an illusion, What's upstream? Day of the Imaginals. Share, share alike who's pulling who? Deserted again Framed. A solitary mister On the look out in the lowlands Halfway bridge, cross both ways Under the arches Just a step, careful - Upstream, downstream, in the stream, where! That's it, stand in the middle. Rain drops, bird shit Fractals in summertime Who's lost? In the circumference, on the periphery Roll, Primroses wild in a meadow sweet straw hat Arms akimbo She, he munching the same cud. Moving on is a must The great, the small huddle Stone, - paper in the solarium. Day of the Crazy Carnival, Flags, crucifixes Pattern soliloquy with a dazzle but the antennae steal the show in an odds on – hurrah! Lotus versus lilies, splatter the pane As magic appears again, in a sliced frame. A saloon's interior – plus furnishings A dilapidated roof where the green abounds Weather matters in the symmetry. Footpath. Wind generator. Harvested field Fern On the way she pirouettes on air, there To the Pond Fish, fishermen An hour ago Temporary emergency Closure 3 ways to nowhere Pay Here Go green at the Pond Day of the Pond. White mannequins in high window A getting wed celebration Shot on location, city in a window According to law. Story of a dog, what follows on High rise, she poses in a garden of roses Frog at Pool Farm Do not touch Danger overhead. Loose dogs on patrole. Pick your own here, at a price. It's an unnatural dead end A National Trust cul de sac Back at the farm – a fine day To grow, property. Leftover tractor's out a world war relic an outlaw, unwanted in every land. A 30 foot the wind generator Heralds the patchwork downs Behind the field the battery foreclosure Non-giving slopes, scrub A fine day for what, unrelenting power! Everybody knows reflection deceives Water lilies, moor-hens Sunken branches in their shadows Are all in their boundaries Layers of surfaces where we drown in shine across on the peripheral horizon In attendant regard they stay in non committal stares on the edges of muddy banks. So expensive – Monumentals Shoppers in displays. Christmas trees Identifiable by their electric coronas. Streets are ghosts Mew in the park Stay, forever stray. Coffee table bird time Perch which-a-way You peek that-a-way I'll peek this-a-way Look straight up. More monuments Inside crinkly colours Embalmed in sweets Outside more ghosts Even with the ladder You carry to climb out from Where the shadows carry you. Clipped in a mirror on a silver stair A sectional action recorded In a space time bloc Whose being had! Tombstone blues on the pavements Bull fights – Bull shit Make my day. Paper floats as air boats Hanging besides the stair Clock on the wall Locked door Glass walls Sit in the New Gardens Paper refreshments, art décor All the world's a collage On your doorstep On the polished wooden bench Where you mustn't die On this occasion in the Arcade. Lest we forget Time branches in the mist A mix of entropies. Artifice in perspective From a high window watch the queue In the rain paying to go in. I'll watch you walk out Follow your backs Against the back of the day A day's visit down river, bank bikes Cathedral caught in a glimpse Between trees Instanced in a stacked stance The barges being for the other. Under the bridge again Cat on the roof, (Black) There was a plague A multitude in pastiche Heads up everywhere Old Masters eternally retouched Ghosts forever young, where we fade. Offices to let Sitting out history on the lawn Where no birds sing, a few pigeons Alms at the Workhouse, hard times Every tower aspiring sweetly like a flower. Sheer in carved stone it looms before its minions Inside the double white non parking line We stand around between pickets In the name of tyranny. To see or not to see, mere mereness of distortion As if the far side were the other side. As if One step were an inexorable impossible reach Not to its impossibility but to serve only ruins. Daytime is a sham of inverted symmetry. Beyond the blur It glows down the strand Hidden in foreclosure A gem gleams. On crowded sunny days Heroic kudos to their statues On a deserted place by night A glittering cone of light A winter festal. Emptiness. A grey bell tower chimes the hour Adds a person in less than a minute. Bubbles beneath the surface Amazing amber in golden silt The hazes are in flight Bridle the day Growth, overgrowth is not so lush Wreckage of our spoil A poisoned banquet for all But for a day. We must peer down There's room in the street for us The ultimate consummation Hunger is a cause Try it side on – both The wood's laid out in plan Round another magic bend Behold, Day of the Plague. Access to the land is denied Use your wristwatch after arrival Don't look now - it's behind you At last form, lilac on the hill Time to pose. Lets try it in reverse Turn twice, above us only bell How picturesque, the large By the wayside, which side are you on? A relic of yore, want to play? No exit from the bus stop Is this an argument for sufficient reason? Almost spot on Suddenly it's lilac again Whose playing anyway? Another time Close up you fall but shouldn't Close close the water waits Waits more still, the whichaway sign Advances the retreat. A garden of your own Tooth in claw after all No where’s safe. What's that A workhouse turned theatre Burlesque in a cartoon charade Civilisation is never far away Just round the corner in fact Follow the path you can't get lost Names name names. It will have to do It's choice after all, isn't it. Either the sky or us Take your pick Is it a UFO or the government. Only the downs sing on Caught up pointing nowhere A place from before On the crown of its own desolation. Meanwhile on a broken wing Clouds tangle with the moon's moment A sufficient distortion of fact.
Robin Ouzman Hislop was an Editor at the 12 year running on line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life & Times, now at Artvilla.com, as its Editor. He has made many appearances over the last years in the quarterly journals Canadian Zen Haiku, including In the Spotlight Winter 2010 & Sonnetto Poesia. Previously published in international magazines, his recent publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian University N Carolina, The Poetic Bond Series, available at The Poetic Bond and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes an Anthology of Sonnets. He has recently completed a volume of poetry, All the Babble of the Souk , publication now available. He is currently resident in Spain engaged in poetry translation projects.
From A to B. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop
From chaos to drift,
the inhuman landscape,
snatches of music,
ensnared in the fiction,
the inescapable illusion of our being.
The dream returns,
half remembered, half forgotten,
False flick, false form, but falseness close to kin,
From the rubble of artifice,
The wreckage of the day long gone,
But things must go their own way
Reborn as myth from the commotion its left,
Beyond our control,
Where humans must enact their fate
From chaos to drift.
From A to B
stomping between being
it is what it is not
& is not what it is,
the big arsed hairless baboon
from what it’s left to what it will be
A to B the myth of it’s morality,
the memory of what it’s forgotten,
what it should be, at play with the day.
A to B, in the transit shift of the scene,
closes the world where we belong,
without belonging in it all,
at that point beyond fiction,
the nothingness which is everything.
Notes towards a supreme fiction. Wallace Stevens.(italics mine)
Being and Nothingness. John Paul Sartre.(italics mine)
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All the Babble of the Souk