...to continue...

I have a dog now.  A six year old Beagle taken from a shelter.  

Sitting on the couch one night I realized that I would not make it through the winter alone.  A companion, another wife, I did not feel was an option.  Before my wife died, she had encouraged me to get a dog - as a family we had many dogs and cats.  My dog had died three years earlier, but I did not get another because of my wife's health.  And then, of course, she encouraged my daughters to prevail upon me that a dog would be good for me.  

Well, the dog is good for me.  She distracts me from the real problem of my life.  But, she does not solve the problem.

I cannot speak clearly to my children of the problem, the darkness, the barren place, that I have entered.  I do want to hurt them.  The other reason is that I would mention it often.  I do not let such realities go, or they do not let me go.  This has always been my approach to life, looking at the good or the not good, equally.  The children, now adults, however, do not understand, or do not face purposely, that darkness I face, and it is just as well.  I would not bring it on them because it can be suffocating.

My oldest daughter keeps daily tabs on me.  She, who kept tabs on her younger sisters and brothers.  My wife told her to watch out for me as well since she knew my temperament.  Still, I do not speak the barrenness that I feel without my wife to my daughter.

I found after my wife's death that most women are truely nurturers and want you, a male, to live, will act to support you in small or larger ways so that you will live.

I always lived in a semi-darkness, but the love and support of my wife kept me walking in the light.  I always had the problem.  I, with some religious faith, (developed later in life), had not solved the problem, because the darkness still existed and the question of death was not answered satisfactorily so that I could accept death.  I did not accept death.

As a creative person, first connecting with God as the creator, my creator, feeling the semblance to myself, not through a religion, but through my personal education in art, my personal creative activity.

I do not accept the death of love.  I do not accept the death of such beauty.  I do not accept death.

The above is irrational, but, I, as a creator, think, sense, that I am irrational, as the creation is irrational, the creator, my God the creator.

A dog is not enough.

Create.

Death in the fast lane...

Obviously, no posting since August means I am very slow posting.  And this makes the blog not very interesting.

I'm still in the slow lane, unfortunately, trying to regain my balance since my wife and supporter of many years died this past February.  Her death, her loss, has become heavier to bear rather than easier - and the encouragement by many to "move on," things will get better with time, seem absurd to me.  Many, of course, wish the best for me after her death, some having been through it themselves.

I have at least made positive cosmetic changes to my webpage.  And I am now involved in some computer maintenance which I have no talent for.

Writing has been very slow, with a focus on my wife's death, death itself, the loss, my loss, and the barrenness that her death has left for me.  Although I have known of death as a serious threat to myself since the age of four, yes, I did say four, and carried it with me since that time, her death makes death more real than I could understood or have imagined.  This is finality, the silence that surpasses understanding.

To make my situation worse, I am an introvert, who likes being alone, which has helped my creative work, and this means thought, thinking, questioning, reaching into the darkness, and nothingness - or a life after this one which becomes a doubt when such a good person is hurt so, dies.

So I walk slowly, looking into the darkness, not looking away.  This is not romantic.  Understand that.  This is not romantic.

I will continue to seek to create.

Why poetry and not fiction?

Poetry can be a shorter form and still be valuable.

Big three ignored...

Jessy Kendall - look him up online @ Flickr

Mark Melnicove - see him as well online

Bern Porter - the father of Maine visual art etcetera

For some reason these creative writers are by-and-large ignored by the Maine literary establishment.

Slowly....

seeking and gaining information for a written form.  Little energy and focus since my wife died.  Reading.  Art.  Visual artists of the mid-20th Century.  American.

And...

All human writing is creative writing.

Words...

we use every day and begin to feel that they are not very significant.

ACAIADA

A creative act is a destructive act.  It is violent.

What...

What should poetry be?

What should the subjects of poetry be?


Is poetry itself significant for the majority of people now?

Are the subjects of poetry now significant for the majority of people living now?

Are the ideas....?

Is the feeling....?


Is the vitality, energy, of poetry today, equal to that of baseball, football, the Olympics....?

And Rumford is...

probably one of the worst places in Maine to create a literary reputation because it is stuck in its "blue collar" psyche.  After years of financial and psychological dependence upon the paper mill, the town has not been able to release itself from that dependence.  Even now, after more than 20 years of an economic depression, it refuses or fears to test other directions.

Having written in this small town for many years, read around the state in previous years, I can say that it is, however, a very good place to write because no one will bother you or make an issue of your being a poet.  No one is interested in poetry.  This allows you complete freedom to write.  And, you may be eccentric because the "blue collar" populace is tolerant of differentiation in themselves and others.

I do like the people in Rumford whom I meet in my daily round of living my "human" life.   I married a native daughter of a paper mill worker who supported my writing without question although she was not interested in the literary life.  And my wife, my wife's family, and others, have contributed positively to my human life in the town.  I and my family were accepted into the town's extended family from the time we came "from away".

My relationship to this small Maine town of Rumford is like my relationship to myself:  I am good and not good.  Rumford is good and not good.

resize

the universe is not human-size yet we humans have a need or desire to reduce
the universe to human size, thus we humans distort
the universe

These...

words we use every day in our speaking with each other.

And, of course, we think in words as well, although not always in words.

The words from our minds make sound, noises, from our throats and mouths.

They become a reality in the air.  Are, a reality, in our minds, silently, before becoming a reality in the air.

Now, on paper, we make words, or on a computer screen.

We see the words before us, unchanging, clearly.

We like words, and they are more often with us than is the thought, or activity of, sex.

They are more important than sex to us although we take them for granted.

I don't know.

Death is not a word.

death

No title

there are no words in death

The beats...

I am reading now.  Not the first time, of course.  The past few months I've been reading the playwrights of the Off-Off Broadway theater of the Sixties with Lanford Wilson, LeRoi Jones, Sam Shepard, Joel Oppenheimer, Paul Foster, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Maria Irene Fornes, Megan Terry, Adrienne Kennedy, Edward Albee and others, returning to my visits to the Caffe Cino, La Mama ETC and the Judson Memorial Church during the Sixties.  This was an exciting time for theater in NYC and America. The beats I'd previously sampled but was not impressed by Kerouac's On the Road.  I have now his original scroll version of the novel and I am impressed.  Never liked "Howl," or much of the other poets of the group, I will admit and I am not overly impressed yet although I am still reading.  I do note that some of the form of the poets correlates with my own, although I had no contact with any of the poets, and did not know their work when I began to explore form.  However, my spiritual attitude toward life was clearly the same, even though I left the city, settling for good in Maine to write:  that attitude toward my society, life, made living very difficult for me, even though I was heterosexual, inactive politically, and very difficult for my wife and companion, who subsidized me spiritually.  I was anti-establishment for creative reasons.

In the Seventies, here in Maine, I became active in a free thinking writers' group organized by out-of-staters who had gravitated to Maine to live off the land, absenting themselves from normal American middle class society and its values, and were involved in political and social protests. Most had college degrees, long hair, no bras, second-hand clothing and were into soft drugs, (which was not my direction since I gained enough satisfaction and problems with alcohol), and as a group published mimeo magazines, held readings and workshops around the state.  They were Maine's first hippies and a valuable support group for me at the time although I was not involved in their political or social protests.  The group began to slowly change, however, as many began to network with academics when they read and taught workshops in schools, gained publication in mainstream literary magazines, and they left behind their anti-establishment direction once so vocally espoused, for a better mannered establishment that they were creating.  They changed their dress, were clean and well-scrubbed, and began to live more stable lives.  I, as far as my research has learned, am the only member of the group to remain an "outsider," an anti-establishment literary person, although still not involved in political or social activity.  I oppose the new establishment created by these writers.  I cannot, however, ignore the fact that this original anti-establishment group of writers, the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, was very significant in supporting my development as a writer.

So much for the outsiders, the beats, the anti-establishment writers, the hippies...let me continue with my reading of the beats.

Problem with "The Pain"

is that line spacing makes it read quickly
neutering the timing and emphasis
upon the lines.  Acceptable for prose
the lines are.

Jass, the original musical form in America

                                 The King


Buddy Bolden's soul expanding

                                        and exploding in

                  on itself

                          from the hot streets of New Orleans.

Buddy Bolden is the reputed originator of jass, his horn heard in the air across the streets of New Orleans, a legend in his time.  If you know the heat of jass, jazz, in those days, you will understand this piece.  Buddy ended up in an asylum, probably from giving so much of himself in his life art.  The sacrifice of creative person, as he or she dives into creative source to return with the life force.

I wrote "The Pain" on the spur of the moment.

I'm uncertain, of course, if it's complete.

I'll reread it in a while, probably
more than once, to see
if I should make changes
or not.

The pain

Still, the pain exists
although I am not
hurt.

She died,
she was hurt.

She is gone.

Still the pain exists.

I am hurt.

I write.  I create.

At four, as a boy, I was able to put off complete psychological encompassment of death by creating.  First, with visual creation, as a child and a youth.  Then, began the writing as a youth, with creating following, which minimized the fear of death, the real grip of death.

At my age, with the death of my wife, creative activity is not yet able to effectively deal with her death, death close, real, in my mind, my self.

I create in short sentences seeking control in those sentences.

One sentence will do.

At the death of my wife, I now have more questions about life, larger, more difficult, than those which I had as a youth.  These involve more pain than the questions of my youth.

There is a difference with these questions, however.

I am not only questioning society, my parents, my teachers, my direction, but I am also questioning myself and my wife, and the nature of life with the reality that death has added.

As a child of four, I learned I would die from a simple accident that was not life threatening, and fear was injected into my understanding of life as a force that could not be ignored.

I lived from that day with fear, fears, brought on by the existential situation that we humans are faced with, relying only on my own intellect and intuition to deal with it.

I return.

In the beginning...

I had questions about life that grew in my mind.  Then I began to write the questions in pocket notebooks.  This was the beginning of my change from visual art to literary art.