FEBRUARY 2010
FEATURED POET
Walter Hess
Walter Hess was born in Germany and arrived in the US in 1940 via Ecuador. He was educated in New York City schools, with a BA from the City College of New York in 1952 and an MA from CCNY in 2003. He is a retired film editor. Films on which he collaborated have won numerous awards; among them two Peabodys and three Emmys. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, and Mima'Amakim. Translations from the German of the poetry of Hans Sahl have appeared in Metamorphosis. He was awarded a prize from The Academy of American Poets in 2002. In 2003 he received from the Nyman Foundation, a prize, along with a substantial cash award for a selection from his memoir. His latest release Jew's Harp is available at Pleasure Boat Studio and Small Press Distribution STEPHANIE'S QUESTION
“Suppose you weren’t here. Would I be here?
Suppose that like your Opa you had...?”
A shadow slickered down her face, a fear
that stopped. She then edged closer to my side
and took my hand as if to solace me.
He held my hand when I was Stephie’s age.
Praise and instruction in our step, we walked
a rhythm like the singing of a page
of psalms in Shul. Call and response. We talked.
He held my hand and solaced me.
Dear Steph, Survivors have no other task
than being who and what they are. You ask
what you already know. You are where you are meant to be.
Your very question solaced me.
ABOUT TIME
Inside my son plays Miles;
outside the lake grows gray.
The woods – an oily green that says
go home.
I hear Chopin, Scriabin;
bass and piano like the darkening wood.
Then Davis with this longing blues,
a yearning gleaned from light.
The dark wood yields a hollow longing –
flute and harp, some Mozart sounds.
The gray breaks up.
Blue threads the clouds, the sky,
a mottled light out on the deck.
Down here there are no colors of our own.
I only see what the changing sky allows –
the sky amends both lure and longing.
I held him once.
Hard for me to say
that Miles is Mozart.
But I listen.
-Walter Hess
POET FROM WILLIAM O DOUGLAS WRITING PROJECT
HASTA LUEGO HERMANITA
The memory of you resurrects from the night around my shoulder
My eyes mingle its stubborn lament with my tears.
Empty like the trees in fall
my heart feels when I remember you.
Cold rose petals are raining all over my heart.
Hermanita, the last day that I saw you was the worst.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
They were the happy times, those that I spent with you.
The times of the spell that blazed like unknown feelings for me.
Those are the times when I remember you hermanita.
Mi hermanita the best of all
WRITE YOUR POEM
FROM MARIA RAINER RILKE's Book of Hours
(Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)
I.7
If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,
and the static my senses make-
if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake-
Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where the thinking ends.
I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.
Rilke touches on themes rediscovered in the West after we were re-introduced to the Chinese and Japanese sensabilities about the poem. The post modern challenge for the poet is to fight the prosaic line.
Some have even argued that Milton's epics in English was simply prose put into a metric form. Write your poem. Put something on the page. Write it in Sharpie marker on the back of an old map. Refold the map and stick it in the glove box of your kid's car.
ARTWORK
Like last month we're pleased to congratulate Christy Hale for the publication of her new children's book. Check it out at:
Javier Lopez- Ortiz
As a friend of Cave Moon Press, Javier has contributed to the newsletter before and recently has won more awards in Mexico for his exploration of the "fragile line". Check out his other artwork on the other sites!
Como un amigo de Cave Moon Press Javier ha contrubido al periodico antes y recentemente ha ganado mas premios en Mexico por su exploracion de la "linea fragile". Mira a sus otras obras en los otros sites!