Big Bang Poetry

Reinventing the Life of a Poet in the Modern World

Month: June 2019

52 Haiku, Week 19

June 26, 2019 / / 0 Comments

FireThere are good times and bad times, basically extreme times when we need to breathe in order to re-center our frenetic brain. It feels like bad times right now just dealing with the news, but also creative times. Or maybe it's just that bad times demand more creativity from us. I'm thinking a lot today about cultural loss, as well as the great suffering that is caused by those who want to assert, gain or keep power and money. I'm trying to breathe through it and look between those breaths for ideas I can use.

The Prompt: Dealing With Loss

Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara. 

"When in wordly activity, keep attentive between two breaths and so practicing, in a few days be born anew."
         – Shiva

And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

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My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

Between two mountains
the open valley of breaths.
This is where we live.

The Reflection

I'm noticing that I'm gravitating to landscape depictions of meditation and the breath. I'm beginning to wonder if this might be the appeal of New Mexico to Zen Buddhists and mindfulness practitioners.

I recently won a silver Nautilus award.  (Have I mentioned that twenty times yet?) Anyway, I purchased the other books of the Silver and Gold winners. The other two Silver winners are both Zen books, interestingly enough. But amazingly to me, both also mention New Mexico as a prominent place of inspiration or a place where some of the poems were written. That makes all three Silver winners books about Buddhism and, to some degree, New Mexico.

I think there's something about the light here, or the water maybe, but probably the wabi sabi of the architecture and landscape that facilitates Zen Buddhist mindfulness. Can't quite put my finger on it, but it's obviously gotten into my head too.

 

What about you?

52 Haiku, Week 18

June 20, 2019 / / 0 Comments

This was a good week. Met with some friends from CNM, cleaned, planted, did some consistent workouts, getting ready for my parents to visit.

The Prompt: Enlightened

Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara. 

"Enlightened or not–
It is all the very same.
Have a cup of tea."
            – Myochi

And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

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My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

So what, the tea says.
Your blooming epiphany
is fuzz in the breeze.

The Reflection

This reminds me of the very funny line in Gigi by Maurice Chevalier as he's trying to calm down Louis Jourdan: "Have a piece of cheese." It serves the same purpose as the tea in the quote above. Enlightenment is a big word for a small thing. And possibly a meaningless red herring.

Relax. Do something ordinary. When you're upset, sit down and have a piece of cheese.

 

What say you?

52 Haiku, Week 17

June 14, 2019 / / 0 Comments

SalsaWe have company from Kansas here this week and we've been having a lot of fun tooling around Albuquerque (eating lots of salsa). This is a good prompt for me this week. How do I see ABQ with new eyes when visitors come?

The Prompt: Open Field

Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara. 

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities;
In the experts there are few"
            – Shunryu Suzuki

And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

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My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

Imagine the trees
of green possibility
in an open field

The Reflection

This might just be one of my favorite Zen quotes. We live in a time where everyone's identity is wrapped up in what they know and lording that knowledge over everyone else or really wanting to prove something. And believe me, I'm right there in the middle of it. I'm a real Hermione Granger myself. But you can get really tangled up in what you think you know. And isn't it amazing what genius ideas beginners come up with? Because they have no preconceived expertise. They have no prejudices around what wont work and ideas around limits. We're so proud of what we know and much of the time, this is our handicap. 

I'm constantly trying to tell myself "shut up and forget what you know." Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

 

Now, you go.

Activist Poems Still Kickin’ It

June 13, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Notes-assemblageI’m still coming across good Black Lives Matter and activist poetry and a look over my web stats shows that the page Poems About Dictators is getting a good amount of traffic also.

In the alumni magazine for my Alma mater, University of Missouri-St. Louis, I read a great article called  “Voices of Ferguson”  with excerpts from a poet, a criminologist, a counselor, actors from Theatre of the Oppressed and a street medic. I loved the poem by Jason Vasser. Read the article here and click under Vasser’s picture to view the poem that depicts a more peaceful day-to-day life in Ferguson.

I also finished a Juan Felipe Herrera book I picked up years ago at USC’s Festival of Books in Los Angeles, Notes on the Assemblage (2015). The first part felt a bit like slam poetry than what usually appeals to me but the ones I really liked were all Black Lives Matter and activist poems, including these:

“And if the man with the choke hold”

“Almost Livin’ Almost Dyin”

“We Are Remarkably Loud Not Masked”

And the call to keep-on-keepin’-on in “Poem by Poem”

It’s a beautifully sized book by City Lights Pres and also includes meditation poems like “It can begin with clouds.” And a small ekphrasis section, my favorite of which was “I do not know what a painting does” about how a painting looks back at the viewer.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Herrera is an Hispanic poet writing about Black Lives Matter but he also writes a few poems in this book about immigration. There’s a great long poem called Borderbus.  And there’s “Half-Mexican” I also liked “The Soap Factory,” “Numbers, Patterns. Movements & Being” and “[untitled, unfettered—” which was more experimental. And there’s a great one about human expression called “Song Out Here.”

The American Writers Museum

June 13, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Visiting Chicago last month, Monsieur Big Bang and I came upon this museum, noticing it because of a Bob Dylan exhibit advertisement in the window of the building.

The small museum packs a big punch. The Bob Dylan Electric museum was one small hallway but filled with memorabilia, the end of which focused heavily on his Nobel Prize winning. The museum obviously considers him an American Writer, which I was happy to see, because it confirmed my existing, documented bias on the issue.

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Newspapers weighing in / Bob Dylan's influences / The Nobel Prize Reception Invite

Related, I really appreciated one massive wall of writers and their genre, to show how inclusive they were in considering the idea of the American writer (from songwriters to book authors to poets to playwrights and speech writers).

The permanent exhibit is a massive display of American writers through history, giving you a really good sweep of American ideology in major periods, from Colonial to present day, each exemplar including a photo or artistic rendering, a sample of their major works, a statement of their importance and maybe a big of trivia, all this supplied on swinging interactive triangular blocks.

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There were quite a few poets I didn’t know and I made a list of writers I wanted to check out.

De Vaca was the first writer listed (a memorialist) followed by John Smith (autobiography), William Bradford (historian) and Anne Bradstreet (poet). That’s right, America’s first poet was a lady-poet! The display had America broken into categories of colonial, revolution, new nation, and literary independence.

There was also an electronic display on American themes across time. And one entire small sub-exhibit devoted just to the inventions of Edgar Allan Poe.

There was also an amazing electronic board of writing excerpts. The museum called it a Word Waterfall reading “what does it mean to be American?

They had a display on magazines and visitor’s favorite books, a Frederick Douglass exhibit, and two last exhibits where I wasn’t sure when one ended and the other began: The Mind of a Writer and Tools of the Trade (from Typewriters to Touchscreens). I love how contemporary they are!

ScrollExhibits included a table of typewriters you could interact with, a display of first lines, an electronic touchscreen version of Jack Kerouac’s scroll manuscript for On the Road.

There was also an exhibit of writerly habits, writer fuel, and advise on how to organize your thinking. 20190513_124748

There were also poetry computer games! One where you would try to figure out missing words from a poem and a word magnet game.

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What a fun, interactive museum! My only complaint was the lack of erasers for sale in the gift shop. What writer doesn’t need erasers?

 

Visit their website for upcoming events: Americanwritersmuseum.org.

52 Haiku, Week 16

June 7, 2019 / / 0 Comments

CouchIt's a dog's life. So I'm working from home now and I can really monitor what the dogs do all day long and as I contemplate my own sense of peace, I can contemplate theirs as well. They do a lot of sleeping, begging and barking at the world outside the house. Occasionally, they will play with each other.

The last time I worked from home, four years ago, Franz would always try to get up into my lap. He doesn't do that anymore. He's getting too old. I bought him a fancy couch (advertised at left)s to get him to stay in the office with me. Sometimes he'll sleep in it. But only when he feels like it. 

Everyone always tells me one of my dog is is a Zen master. Just the other day the vet looked shocked when she was listening to his heart beat calmly up on the table. No vet appointment is going to rattle him! Years ago I went on an archaeological trip with the students at Highlands University in Las Vegas, NM, and one of them spent 10 minutes staring at Franz before saying, "Your dog is intense man!" 

The Prompt: Animal Nature

Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara. 

"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"
            – Zen phrase

And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

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My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing (which looks nothing like Franz but that's the best dog I could do):

Stares like an old sage
Barking out the window now
Will be asleep soon

The Reflection

I always find it strange when people question the spirituality of animals, especially dogs, who snap to the moment better than anyone. Sure, there are dogs that fret and there's a spectrum of dog-calm and they get furiously off-kilter over territorial disputes…and they do seem to dream (going over all the drama of the day). But they still seem better suited to paying attention than we are. Watch a dog beg at the dinner table. I give them people food just to be able to experience it. They're masters of manipulation and the long game.

 

How about you?

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