Friday, August 24, 2012

How I Write Poems

August 24, 2012




































How I Write Poems





















There are many books and essays on how poems are made, Rilke’s How Poems Happen, how I write, or like George Orwell’s Why I Write...









In as much as, I want to gather all the fibers that have been woven and thread them together at this time, I will share how I weave my own, as taught, as read, as practiced, and with all due respect to my professors and other writers and poets.









When I was an MFA student, I was a mother who wanted more than 24 hours of a day to get closest to the life I lived. That ranges from the 20th century (December 1, 1901 – December 31, 2000) and the 21th century (January 1, 2001 – December 31, 2100) now, where I will end.









I must admit, I was chipped before the boom of technology. From the magnetic tapes on checks and tickets, I evolved with internet cards and got promoted with servers today. That was how I lived.









Everyday, I was a witness as to how technology evolved from big mobile phones, car phones, antique phonograph and stereos, boom box, first cars with automatic windows, karaoke, microwave, remote controls, laser discs, Altec Lansing speakers, automatic cars, control switches, bio prints, digital cameras, the lap top, notebooks, PC tablets, the complication and elegance of Apple, fame of Blackberries, my tape recorders for work, my Neo laptop damaged by lightning, and my Nokia phone (which I call user friendly) that can only use the text mode due to a writers budget, in some point of my life. Don’t forget the Sega games; and now everything online, Twitter and Facebook as with dictionaries and translations, ezines and ebooks. Hence, a blast of high technology and our global community!









Back then, poems were made years, months, or some of them from spark of muses. Poems were crafted, revised many times, simmered, and some just still on stones, mossed. I recommend for reading, “A Passionate Patience,” by R.M. de Ungria and “Twentieth Century Pleasures” by Robert Hass, among others. Also, read poems of contemporary poets and teachers like Eric Gamalinda, Cirilo Bautista, Marjorie Evasco, Tony Perez, Luisa Gloria, Zeus Salazar and Albert Casuga.









As for me, I dance on pages online. I sing on pages online. I go naked. Maybe, it is that POM in fiction of Isagani Cruz. I send and submit as fast as technology can communicate first drafts, after fire from prayers, other texts, and reading materials. Take for example, the prose prayer poems I had written and attempted based on the Psalms, where I read and wrote only because of God’s grace and maybe from God’s mercy, too. It is because I lived with the Psalms all throughout my happiest and saddest times. Moreover, I set myself, a deadline, an output for a month that I must produce. Revisions will be later.





Ordinarily, my work is to think. Now I am an android built with a heart. That is how fast I can write a poem; press me, press my heart and I will zoom and burst in you words. I deal with symbolisms and images, as well. I experiment because I didn’t have enough chances to go out, when I was still younger. So now, while there’s still fire in me, I am living in fiction and my poems to pull back the years I have missed, while fate chained me to something else. In the future, perhaps, revisions would be easier because the poems online, are archived and could be published until then, whether paid or free for all. By that time, I will be very old or dead.







Thank you for reading my poems.



RoseVoc on IWroteFiction




Reference:  Wikipedia Online, PoemHunter.com

























































































Sunday, August 19, 2012

Watching Kingdom of Heaven, I Remember

HOME::Arts and Entertainment:Movies TV






Watching Kingdom of Heaven, I Remember

By Rosalinda Flores-Martinez



I remember Jerusalem as the home of Christ. Christ is born in Bethlehem. He is crucified on the Hill of Calvary (now the altar of crucifixion), is buried in Golgotha (a place of skull), and on the third day, he arose again.



I remember Jerusalem in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, I am a Christian.



I honor the Wailing Wall (Western Wall) of the Jews. I weep in the wailing walls, the city of David, where Solomon built the temple. I mourn with them.



In Jerusalem, a mosque stands over the spot from which Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven. Abraham is said to have prepared to sacrifice Isaac on the same spot. I believe the Dome of the Rock.



Hence, I remember Jerusalem, a place of prayer for all faiths.



It is comforting to know that God has no favorites and his love for all manifests in the everyday conquest of our hearts and life journey. God, above all, strengthens us to be better beings everyday in the chances we can make out of life.



The film, "Kingdom of Heaven," (2005) highlights this Holy City. It tells the story of a blacksmith (Orlando Bloom; Legolas in Lord of the Rings), who after his dolours, transforms to become a brave knight and baron of Ibelin. His loyalty is grounded on the kingdom of conscience, which is imperfect in human conditions, but buttressed in the hands of God. His humility in being a blacksmith lets him serve the people. His bravery in being a knight lets him deal with wars and speak the truth. He portrays a modern Christ in some point of his life, teaching even a king, a woman, a child, a gravedigger and a bishop, among others. Being in a company of various troops and conditions of people, he endures and values every person, sharing about right action, courage, and loyalty to God, above all.



According to Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times (IMDB), "Scott and company have gotten so accomplished at re-creating history that the results have a welcome offhanded quality, making them spectacular without seeming to be showing off."



"Kingdom of Heaven" stars Liam Neeson as Godfey de Ibelin, Orlando Bloom as Balian de Ibelin, Marton Csokas as Guy Lusignon, Eva Green as Sybylla, Nasser M. as Muslim Grandee, Ghassan Massuod as Saladin, Jeremy Irons as Tiberias, Edward Norton as the king, John Finch and more.



Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Prometheus) is the director. William Monahan (a novelist) is the screenwriter.



References:

Lands and People, III, The Near and the Middle East

Wikipedia Online

IMDB





Saturday, August 11, 2012

Embrace By New Time by Andrzey Jawien

Embraced By New Time




Translated from the Polish by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

By Karol Wojtyla /Andrzey Jawien



My depths are seen into, I am seen through and through.

Open to sight I rise, in that vision gently submerge.

For a long time nobody knew of this;

I told no one the expression of your eyes.



How attentive your stillness: it will always be part of me.

I lift myself towards it, will one day grow so used to it

that I will stand still, transparent as water vanishing

into a dry riverbed – though my body will remain.

Your disciples will come, and hear that my heartbeat has

stopped.



My life will no longer be weighed deep in my blood,

the road will no longer slip away from my weary steps,

New time now shines in my fading eyes:

it will consume me, and dwell with my heart.

And all shall be full at the last, and left for thought’s

delight.







I will open out my song and know its smallest sound,

I will open out my song intent on the whole of your life,

my song possessed by the Event so simple and clear,

which begins in every man, visibly there, yet secret.



In me it was made flesh, was revealed in song with grace,

and came to many, and in them found its own space.




posted on iwrotefiction by rosevoc2.august 2012

Lunch Poems - Callie Garnett