It seems like I blinked and summer was already half over. My
son is almost done his summer job as a Boy Scout camp adult counselor, and
before I know it, we will be moving him in for his first semester of college. We
have also planned a couple of short vacations, and we will be welcoming back
our wonderful international student as she returns from Korea the end of August.
Where did you go, July?
A few bits of poetry news:
First, I learned that my poem “Señor
Morning” was accepted for the next issue of US
1 Worksheets. I’m happy to be appearing in their fine journal once again.
Second, Robert Brewer announced a few more winners for his
Poem-a-Day Challenge Contest on his Poetic Asides blog. Robert has a daunting
task, slogging through literally thousands of entries and picking the ten best
from each day of April to send to his guest judges for a final decision. I’m
happy to report that my poem “Romantics” won for Day 15! It was selected by the judge of the day, poet
Barbara Hamby, and it will appear with the other winners later this year in an anthology,
Poem Your Heart Out, to be published
by Words Dance Press. I also had three other poems make the top 10 among the
fifteen days that have been judged so far – there are still another 15 days of
winners to be announced. A couple of
other poets have had multiple wins for this month so far, so I still have a
chance of getting another winning poem, but I’m quite happy with the one win. Thanks to Robert and Ms. Hamby for their
appreciation of my work.
Third, I was invited as a featured poet to the monthly
reading series “Poetry Aloud and Alive” at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore in
Philadelphia, last Friday the 25th. It
went very well – they are a talented and very appreciative group of fellow
poets, and they really seemed to enjoy my work. Thanks to Mike Cohen and Dave
Worrell for inviting me to read.
Music: Recently my wife and I attended two music
events that we thoroughly enjoyed. The
first was the movie Jersey Boys,
about the 60’s singing group The Four Seasons, directed by Clint Eastwood. The other was “Classical Mystery Tour”, a
great live concert featuring a Beatles tribute band backed by the Philadelphia
Orchestra. The band was really good, and you can’t do much better than the
Philadelphia Orchestra for your back-up musicians. They played a variety of
Beatles songs, featuring especially the ones that were originally recorded with
orchestral arrangements, like “The Long and Winding Road”, “All You Need is
Love,” “Yesterday”, and so on. You haven’t lived till you have heard “A Day in
the Life” performed live with a full orchestra.
They also did two solo numbers, John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Paul
McCartney’s “Live and Let Die”. There
was even an arrangement of the head-trippy “Tomorrow Never Knows” – it’s not
easy to replicate electronic effects with an orchestra, but they pulled it off
admirably. The Kimmel Center in Philadelphia is a wonderful venue too, by the
way.
Poem: Once in a while I feature poems by other
poets, and today I thought I’d introduce you to one from a new collection, Sisters and Courtesans, by my talented
friend Anna M. Evans. This is her first full-length book, an impressive
collection of sonnets in the voices of women through the ages, from a vestal
virgin and a geisha, to Victorian streetwalker and a gangster’s moll. The book is available on Amazon.com.
My Life as a Russian
Orthodox Nun
by Anna M. Evans
My grand duchess took orders long before
the trouble started. I was glad to go
with Europe heading for a bloody war.
And then the revolution struck. The snow
was knee deep on the night they came for us -
she was an aristocrat, I guess, although
she'd sold her jewels to help the poor, owned less
than anyone. They held us in a school,
then gave us to the cheka.
I confess
I was afraid. But my lady kept her cool
even as they threw us down, tossed in
the hand grenades. She said, The golden rule
is: don't let the
bastards have a single thing.
She squeezed my hand and then began to sing.
[©2014, White Violet
Press; used with permission of the author]
