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 "There is so much we don't understand about poetry. No other utterance, we know, gives more lasting dimensions to our beliefs than that spiraling intertwining of music, image, and conviction. Yet we cannot see into the depths of that magical fusion, we do not understand how it can transmute any subject matter into a presence." -- Serge Hughes
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"He never described himself as a poet or his work as poetry. The fact that the lines do not come to the edge of the page is no guarantee. Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation. He hated to argue about the techniques of verse. The poem is a dirty, bloody, burning thing that has to be grabbed first with bare hands. Once the fire celebrated Light, the dirt Humility, the blood Sacrifice. Now the poets are professional fire-eaters, freelancing at any carnival. The fire goes down easily and honors no one in particular.
"Once, for awhile, he seemed to serve something other than himself. Those were the only poems he ever wrote." Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game I met Chris Martin through my work with kids with autism. He is a poet with a deep contemplative streak who has published several books. Here is a vertical poem he shared with me.
Rising over time vertiginous this timid middling life and no less miraculous over time me and you meandering and more dear or more idea than people I want to plead want to be plea and flue the hole the fire leaps through over time under cover of brick walled darknesses the fire feeds on air to meet whatever doesn’t groan and cleave against this cold and whitest winter - Chris Martin You can get to know him better through this website: https://onbeing.org/author/chris-martin/ there are not many songs
there is only one song the animals lope to it the fish swim to it the sun circles to it the stars rise the snow falls the grass grows there is no end to the song and no beginning the singer may die but the song is forever truth is the name of the song and the song is truth. -- Robert Lax  The world
seems far away The world seems far away The world seems far away today. The world seems ill at ease The world feels ill at ease. The world seems ill. As I walk home alone today As I'm walking home alone The world seems far away The world seems ill at ease The world seems far away today. 7/29/19 LOVE
LOVE Love Love Shall I tell you a secret Shall I tell you a secret My love? Love Love Love is the secret Love is the secret My love. DJW 5/14/19  Love and Light
Love and Light the circle burns all day, all night. 2/15 On Angels
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence. Yet I believe in you, messengers. There, where the world is turned inside out, a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts, you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams. Short is your stay here: now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear in a melody repeated by a bird, or in the smell of apples at the close of day when the light makes the orchards magic. They say somebody has invented you but to me this does not sound convincing for humans invented themselves as well. The voice -- no doubt it is a valid proof, as it can belong only to radiant creatures weightless and winged (after all, why not?} girdled with the lightning. I have heard that voice many a time when asleep and, what is strange, I understood more or less an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue. day draws near another one do what you can Czeslaw Millosz, 1911 - 2004 I've been reading the biography of my favorite poet, Robert Lax, called Pure Act, by Michael N. McGregor. Beautiful story of a beautiful contemplative poet. This is a quote from Lax that I read last night: "This just occurred to me: my idea of a good contemplative is something more like a cow than it is like a dancing master." Ha!  If a tree falls in the forest
and there is no poet to notice it is it still a poem? I've never thought of poetry as something someone just makes up and writes down. No more than love is just an emotion. The reason we feel love is that we are made of it and surrounded by it. The reason we write poetry is that we are made of it and surrounded by it. The world itself is composed of poetry. We take note of it or not, write it down or not, but we don't invent it. The joy of reading a great poem is in the recognition of our own world, isn't it? Or so it seems to me. IT GOES WITHOUT It goes without saying, there is poetry everywhere you look. But who, these days will look? It goes without saying. Doug Westendorp 7/16 |
Doug WestendorpI have written some poetry, and translated a few short poems from the ancient Chinese. Archives
November 2021
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