Sean Spicer, back in the news

It seems Mr. Spicer has made his way back into the news, parodying the press conferences that made him (in)famous.  What I wonder is how much he honestly regrets the lies he foisted upon America?  True, he had a new job, one at the summit of his profession, but in taking it he was expected to play the fool, which is not something I think he expected, and certainly not something that is traditionally associated with the position of White House Press Secretary.  Repeatedly he has said that it was an honor to serve in the Trump administration, but now he is saying he regrets comments (about crowd size) from his first press conference.  Is he saying it was an honor to lie for Trump, but now he regrets it?  Whatever he means, it seems like all good capitalists he is off to the speaking circuit to rake in big bucks, mouthing whatever mea culpas are required along the way.  Let us hope that at some point he actually apologizes to America for the obvious incompetence of his tenure in office.  It is not unreasonable to expect the Press Secretary of the President of the United States to give an honest account of a situation, especially when the White House version is so easily disproven.  There is a difference between spin and lying Mr. Spicer, and it is unfortunate that difference escapes you.

Resounding echoes in other poetry

From Frances Densmore's Chippewa Music:

The Sky Will Resound

it will resound finely
the sky
when I come making a noise


Because I read the Neruda first, this reminds me of something from The Book of Questions, it is here someplace, but let me transcribe it below, though I doubt it will make sense to anyone but me.

XLIX

When I see the sea once more
will the sea have seen ornate seen me?

Why do the waves ask me 
the same questions I ask them?

And why do they strike the rock
with so much wasted passion?

Don't they get tired of repeating
their declaration to the sand?


The sky resounding with the questions of the sea?  I am not sure what brought these two together in my mind, but I did think of the Neruda when I read Densmore piece.  Minds are odd and they forge connections were they will.  Densmore is the earlier work, so what reminding me of which should probably be reversed, but I read one well before I read the other, and that is the timetable I am working through.  I can say one thing with certainty though, the connection has nothing to do with alcohol, as there was no consumption of such.

Not poetry...

For whatever reason, no poetry in this entry.  I have been enjoying the poetry, and I find that placing those poems I like here does a nice job of collating them for future reference, as my books have all sorts of little post-it tags sticking out the sides of them, but I don't know what any of them are for, except to mark something I like.

Since our news cycle is impossibly fast these days, I don't even know how to keep this update on any but the most outrageous stories.  Twitter gets most of my attention for that these days, at least for the sharing part.  I still think this blog will be a bit of this and that, as long as I am doing a bit of this and that.  I have been reading poetry, mm romance novels, playing ESO, and tweeting out the news, which doesn't really make it sound like I am doing anything with my life, and that is probably true.

Poor Dreamspinner Press, they had a webpage malfunction that automatically added free shipping (to a trade show in Paris) and had to cancel orders.  Either inputting correct ship to addresses and billing was going to be to much of a burden, or they thought it would just be cleaning, so they did the cancel with a request to the buyer to place a new order.  I did, but I ordered less, such is the way things go when I am not browsing the internet for books at 3am.

I will probably move back into putting poems that grab my attention in here, at least for the time being, but I wanted to touch base, with however many readers I actually do have.

Poem on words...

This short one is called Horses, by Witter Bynner:

Horses

Words are hoops
Through which to leap upon meanings,
Which are horses' backs,
Bare, moving.

Like a reason to enjoy poetry... that sort of describes this one for me.  

Surprise translated from the Spanish

Here is a poem by Mario Melendez, translated from the Spanish by Eloisa Amezcua:

Future Memories

My sister woke me very early
that morning and told me
"Get up, you have to come see this
the ocean's filled with stars"
Delighted by the revelation
I dressed quickly and thought
if the ocean's filled with stars
I must take the first flight
and collect all the fish from the sky

I was caught off guard by the brilliant logic at the end, which it is, and reminded of how wonderful other cultural perspectives can be.  

This poem is from the September 2017 issue of Poetry.

Poetry, just because

I really didn't intend this to become a poetry blog or a place where I just posted poems that I liked, but that seems to be the direction it is inhabiting, at least temporarily.  This evening I came across a fun one by William Carlos Williams in which the words for me dance just like the title, "The Dance":

The Dance

In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess, 
the dancers go round, they go round and 
around, the squeal and the blare and the 
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them.  Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.

Hopefully it brings a smile to you, as it did for me, my eyes flittering with all the repetitions, and enjoying the humor that I saw.

It's Labor Day, so let's post some Rumi

From "The Great Wagon":

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
...

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

Excerpt From: Coleman Barks. “The Essential Rumi - reissue.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-essential-rumi-reissue/id381183707?mt=11

Both are from the same poem, and initially I was only going to post the longer section, but I changed my mind and added the earlier bit.