Brian...this is just so lovely. Your poem makes me feel as if I'm with you painting that poem, including that loooong drop down the middle. I'm assuming this is the painting you did? So colorful and vibrant. I used to paint some, but not in a long time. I found it to be so freeing.
Wow. Thanks for the feedback, Pris. It's always gratifying to "reach" somebody through a poem. The "buddhist script running down the middle" is Nam Myoho Renge Kyo in midaeval Japanese running script down the middle of the Gohonzon, the mandala we Soka Gakkai Buddhists focus on when we chant -- which I approximated in the painting. You give me an idea. I could post photos of the actual pictures that inspired the poem. Maybe though it would detract from the reader's subjective experience of the poem itself. (I'm not a huge multimedia fan for that reason.) I'll think about that.
I was enjoying browsing through the magazine and thought I might send them some poems, but then I discovered, when I went to the submissions page, that they will no longer be publishing poems after this issue. Oh well. At least you got in under the wire!
Actually, Andrew, I think it's a little bit weird that a journal dedicated to "fresh observations" has discontinued poetry. I mean, "go with the flow" or not, if they lost their poetry editor they could have sent out a call to all those poets they had published. How could that carrot be more freshly observed via prose?
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Brian...this is just so lovely. Your poem makes me feel as if I'm with you painting that poem, including that loooong drop down the middle. I'm assuming this is the painting you did? So colorful and vibrant. I used to paint some, but not in a long time. I found it to be so freeing.
Wow. Thanks for the feedback, Pris. It's always gratifying to "reach" somebody through a poem. The "buddhist script running down the middle" is Nam Myoho Renge Kyo in midaeval Japanese running script down the middle of the Gohonzon, the mandala we Soka Gakkai Buddhists focus on when we chant -- which I approximated in the painting. You give me an idea. I could post photos of the actual pictures that inspired the poem. Maybe though it would detract from the reader's subjective experience of the poem itself. (I'm not a huge multimedia fan for that reason.) I'll think about that.
I was enjoying browsing through the magazine and thought I might send them some poems, but then I discovered, when I went to the submissions page, that they will no longer be publishing poems after this issue. Oh well. At least you got in under the wire!
Actually, Andrew, I think it's a little bit weird that a journal dedicated to "fresh observations" has discontinued poetry. I mean, "go with the flow" or not, if they lost their poetry editor they could have sent out a call to all those poets they had published. How could that carrot be more freshly observed via prose?
... or rather, not be more freshly observed than via poetry? (Framing it more positively)
All this talk about carrots is making me hungry.
Better than the stick.
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