Time for A Pause

_{Crocus, Sure Sign of Spring, photograph by Mary Clark}

I’ve decided to pause my blog for a while. I know “to pause” is a privilege not everyone in the world has. When war, natural disasters, and famine hit, people cannot say, I think I’ll take some time off from this. I’m fortunate and grateful for that. What does it mean? Consider being idle, unproductive, lazy, possibly losing meaning in your life, is that the same as taking a break from the routine? I hope not. The value of a pause can mean reflection leading to change or renewed energy to re-engage with many if not all of the same challenges.

Pauses are built into our lives, in religious holidays and national holidays, even birthdays are meant to give people time to stop and reflect and do something different that day, or do nothing much at all! Taking a vacation usually means vacating a space and our sense of time often alters. Then there was the pandemic, when the pause was not voluntary, and many of us wondered what we would do to “fill” the days. I filled my belly and gained the usual 15 pandemic pounds (which I’ve since lost, well, most of it).

So, without more ado, here’s my pause.

And a pause poem.

Theodore Roethke’s poem, The Pause

I have walked past my widest range,
But still the landscape does not change.
. . .
My eyes are used to sights like these:
I stand between familiar trees.

Two wind-blown hemlocks make a door
To country I shall soon explore.

For the whole poem, visit the Poetry Foundation

Peace on Earth, Songs for the Holidays

Hello, blogger friends and readers, I wish you Happy Holidays! This season is filled with the songs and echoes of eternal joy that we sense, and of the peaceful and creative life this joy creates.

Bing Crosby and David Bowie September 11, 1977

Christmas Bells

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Christmas Mail

by Ted Kooser

Cards in each mailbox,
angel, manger, star and lamb,
as the rural carrier,
driving the snowy roads,
hears from her bundles
the plaintive bleating of sheep,
the shuffle of sandals,
the clopping of camels.

for the rest of the poem, please go to the Poetry Foundation

My books are on Amazon (print and digital) and Smashwords (digital).

Into The Fire: A Poet’s Journey through Hell’s Kitchen on Amazon

Into The Fire: A Poet’s Journey through Hell’s Kitchen on Smashwords 50% discount until January 1, 2024

The Horizon Seekers, a novel, on Amazon

The Horizon Seekers, a novel, on Smashwords

Tally: An Intuitive Life, All Things That Matter Press, a creative memoir, on Amazon

Children of Light, a poetry novel, Ten Penny Players’ BardPress, on Amazon (Kindle Unlimited)

My book, Community, is being revised and updated with photographs. It will be available early next year.

Ella Fitzgerald and Frosty the Snowman (for Mister Muse)

See you in 2024!

Give Thanks for the Past, the Future is AI

The world has changed, once again. In my lifetime the internet and the smart phone. Ecommerce and Emojis. While we were busy fighting for old paradigms, the computer techs staged their own revolution. They do not understand it, they only follow the paths that open up as they dither onward. Will it lead to good or bad or a mixed up world that does not resemble the past mixed up world?

A poem about Artificial Intelligence, “Poet Wrestling with [Artificial] Intelligence” by Rosebud Ben-Oni.

An AI Cover of “Sultans of Swing” featuring the “voices” along with doctored images of Donald Trump and Joe Biden (removed from YouTube shortly after I viewed it) showed them as aging rock stars, and almost made it seem possible that peace could exist between them and among us. An alternate universe.

A computer’s ability to learn at mach speed can be of great benefit to humanity in the fields of medicine, climate change, and other sciences. Can it be used to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? End hunger and war in Sudan and Darfur?

I’m unsure whether our ability to hope and envision a better future is delusional or life-saving. This poem works with one of these answers: “Poem with Human Intelligence” by J. Estanislao Lopez.

OpenAI uses all the work it’s scoffed up on the internet, original writing and artwork by actual human beings who posted their work online for free, and now it belongs to the machines. AI uses these works to generate simulacrums. To some extent we already live in a human-created world of simulacrums, where nature exists in parks and preserves and farms, and families exist on Facebook. AI is building on this, like new towns on the sites of old ruins. Except the the creators of the ruins were alive and struggling to survive and thought their lives had purpose. We’re now giving purpose in the form of tasks and missions to computers.

In the New Yorker, an OpenAI poem in the style of Philip Larkin talks about the “Singularity” in which humans and machine merge.

The Singularity

The Singularity is coming up
To meet me at the station
With flowers and a smile and
Some bad news.

I HOPE all this is not true. Not entirely or forever, because thankfully, things change and sometimes there’s a Return to Innocence.

Return To Innocence

Lessons of Humanity

With what is going on in the world it is hard to hear the poetry, to take the time for its lessons of humanity, for art’s meaning in our short lives. I thought of doing a selection of short poems. Writing, though, has its way of coming on, pushing through like a birth that cannot be denied. I feel for the people caught up in war, famine, and hopelessness around the world. My heart goes out to both Israelis and Palestinians, and to hope for a change in heart for those infused with dogma and hatred, and to the valiant Ukrainians and closed-off-from-information Russians. I think of where I get the news, reminding myself to look further, read more, communicate more. At the end of this blog, I am adding some of my thoughts.

Different takes on the world as it is today. Some hopeful.

Gate A-4, by Naomi Shihab Nye

and

Mimesis
by Fady Joudah
 
My daughter
                        wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
 
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
 
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
 
From Alight

Island
by Langston Hughes
 
Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:
 
I see the island
Still ahead somehow.
 
I see the island
And its sands are fair:
 
Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.

Aharon Shabtai is a famous Jewish poet. His poem, “Lotem Abdel Shafi”, includes the lines:

My heart goes out with love to those beyond the fence;

only toward them can one really advance, that is, make progress.

My friend Richard Spiegel wrote this after the October 7 attack.

Haven’t turned 
on the radio yet today. 
Staying away from the news.  
Everything changes 
moment by moment.

Tumbling through 
unbearable lost bearings
arms reaching out
swinging slapping 
bruising bodies
where is an embrace?

In the distance 
rumors of mountains
while here
shadows cast 
by homes
along streets
lined with trees.

Counting 
steps and breaths.
What counts?

Thoughts on Israel and Palestine October 2023

What does an Israeli ground invasion accomplish now? I don’t believe a military solution exists for Israel. It’s a propaganda war. Palestinian and Israeli spokesmen and women are spinning one-sided stories of victimization. Neither side admits any responsibility for the current situation.

Right now the narrative is that the U.S. and President Biden fully support the Israeli war machine. Listening to Biden’s speech I hear him advising caution, thinking of long-term goals, putting the hostages’ safety first, providing humanitarian aid, and following the rules of war, that is, trying to minimize civilian casualties. Palestinians wanted more sympathy for their plight. This is because we are all human. We need to be recognized as having meaningful lives, lives that are important as any other lives. 

The cycle is the same every time, and with so much distrust the truth about specific events doesn’t matter, which means people can fabricate narratives that support their side.

The cycle. Every time the peace process was making progress, an attack by a suicide bomber or gunman would be carried out against Israelis by a Palestinian extremist who rejected the existence of the state of Israel and therefore a two-state solution. Wouldn’t that have been calculated in after the first several times? Yes, there’s going to be an attack by someone who doesn’t want peace and co-existence between the two, and we know that, and when it happens we will not be deterred, we’ll continue the peace negotiations. But no, it worked every time. And it continued to be a tool of those who opposed peace in the region.

Narratives. How easy it is to descend into conspiracy theories. What if? Netanyahu and his right-wing government knew they were losing popularity, and on hearing there might be an attack, made sure there was minimal security along the Gaza border. They thought the attack wouldn’t be that bad. Then they could rally people around them again. The attack turned out to be horrific. But that only plays even more into Netanyahu’s hands. A country’s not going to change presidents during wartime, right? Rather than hold him and his government and the military leaders accountable, Israeli citizens appear to support a full-scale response. And we hear the war may last ten years!

Truth. There are alternatives to bombing and a ground war. Strengthening the border, beefing up security, infiltrating Hamas, stopping the flow of money and arms, judicious use of special forces, changes in policy, diplomacy and public relations might be a better course.

The hospital attack happened just before Biden was to meet with other leaders in the region. Who benefits from this attack? Hamas or another jihadist group, since they do not want peace with Israel. Their stated purpose is to end the state of Israel. Another possibility, the hard right Israeli government which thrives off conflict with Palestinians. Biden was suggesting changes in direction that Netanyahu and his followers oppose, such as working with the Palestinian Authority, which means looking at root causes, and showing support for Arab leaders in the region.

When Yasser Arafat changed from violence to diplomacy, Israeli leaders worked to de-legitimize him, saying, once a terrorist, always a terrorist. They undermined the PLO’s efforts to seek a peaceful resolution. Arafat came close to succeeding when President Clinton tried to broker a deal with Israel, but he could not accept the two-state solution as presented because it meant Palestinians would be living in two separate areas (West Bank and Gaza), and he knew his people would not accept that.

In the intervening years, Israel has continued to build Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, an area not granted to them by the original U.N. agreement. President Obama urged Israel to extend its moratorium on further settlements but stopped short of calling them illegal, in a balancing act that has become wearisome for all. Unfortunately, more settlements were built.

The jihadist movement has only grown stronger because of this ongoing conflict. War serves the purpose of Iran and its vision of an Islamic caliphate or allied Islamic states.

Richard writes, Peaceful coexistence is a reality that must be embraced. People do not have to live in constant states of war, or threats of war. But not in a Pax Romana (any state of peace imposed by a strong nation on weaker or defeated nations).

By one-sidedly supporting Israel or the Palestinians, we keep people in their silos, and in endless conflict. Making excuses for either side, justifying the taking of hostages or displacing people from their homes, should never be acceptable. Root causes must include the actions of Israel but also the Islamic jihadist groups (and their sponsors) that harbor among peaceful Arab and other regional citizens and disrupt any attempts at peace. 

Jumping Into Fall

This is an eclectic blog post, but isn’t that what a change of seasons is about? One world receding while another comes on? Every September a small town in Southwest Virginia hosts a music festival called Bristol Rhythm and Roots. It’s mostly country and country rock music, but includes the blues and jazz and blended music. Crowds come into town, attending concerts indoors and outdoors. Most are outdoors and the weather plays a part: thunderstorms and hot as summer, or a chill in the air. The audience dresses for the festival in Nashville chic: ripped jeans, short denim skirts and jackets, bell bottoms, or just ordinary folks. One older man I saw was sporting a Margaritaville tee-shirt. From Friday night through Sunday noon downtown rocks with amplified music: drums, electric guitars and fiddles. I live nearby and can hear concerts on one of the stages when I open my living room window. After the festival the town seems strangely quiet. My neighbors and I have to readjust, some gladly and others like me feeling the music’s absence.

Among the groups this year: 49 Winchester’s Russell County Line really captures what it’s like living out here, the singer’s accent Southern but with a hearty edge of Appalachian Country.

Others I like are Amythyst Kiah, Sons of the East, Momma Molasses, and Allison Russell.

Watch out for this young group: Arcy Drive.

RIP Jimmy Buffett. He kept me in contact with the ocean and the coast, my true home. He was a national treasure and a darn good poet!

Now, to collect leaves from ancient times, a return to Old England. From Solomon and Saturn:

A woman and man must bring into the world
a child by birth. A tree on the earth must
lose its leaves; the branches mourn.
Those who are ready must go; the doomed die
and every day struggle against their departure
from the world.

Old English:

Sceal wif ond wer in woruld cennan
bearn mid gebyrdum. Beam sceal on eorðan
leafum liþan, leomu gnornian.
Fus sceal feran, fæge sweltan
ond dogra gehwam ymb gedal sacan
middangeardes.

A little while the leaves are green;
then they wither again, fall to the earth,
and die, turn to dust.
Just so fall those who for a long time
continue in their crimes, live in wickedness,
hide their treasures, hoard them eagerly
in safe places at the pleasure of the devil.

Old English:

Lytle hwile leaf beoð grene;
ðonne hie eft fealewiað, feallað on eorðan
and forweorniað, weorðað to duste.
Swa ðonne gefeallað ða ðe fyrena ær
lange læstað, lifiað him in mane,
hydað heahgestreon, healdað georne
on fæstenne feondum to willan.

Translated on the blog, A Clerk of Oxford.

Jane Austen weaves character, action, and setting together so that everything falls into place. In this case, from one of my favorite books of hers, Persuasion, the season is Fall.

Anne’s object was not to be in the way of anybody; and where the narrow paths across the fields made many separations necessary, to keep with her brother and sister. Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. She occupied her mind as much as possible in such-like musings and quotations; but it was not possible, that when within reach of Captain Wentworth’s conversation with either of the Miss Musgroves, she should not try to hear it… After one of the many praises of the day, which were continually bursting forth, Captain Wentworth added —

“What glorious weather for the Admiral and my sister! They meant to take a long drive this morning; perhaps we may hail them from some of these hills. They talked of coming into this side of the country. I wonder whereabouts they will upset to-day. Oh! it does happen very often, I assure you; but my sister makes nothing of it; she would as lieve be tossed out as not.”

“Ah! You make the most of it, I know,” cried Louisa; “but if it were really so, I should do just the same in her place. If I loved a man as she loves the Admiral, I would be always with him, nothing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him than driven safely by anybody else.”

It was spoken with enthusiasm.

“Had you?” cried he, catching the same tone; “I honour you!” And there was silence between them for a little while.

Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth, and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory.

🙂

See you in October!

From Silence to Song

The idea that sound exists out there in space is intriguing. A continuous rushing sound, with intermittent booms or crackles and hints of melody? Scientists believe they have captured the sound of the “big bang.” Gravitational waves roll over the earth, creating vibrations in the fabric of spacetime (a faint but pervasive hum).

The sounds of the earth are all around us, drowned out by our own noise, unless we walk into quiet spaces, or simply listen: the wind in the trees, birdsong morning and evening, crickets and cicadas in summer, the hush after a snowfall. Our human voices also keep us connected, sometimes too much, others not enough. Silence is a form of speech too. Let thoughts and feelings fill the spaces between us.

Stone
By Danusha Lameris

And what am I doing here, in a yurt on the side of a hill
at the ragged edge of the tree line, sheltered by conifer and bay,
watching the wind lift, softly, the dry leaves of bamboo?
I lie on the floor and let the sun fall across my back, 
as I have been for the past hour, listening to the distant traffic,
to the calls of birds I cannot name. Once, I had so much
I wanted to accomplish. Now, all I know is that I want
to get closer to it – to the rocky slope, the orange petals
of the nasturtium adorning the fence, the wind’s sudden breath.
Close enough that I can almost feel, at night, the slight pressure
of the stars against my skin. Isn’t this what the mystics meant
when they spoke of forsaking the world? Not to turn our backs to it,
only to its elaborate plots, its complicated pleasures – 
in favor of the pine’s long shadow, the slow song of the grass.
I’m always forgetting, and remembering, and forgetting.
I want to leave something here in the rough dirt: a twig,
a small stone – perhaps this poem – a reminder to begin,
again, by listening carefully with the body’s rapt attention
– remember? To this. to this.

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm
by Wallace Stevens
 
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
 
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
 
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
 
Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
 
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
 
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
 
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
 
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
 
From The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens.

One of my favorite authors is David George Haskell. His latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and The Crisis Of Sensory Extinction. March 1st 2022 (US and Australia), April 21 2022 (UK), reveals how sound is born and holds us together, human and animal, within the story of the earth from creation to present day. Here are “sounds from the book.“

A World of Singers
by Ralph Stevens
 
We live in a world of singers
and the song is loud or soft, sweet
or shrill, sometimes silent. But listen.
With a storm approaching someone
shelters a robin’s nest.
Another whistles to a black dog on the beach.
One laughs to herself, reading alone in the kitchen.
In the woodlot someone grunts as he swings the ax.
There’s the sound trees make
after the wind stops and there are those
who look into the eyes of nurses
coming off the night shift,
those greeting the undertaker when he arrives
with his unique instruments.
A man has just argued with his wife.
Now he stands alone on the dark porch,
watching the rain. One hums at the workbench,
carving a delicate bird (last night she
groaned with relief after a phone call).
One sighs as he imagines Odysseus
tied to the mast, and one
looks up when a bell rings
and a customer enters his shop.
One is astonished hearing the fox
bark its own peculiar song and one
just stands on the rocks,
listening to the sea.
 
From At Bunker Cove.

“The Sound of Silence” by Wuauquikuna, Ecuadorian musicians

Music Video

Tomorrow
by Barbara Crooker
 
there will be sun, scalloped by clouds,
ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong.
It will be a temperate seventy-five, low
humidity. For twenty-four hours,
all politicians will be silent. Reality
programs will vanish from TV, replaced
by the “snow” that used to decorate
our screens when reception wasn’t
working. Soldiers will toss their weapons
in the grass. The oceans will stop
their inexorable rise. No one
will have to sit on a committee.
When twilight falls, the aurora borealis
will cut off cell phones, scramble the internet.
We’ll play flashlight tag, hide and seek,
decorate our hair with fireflies, spin
until we’re dizzy, collapse
on the dew-decked lawn and look up,
perhaps for the first time, to read the long lines
of cold code written in the stars….

See you in September!

Nitty Gritty Poems

_{Coneflowers, photo by Mary Clark}

Summer is dirt, earthworms, tilling of the soil, pruning and weeding, choosing what lives and does not, surprises and anticipation of harvest. These poems celebrate the nitty gritty of our existence and the “big” things that move below the surface or in the celestial sphere.

Late Ripeness
By Czeslaw Milosz
Translated by Robert Hass and Czeslaw Milosz
 
Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,  
I felt a door opening in me and I entered  
the clarity of early morning.  
 
One after another my former lives were departing,  
like ships, together with their sorrow.  
 
And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas  
assigned to my brush came closer,  
ready now to be described better than they were before.  
 
I was not separated from people,  
grief and pity joined us.  
We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King.  
 
For where we come from there is no division  
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.  
 
We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part  
of the gift we received for our long journey.  
 
Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago—  
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror  
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel  
staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us,  
waiting for a fulfillment.  
 
I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,  
as are all men and women living at the same time,  
whether they are aware of it or not.  

Bad News Good News
Marjorie Saiser
 
I was at a camp in the country,
you were home in the city,
and bad news had come to you.
 
You texted me as I sat
with others around a campfire.
It had been a test you and I
 
hadn’t taken seriously,
hadn’t worried about.
You texted the bad news word
 
cancer. I read it in that circle
around the fire. There was
singing and laughter to my right and left
 
and there was that word on the screen.
I tried to text back but,
as often happened in that county,
 
my reply would not send, so I went to higher ground.
I stood on a hill above the river and sent you
the most beautiful words I could manage,
 
put them together, each following each. Under
Ursa Major, Polaris, Cassiopeia, a space station flashing,
I said what had been said
 
many times, important times, foolish times:
those words soft-bodied humans say when the news is bad.
The I love you we wrap around our
 
need and hurl at the cosmos: Take this, you heartless
nothing and everything, take this.
I chose words to fling into the dark toward you
 
while the gray-robed coyote came out of hiding
and the badger wandered the unlit hill
and the lark rested herself in tall grasses;
 
I sent the most necessary syllables
we have, after all this time the ones we want to hear:
I said Home, I said Love, I said Tomorrow.

_{Viral Rain, photo by Mary Clark}

Dear Dirt

Sharon Olds

Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you,
I thought that you were only the background
for the leading characters—the plants
and animals and human animals.
It’s as if I had loved only the stars
and not the sky which gave them space
in which to shine. Subtle, various,
sensitive, you are the skin of our terrain,
you’re our democracy. When I understood
I had never honored you as a living
equal, I was ashamed of myself,
as if I had not recognized
a character who looked so different from me,
but now I can see us all, made of the
same basic materials—
cousins of that first exploding from nothing—
in our intricate equation together. O dirt,
help us find ways to serve your life,
you who have brought us forth, and fed us,
and who at the end will take us in
and rotate with us, and wobble, and orbit.

A song by Ferron, sung by Cheryl Wheeler; if you don’t know Cheryl, I recommend you get acquainted. She’s a singer and songwriter. #American #music

_{Ain’t Life A Brook, Cheryl Wheeler}

Song For The Rainy Season

Elizabeth Bishop

Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.

In a dim age
of water
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back,
holding them both,
house and rock,
in a private cloud.

At night, on the roof,
blind drops crawl
and the ordinary brown
owl gives us proof
he can count:
five times–always five–
he stamps and takes off
after the fat frogs that,
shrilling for love,
clamber and mount.

House, open house
to the white dew
and the milk-white sunrise
kind to the eyes,
to membership
of silver fish, mouse,
bookworms,
big moths; with a wall
for the mildew’s
ignorant map;

darkened and tarnished
by the warm touch
of the warm breath,
maculate, cherished;
rejoice! For a later
era will differ.
(O difference that kills
or intimidates, much
of all our small shadowy
life!) Without water

the great rock will stare
unmagnetized, bare,
no longer wearing
rainbows or rain,
the forgiving air
and the high fog gone;
the owls will move on
and the several
waterfalls shrivel
in the steady sun.

Another cool poem: Robert Frost’s A Line-Storm Song.

Do you have any other poems you like?

Some of my books:

The Horizon Seekers, a novel of work, play, and pursuing one’s dreams of a better life

Passages, coming of age in the 1970s, sex, romance, fame, and an artist’s life

Children of Light, poetry novel #summersale #beachreads #KindleUnlimited

Thanks, and see you in August! Mary

 

Future Blog

I will be blogging once a month during June, July and August. I treasure the connections I’ve made in the blogosphere and will continue to read others’ work.

A small literary magazine published my poem about a Pride festival and parade in my town. I’m in a mostly rural area with three towns or cities, known as Tri-Cities, in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. It’s a conservative area, making this event more remarkable. However, a strong progressive presence is also in the area. Though I am not gay or transgender, I support people’s freedom to be who and what they are. In my poem I tried to convey the good feeling that emanated from the TriPride Festival.

TriPride Parade and Festival

(Kingsport and Johnson City, TN and Bristol TN/VA)

In the style of the Song of Amergin*

We came holding rainbow flags
We came with 22 floats
We came with 1000 marchers
We’re 10,000 strong and peaceful
We’re the flood of humanity
We’re mothers, sisters, brothers
We’re cousins, and friends
We know love can be lost
We know the rush to judgment
We know our song comes from the mountains
We sing and our music flows over town
We know our song is heard ’round the mountains
We’re the fire and flood of humanity
We see a few mutter and turn away
We know we belong
We’re here with rainbow-striped socks
We’re here to dispel hate and promote care
We’re here with love as our companion
We’re here

*“English poetic education should, really, begin not with Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin.” – Robert Graves

Published in Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, Volume 43, No.11, May 2023

Passages

Passages is now available in paperback.

The 1970s. New ideas on how to live. Being young in the city, searching for identity and love and the most amazing life possible – that was the story of many back then. They were trailblazers. Martin is one of them.

See you next month!

Passages

Passages, by Mary Clark

The 1970s. Anything goes. Sexual liberation. New ideas on how to live. Being young in the city, searching for identity, and love, and the most amazing life possible – that was the story of many back then. They were trailblazers. 

Passages, a young man’s coming of age in 1970’s New York City, reflects the greater panorama of people seeking freedom of expression. 

Martin is an aspiring writer who explores the tangled topics of love and living an alternative lifestyle as an artist. He also lives within his male and female identities which fuel his dreams and fantasies. His family history of violence, his mental instability, and a friend’s death spur him to escape suburban life.

In the city, Martin meets Simone, an actress on Broadway. A strange first encounter reveals a new self to him. Shortly afterward, he meets sexy, volatile Rafaela, who works in a Times Square restaurant. He struggles to nourish his independent self as he engages in these two challenging relationships.

Rafaela is pragmatic and driven. Simone is on her way to a legendary career. What will Martin do with the gifts and burdens life has given him?

Passages is an exploration of sexual awakening, social change, and a writer’s life.

Content warning: descriptions or references to sexual assault, erotic dreams, domestic violence, and mental health episodes.

Kindle only (paperback will come later)

These books are related to Passages:

Into The Fire: A Poet’s Journey through Hell’s Kitchen

Children of Light, a poetry novel, Ten Penny Players’ BardPress

Covenant: Growing Up in Florida’s Lost Paradise, a novella, Kindle Unlimited

Passages is Here

Starting today, you can pre-order my new book, Passages, going live April 17. Passages is a young man’s coming-of-age story in “anything goes” 1970’s New York City.

Martin lives within his male and female identities to the extent he has two personas. He identifies as male, but he also understands the world as Maryanne. As he evolves into adult sexuality, he dreams, fantasizes, and explores real life relationships. Escaping a suburban nightmare, he moves to the city. He fantasizes about meeting Simone (who he also perceives as Ethan), an actress on Broadway and wills himself to act, causing a collision of needs and personalities. He descends into temporary insanity, contemplating violence. After Simone leaves for the coast, he meets Rafaela, a woman who works in a Times Square restaurant who tests him even more than Simone. Rafaela is a hard-working immigrant. Simone is on her way to a legendary career. Can Martin untangle his childhood experiences of abuse, his mental health issues, and his complex identity?

I hope readers will enjoy the characters, drawn from “real life,” including the driven Rafaela, irrepressible scholarly Frankie, gifted poet Sally, poetry series organizer Richard, and the ambitious Simone.

Romance, sexual awakening, gender fluidity, celebrity, friendship. Descriptions of books, theater, poetry, film, and music.

Content warning: domestic violence, gun violence, sexual assault, mental health. A few erotic passages.

Other books by the author related to Passages:

Into The Fire: A Poet’s Journey through Hell’s Kitchen

Children of Light, Ten Penny Players’ BardPress

Covenant: Growing Up in Florida’s Lost Paradise, KDP Select, Kindle Unlimited