Friday, February 4, 2011

Reflections: The Weather Outside is Frightful

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I note that it's been almost a week since I've updated this blog. The primary reason for this, I guess, is that I've been doing very little reading in the past few days. I've been distracted by trying to follow the uprising in Egypt via the internet and television. I've been distracted also by keeping an eye on the succession of winter storms which have been rolling across the map. Some of these have been record-breaking; but, thankfully, not right here.

The final reason that I haven't been posting is that I've been writing an unusually large number of poems lately, which composition has taken up most of the early-morning time that I routinely consign to blogging. A couple of these poems can be read as posts below. A couple more of them are available by clicking their links on the "Rodak's Writings" sidebar to the left of this page. But to read the bulk of them, you would need to become my "friend" on Facebook. (Please, send me a request.)

The latest of these new poems, entitled "Sounds Like..." was inspired by my readings in the poetry collection, Giant Night, by Anne Waldman. She was in her early 20s when she wrote the poems in this collection. It was the late 1960s. She was married to her art and living in, or near, Greenwich Village, had just travelled to Europe, and was digging the Rolling Stones.

Giant Night reminds me--for all of those reasons--of Patti Smith's recent memoir, Just Kids; except that Giant Night is current reportage, while Just Kids is pure recollection. I was there, too, for most of it. Both women get it right.

Pray for spring.
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