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Wednesday, 28 February 2018

Among the teapot aggregates on the Day of Resurrection (target practise) | Josephine Miles: Eighteen Poems

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#Syria Smoke rises from the rebel-held enclave of Eastern #Ghouta following fresh air strikes and rocket fire today. #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 27 February 2018

  
Warplanes resume striking Syria’s eastern Ghouta region after a Russian call for a five-hour truce fails to halt one of the most devastating campaigns of the Syrian war: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 February 2018

  
Warplanes resume striking Syria’s eastern Ghouta region after a Russian call for a five-hour truce fails to halt one of the most devastating campaigns of the Syrian war: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 February 2018 


Always during yesterday's day was a very harsh day families under the rubble sounds of screaming under the rubble: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 27 February 2018



Douma in the past nights as if the Day of Resurrection in the most accurate details : image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 28 February 2018

  

Douma in the past nights as if the Day of Resurrection in the most accurate details : image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 28 February 2018

   

Douma in the past nights as if the Day of Resurrection in the most accurate details : image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 28 February 2018


 #Douma: image via Ahmad36120, 23 February 2018

 

Douma: image via Ahmad36120, 23 February 2018


This is what look like my street looks like today. Nobody can imagine what we are living through. Shelling never stops. Children don't see light of day since nearly one week. They are afraid, they scream, they cry, they need to eat. What is this world who can watch us dying? Keep a share for us please.: image via Ahmad36120, 23 February 2018


This is what look like my street looks like today. Nobody can imagine what we are living through. Shelling never stops. Children don't see light of day since nearly one week. They are afraid, they scream, they cry, they need to eat. What is this world who can watch us dying? Keep a share for us please.: image via Ahmad36120, 23 February 2018


The situation is now relatively calm, but the people here don't go out of their homes and don't believe that the ceasefire will be respected, the warplanes are in the sky, the situation is uncertain, the majority of the people are still in shelter, #Douma, Feb 25: image via Ahmad36120, 25 February 2018



The situation is now relatively calm, but the people here don't go out of their homes and don't believe that the ceasefire will be respected, the warplanes are in the sky, the situation is uncertain, the majority of the people are still in shelter, #Douma, Feb 25: image via Ahmad36120, 25 February 2018



Can you imagine that is the popular market!! This looks like it's in a city where there are no human beings and already abandoned, but we are here. This is the result of all the rockets launched on our head. #Douma, Feb 25: image via Ahmad36120, 25 February 2018

 

Can you imagine that is the popular market!! This looks like it's in a city where there are no human beings and already abandoned, but we are here. This is the result of all the rockets launched on our head. #Douma, Feb 25: image via Ahmad36120, 25 February 2018

انعدام الحياة في الغوطة الشرقية The absence of life in the eastern Ghouta @mouneb_abo_taim: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 27 February 2018


Among the teapot aggregates a man lost his family.: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 27 February 2018
 


#Al-Marwahi helicopters continued shelling of civilians and more than 75 martyrs and hundreds wounded on the Day of Resurrection #EastGhouta doomsday #Al-Ghouta #Al-Sharqiya #Always: image via Maamuon Abo Loae @MaamuonLoae, 20 February 2018



#Al-Marwahi helicopters continued shelling of civilians and more than 75 martyrs and hundreds wounded on the Day of Resurrection #EastGhouta doomsday #Al-Ghouta #Al-Sharqiya #Always: image via Maamuon Abo Loae @MaamuonLoae, 20 February 2018



#Al-Marwahi helicopters continued shelling of civilians and more than 75 martyrs and hundreds wounded on the Day of Resurrection #EastGhouta doomsday #Al-Ghouta #Al-Sharqiya #Always: image via Maamuon Abo Loae @MaamuonLoae, 20 February 2018

The beginning of the end (the sweet smell of something else)
 

At the gun range with teens practicing clay target shooting in Sunrise, Florida, just a dozen miles away from the scene of a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 February 2018


 White House Communications Director Hope Hicks leaves after appearing before the House Intelligence Committee in Washington: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 February 2018


  
White House Communications Director Hope Hicks arrives to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee: Photo @somogettynews: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 27 February 2018
 
Josephine Miles: Eighteen Poems



Aleppo wounded day of bombardment by government forces that killed fifty people: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 14 June 2016
Josephine Miles: Figure

A poem I keep forgetting to write
Is about the stars,
How I see them in their order
Even without the chair and bear and the sisters,

In their astronomic presence of great space,

And how beyond and behind my eyes they are moving,

Exploding to spirals under extremest pressure.

Having not mathematics, my head

Bursts with anguish of not understanding.


The poem I forget to write is bursting fragments
Of a tortured victim, far from me

In his galaxy of minds bent upon him,

In the oblivion of his headline status

Crumpled and exploding as incomparable

As a star, yet present in its light.

I forget to write.


Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Figure from Collected Poems: 1930-83


SYRIA - A shepherd leads his flock as smoke billows from a farm following an airstrike in Sheifuniya. By @AbdDoumany: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 14 June 2016

 
SYRIA - A rebel fighter waits to break his fast during the Ramadan in Jobar near Damascus. By @abdfree2 #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 15 June 2016

L1009027 | by Film&PhotoArchivist
 
[Looking westward from Berkeley hills, early evening]: photo by Film&PhotoArchivist, 19 May 2015

L1009027 | by Film&PhotoArchivist
 
[Looking westward from Berkeley hills, early evening]: photo by Film&PhotoArchivist, 19 May 2015

Josephine Miles: Saving the Bay

Apart from branches in courtyards and small stones,

The countryside is beyond me.
I can go along University Avenue from Rochester to Sobrante
And then the Avenue continues to the Bay. 

Often I think of the dry scope of foothill country,
Moraga Hill, Andreas, Indian country, where I was born
And where in the scrub the air tells me
How to be born again.

Often I think of the long rollers
Breaking along the beaches
All the way down the coast to the border
On bookish cressets and culverts blue and Mediterranean.

There I break
In drops of spray as fine as letters
Blown high, never to be answered,
But waking am the shore they break upon.

Both the dry talkers, those old Indians,
And the dry trollers, those old pirates,
Say something, but it's mostly louder talking,
Gavel rapping, and procedural dismays.

Still here we are, and where we roll and call,
The long rollers of the sea come in
As if they lived here. The dry Santa Ana
Sweeps up the town and takes it for a feast.

Then Rochester to El Sobrante is a distance
No longer than my name.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): "Apart from branches in courtyards...", from Saving the Bay, 1967, in Collected Poems 1930-83 (1983)

Bay Side Ocean View | by davehebb

Bay Side Ocean View (Berkeley). 35 mm plastic toy camera from dog food. Expired Tri-X from the 1980s.: photo by Dave Hebb, 12 July 2015

Orange stand | by efo

 Orange stand (Williams, California): photo by efo, 18 May 2016

Josephine Miles: $7,500

I cannot tell you what a bargain this is,  
Built at a cost of seven thousand, selling 
For seven five, and all the utilities 
                              In, and trees.
   
Landscaped front and back, strings up for lawn, 
Tiles, wrought-iron fixtures, entrance hall 
With an echo, echo, echo, beamed ceiling
                              And a Southern feeling.
 
Marvelous in this spring month, in this empty field, 
Out of the already forgotten hammers, hands compressed, 
So like a snowdrop sprung, white, delicate, and new, 
                              With mountain view.
 
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): $7,500 from Lines at Intersection, 1939, in Collected Poems: 1930-83

There's got to be an end | by QsySue

There's got to be an end (possibly Beryl, Utah): photo by QsySue, 8 June 2016

There's got to be an end | by QsySue

There's got to be an end (possibly Beryl, Utah): photo by QsySue, 8 June 2016
 
There's got to be an end | by QsySue

There's got to be an end (possibly Beryl, Utah): photo by QsySue, 8 June 2016


Resident at the Highland Manor Retirement Home, New Ulm, Minnesota: photo by Flip Schulke for the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica Project, c. 1975 (US National Archive
Josephine Miles: Reason

Said, Pull her up a bit will you, Mac, I want to unload there.

Said, Pull her up my rear end, first come first served.
Said, give her the gun, Bud, he needs a taste of his own bumper.
Then the usher came out and got into the act:

Said, Pull her up, pull her up a bit, we need this space, sir.
Said, For God's sake, is this still a free country or what?
You go back and take care of Gary Cooper's horse
And leave me handle my own car.

Saw them unloading the lame old lady,
Ducked out under the wheel and gave her an elbow.
Said, All you needed to do was just explain;
Reason, Reason is my middle name.
 

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Reason, from Prefabrications, 1955


Old man, India: photo by Glenn Losack MD, 17 December 2011
Josephine Miles: The Sympathizers

To this man, to his boned shoulders
Came the descent of pain.

All kinds,

Cruel, blind, dear, horrid, hallowed,

Rained, again, again.


To this small white blind boned face,

Wherever it was,

Descended

The blows of pain, it took as it were blinded,

As it were made for this.


We were there. We uneasy

Did not know if it were.

Knew neither

The reason nor the man nor whether

To share, or to beware.

 
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): The Sympathizers, from Local Measures, 1946

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34500/1a34565v.jpg

Farmland along the upper Delaware River in New York State
: photo by John Collier, June 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)
Josephine Miles: Gypsy

The entire country is overrun with private property, the gypsy king said.
I don't know if this is true,
I believe in the gypsy kingship though.

The lost tribes of my own nation
Rove and rove.
In red and yellow rough and silent move.

I believe
The majesty pot mending, copper smith
On the hundred highways, nothing to do with.

And black eyes, black I never saw,
Searching out the pocket lines of cloth
The face lines and the furrows of belief.

It's a curious fact, Stephan, King, if you are made to doubt
Aegyptian vision on the Jersey shore.
Property's private as ever, ever.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Gypsy, from Local Measures, 1946

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34500/1a34566v.jpg

Farmland along the upper Delaware River in New York State
: photo by John Collier, June 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)
Josephine Miles: Belief
 
Mother said to call her if the H-bomb exploded
And I said I would, and it about did
When Louis my brother robbed a service station
And lay cursing on the oily cement in handcuffs.

But by that time it was too late to tell Mother,
She was too sick to worry the life out of her
Over why why. Causation is sequence
And everything is one thing after another.

Besides, my other brother, Eddie, had got to be President,
And you can't ask too much of one family.
The chances were as good for a good future
As bad for a bad one.

Therefore it was surprising that, as we kept the newspapers from Mother,
She died feeling responsible for a disaster unverified,
Murmuring, in her sleep as it seemed, the ancient slogan
Noblesse oblige.
 

1955                                      
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Belief, 1955, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8b29000/8b29400/8b29417v.jpg
 
Gas station, Washington, D.C.: photo by John Vachon, July 1937 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress) 

Josephine Miles: Family

When you swim in the surf off Seal Rocks, and your family
Sits in the sand
Eating potato salad, and the undertow
Comes which takes you out away down
To loss of breath loss of play and the power of play
Holler, say
Help, help, help. Hello, they will say,
Come back here for some potato salad.

It is then that a seventeen-year-old cub
Cruising in a helicopter from Antigua,
A jackstraw expert speaking only Swedish
And remote from this area as a camel, says
Look down there, there is somebody drowning.
And it is you. You say, yes, yes,
And he throws you a line.
This is what is called the brotherhood of man.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Family, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8b31000/8b31400/8b31481v.jpg

Gas station and gospel mission, Cleveland, Ohio: photo by John Vachon, August 1937
(Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress) 

Josephine Miles: So Graven

Simplicity so graven hurts the sense. The monumental and the simple break
And the great tablets shatter down in deed.
Every year the quick particular jig
Of unresolved event moves in the mind,
And there's the trick simplicity has to win.
1946
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): So Graven, 1946, from Collected Poems 1930-83
 
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a11000/8a11200/8a11201v.jpg
 
Gas station, Butte, Montana: photo by Arthur Rothstein, Summer 1939 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: Made Shine

This face had no use for light, took none of it,
Grew cavernous against stars, bore into noon
A dark of midnight by its own resources.

Yet where it lay in sleep, where the pillows held it
With the blind plaster over it and the four walls
Keeping the night carefully, it was undone.

Sixty-watt light, squared to a window frame,
Across a well of air, across wind and window
Leaped and made shine the dark face in its sleep.
1939
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Made Shine, 1939, from Collected Poems 1930-83
 
 
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8c17000/8c17000/8c17048v.jpg

Gas station at night, Dubuque, Iowa: photo by John Vachon, April 1940
(Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress) 

Josephine Miles: For Futures

When the lights come on at five o'clock on street corners
That is Evolution by the bureau of power,
That is a fine mechanic dealing in futures:
For the sky is wide and warm upon that hour.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): For Futures, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a33000/8a33700/8a33747v.jpg

An "open all night" gas station in  Durham, North Carolina: photo by Jack Delano, May 1940
(Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress) 
Josephine Miles: Kind

When I think of my kindness which is tentative and quiet
And of yours which is intense and free,
I am in elaboration of knowledge impatient
Of even the patientest immobility.

I think of my kind, which is the human fortune
To live in the world and make war among its friends,
And of my version, which is to be moderately peaceful,
And of your version; and must make amends

By my slow word to your wish which is mobile,
Active and moving in its generous sphere.
This is the natural and the supernatural
Of humankind of which I grow aware.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Kind, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8c05000/8c05400/8c05405v.jpg

 Gas station in Franklin, Heard County, Georgia, nine o'clock in the evening: photo by Jack Delano, April 1941
(Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)
Josephine Miles: Forecast

All our stones like as much sun as possible.
Along their joints run both solar access and decline
In equal splendor, like a mica chipping
At every beat, being sun responsible.

How much sun then do you think is due them?
Or should say, how much sun do you think they are apt to have?
It has misted at their roots for some days now,
The gray glamour addressing itself to them.

I should think possible that it go on misting likewise
A good way into next year, or time as they have it,
A regular cool season every day for our stones.
Not a streak that low of any sun or longed surprise.

1946
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Forecast, 1946, from Collected Poems 1930-83
  


http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8b29000/8b29400/8b29416v.jpg

Gas station, Minneapolis, Minnesota: photo by John Vachon, January 1942
(Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress) 

Josephine Miles: Effort for Distraction

for Henry Adams

Effort for distraction grew
Ferocious, grew
Ferocious and paced, that was its exercise.

Effort for distraction strained,
Legged in the hour-like single stretch
Its heels and sight to feel, so slit its eyes.

Effort without effort or with
Greatest possible effort always centered
Back in the concentrated trough where lies

The magnet to the filings,
The saw tooth to the tongue,
The turn of life to a returning life.

By all the traction of mind and spin of spirit
Having gained grasp gasped to bear it,
Having got ground groaned, furious title holder.

Paced and cried, so sore for a different direction, grew
Ferocious, grew
Unkind to strength that gave it strength to grow.

 
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Effort for Distraction, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a06000/8a06800/8a06832v.jpg

Gas station, Benton Harbor, Michigan: photo by John Vachon, July 1940 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)
Josephine Miles: Deed
 
As George Washington hacked at his cherry tree,
Joseph said to him
This is the tree that fed Mary
When she lingered by the way.

As George Washington polished his bright blade,
Joseph told him
This cherry tree
Bent down and nourished the mother and her babe.

As George Washington felled the cherry tree,
Voices of root and stem
Cried out to him
In heavenly accents, but he heard not what they had to say.

Rather, he was making
A clearing in the wilderness,
A subtle discrimination
Of church and state,

By which his little hatchet
Harvested a continental
Bumper crop for Mary
Of natural corn.


Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Deed, from Collected Poems 1930-1983


. | by gumanow

Dallas, TX -- March 2015: photo by gumanow, 27 May 2016 
Josephine Miles: Lucifer Alone

One rat across the floor and quick to floor's a breeze,
But two a whisper of a human tongue.
One is a breath, two voice;
And one a dream, but more are dreamed too long.

Two are the portent which we may believe at length,
And two the tribe we recognize as true.
Two are the total, they saying and they saying,
So we must ponder what we are to do.

For every scuttle of motion in the corner of the eye
Some thought of thought is asked in us indeed,
But of two, more: there we have likeness moving,
And there knowledge therefore, and therefore creed.

                                                    

1969 
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Lucifer Alone, 1969, from Collected Poems 1930-1983
 
. | by gumanow

New York, NY -- July 2015: photo by gumanow, 27 May 2016
Josephine Miles: King

I walked along the river path, the river
I never lived beside,
and met there, hook and line, king of that kingdom
I would not recognize.
He was the golden branch of Eliot, of
Those wasteland parties where I had to play
Tiresias, and he was a king
Whom I did not believe.
Laius nor any man's killed by his son
Unless he wills it, so I said
To this old bird where he sat. Why let come riding
The handsomest of your brood to do you in?
And he wept, Because it is him or me --
Should he not survive me, he survives not
All that I was: alcoholic
At forty, cheat at forty-five,
Coward at fifty, so will he be
Over again in sequence, while I sit
Mourning myself in him. Tell him to hurry.
This was the waste land, as it dawns upon me
To see it was my friend sat by the river
Crouching and fishing in his father's form.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): King, from Poetry, August 1966




Sheep graze on a field at the Siennese clays area near Asciano, Italy. The Crete Senesi, located in Tuscany, consists of an untouched natural landscape of hills and woods: photo by Max Rossi/Reuters, 2011
Josephine Miles: Tally

After her pills the girl slept and counted
Pellet on pellet the regress of life.

Dead to the world, the world's count yet counted

Pellet on pill the antinomies of life.


Refused to turn, the way's back, she counted

Her several stones across the mire of life.

And stones away and sticks away she counted

To keep herself out of the country of life.


Lost tally. How the sheep return to home

Is the story she will retrieve

And the only story believe

Of one and one the sheep returning home


To take the shapes of life,

Coming and being counted.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Tally from Collected Poems 1930-1983 (1983)

Fair Day, Glenties, Co. Donegal | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Fair Day, Glenties, County Donegal: photo by Robert French, c. 1890-1910 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

Fair Day, Glenties, Co. Donegal | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Fair Day, Glenties, County Donegal: photo by Robert French, c. 1890-1910 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

Fair Day, Glenties, Co. Donegal | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Fair Day, Glenties, County Donegal: photo by Robert French, c. 1890-1910 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)


Embedded image permalink

Serious traffic jam on the back roads of beautiful #Lesvos this morning:image via MSF Sea @MSFSea, 7 February 2016 

 
Silence of the lambs. Narkanda, Himachal, India: photo by Manik Sharma via the land below water, 2016


Sheep staring, Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scotland: photo by Bug in Box, 10 October 2009

Life | by seyed mostafa zamani

Life [Marand, Azarbayjan-e Sharqi, Iran]: photo by Seyed Mostafa Zamani, 29 September 2010
 

A flock of sheep walked in the smoggy haze in a suburb of Beijing, where poor air quality has proved to be a persistent health hazard: photo by Lintao Zhang / Getty Images, 15 January 2016



A flock of sheep walked in the smoggy haze in a suburb of Beijing, where poor air quality has proved to be a persistent health hazard: photo by Lintao Zhang / Getty Images, 15 January 2016

Sheep May Safely Grace | by geirt.com

 Sheep May Safely Graze: photo by geir tonnessen, 23 July 2013
 
Sheep May Safely Grace | by geirt.com

 Sheep May Safely Graze: photo by geir tonnessen, 23 July 2013

Sheep May Safely Grace | by geirt.com

Sheep May Safely Graze: photo by geir tonnessen, 23 July 2013



A villager attempts to rescue a sheep during Israel attack on frontline area of Zanna (Khan Younis), two miles from the border with Israel: photo by Hazem Balousha, 23 July 2014

Domestic Sheep(Corriedale) of Kanazawa Zoo : ヒツジ | by Dakiny

Domestic Sheep, Kanazawa Zoo: photo by Toshiro Gamo, 16 January 2015

Domestic Sheep(Corriedale) of Kanazawa Zoo : ヒツジ | by Dakiny

Domestic Sheep, Kanazawa Zoo: photo by Toshiro Gamo, 16 January 2015

Domestic Sheep(Corriedale) of Kanazawa Zoo : ヒツジ | by Dakiny

Domestic Sheep, Kanazawa Zoo: photo by Toshiro Gamo, 16 January 2015

 
attentive sheep | by enki22

Attentive sheep [Sarre, Val d'Aosta, Italy]: photo by enki22, 1 March 2013

attentive sheep | by enki22

Attentive sheep [Sarre, Val d'Aosta, Italy]: photo by enki22, 1 March 2013

attentive sheep | by enki22

Attentive sheep [Sarre, Val d'Aosta, Italy]: photo by enki22, 1 March 2013

Sheep | by Atli Harðarson

Sheep [Skipaskagi, Akranes, Iceland]: photo by Atli Hardarson, 23 September 2007

File:Corsbie Tower - geograph.org.uk - 1422694.jpg

Corsbie Tower:
photo by Walter Baxter, 30 July 2009


Everywhere I go, i see ruin, i see desolation, I see URBEX! | by c@rljones

 It seems there is no escaping a bit of rural decay is there. Ruined miners' houses with sheep, Cwn Ystradllyn, Wales: photo by Carl Jones, 23 June 2008

Sheep, darkroom print | by Mark Dries

Sheep, darkroom print: photo by Mark Dries, 11 November 2015

Sheep, darkroom print | by Mark Dries

Sheep, darkroom print: photo by Mark Dries, 11 November 2015

Sheep, darkroom print | by Mark Dries

Sheep, darkroom print: photo by Mark Dries, 11 November 2015


Sheepish [original version]: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 27 March 2010


Sheepish [hand coloured photogravure version]: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 21 March 2013

New Zealand (sheep and herder) | by Museum of Photographic Arts Collections
New Zealand (sheep and herder): albumen print, photographer unknown, c. 1900 (Museum of Photographic Arts)

field full of sheep | by MICOLO J Thanx 4, 2 million+ views

field full of sheep: photo by Micolo J, 3 February 2015

field full of sheep | by MICOLO J Thanx 4, 2 million+ views

field full of sheep: photo by Micolo J, 3 February 2015

5 comments:

TC said...

If you think you're interested in american poetry and haven't read jo miles, it can only be because you went to bad schools. So now's your chance.

She was a scholar of the old sort and a good one, an English teacher and remarkably good at that as well (first female english dept prof to have tenure), a terrific poet with fantastic vernacular command (I wouldn't trade ten MFAs for a poem like Reason, which by the way is also about something real).

Why did I knock myself out making this little anthology of her work to go with a post that once again addresses the tragedy of Syria?

JM was not Syrian. But she was a victim of crippling arthritis, so knew more than a bit about p & s.

As difficult as it must be to be Syrian these days, at least with being Syrian there is what in sports lingo is called upside.

kent said...

WEATHER REPORT FOR TC

It’s one of those
Wet late winter blasts
March always marches in on
And though I’m reminded
Mother’s rural county birth certificate
Always claimed Three One
As her birth date
She always blew out candles
Two Twenty Eight
That paper also carried
No middle name
Just Josephine
Just like the famous poet
That I read at that same
Bad school as yours
Sent there by WWII bomber group’s
Map-making meteorologist
She waited more than a decade
And a war to marry
But what I can’t believe
It’s been ninety-seven circles
Since they got it all wrong
And the forecast still
Is at best iffy.

k 3.1.18

kent said...

Dear TC,

After my late afternoon missive, this eve had one-half of 100-year maple fall ten feet away from yours truly in-the-dark shovel man's head. Cops just swung by with, "Somebody must be watching over you." I like to think it was Jo, Jo, and the holy ghost Tom. Of course, the 5+2 grand kids always a factor.

k

Hilton said...

JM - what a terrific poet.

TC said...

OMG, a bit of fun on my horrid crooked number birthday, here on the frigid and sopping yet always busy busy busy freeway feeder. When the Russian nukes come in, the traffic flow will be furious.

O Ivanka, let us go into this good night remembering the Curling.

Hilton, thank you. This is what passes around here for authority.

O Kent, I can't think of your mother w/o thinking about Jesus. What CAN have got into me.

Meanwhile the six cats...