THE SUBMISSION WINDOW IS NOW CLOSED
SONGS OF ERETZ POETRY REVIEW
"WINTER SOLSTICE" ISSUE 2023
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Unless otherwise indicated, all art is taken from "royalty-free" Internet sources.
Chief Executive Editor
Steven Wittenberg Gordon
Co-Editors-in-Chief
Terri L. Cummings
Charles A. Swanson
Frequent Contributors
Terri Lynn Cummings
Steven Wittenberg Gordon
Yoni Hammer-Kossoy, former FC
John C. Mannone
Karla Linn Merrifield
Vivian Finley Nida
Howard F. Stein
Charles A. Swanson
Tyson West
Biographies of our editorial staff & frequent contributors may be found on the "Our Staff" page.
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Table of Contents
Letters From the Editors
Featured Frequent Contributors
Vivian Finley Nida
“Winter Solstice Prayer”
“Stone Age Life and Winter Solstice”
John C. Mannone
“Observing the Sun’s Path”
“Longest Night”
“Moon Shadows”
Frequent Contributors
Howard F. Stein
“Orion’s Longest Night Ride”
“Prayer to the Sun”
Tyson West
“My First Priestess”
“Crossroads Blue”
Karla Linn Merrifield
“Through”
Steven Wittenberg Gordon
“The Fall of Fall”
Terri Lynn Cummings
“Winter Solstice”
Charles A. Swanson
“Embracing the Pocket”
“Toward Winter Solstice”
Yoni Hammer-Kossoy
“Golden Hour”
Guest Poets
Connie Jordan Green
“How You Might Spend the Winter Solstice”
“Early Morning”
Oliver Smith
“Despoina”
Sarah Das Gupta
“St Lucy’s Day”
Keith Melton
“Key Bridge”
Mark A. Fisher
“conjury”
Mantz Yorke
“Winter Solstice, Derbyshire”
Paul A. Freeman
“Stonehenge”
William Doreski
“Dolor at the Solstice”
Colleen Anderson
“untitled”
(general submission)
A J Dalton
“Valkyrie Love”
(general submission)
Sarah Das Gupta
“Into the Darkness”
(general submission)
Book Reviews
Vivian Nida
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When Distant Hours Call
Poems
by t l cummings
(Editor-in-Chief)
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Charles A. Swanson
(Associate Editor)
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The Book of Noah
Poems
by Yoni Hammer-Kossoy
(Former Frequent Contributor)
Frequent Contributor News
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A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief
Each year, on December 21, winter solstice marks the “turning of the sun.” Meteorologists claim winter begins earlier and spans December – February. Yet the seasonal significance is the gradual growth of daylight until the summer solstice in June.
Although winter is a dormant season, the days grow longer after winter solstice. Celebrations of returning light have been popular throughout history and continue to this day. Pagan societies celebrated a 12-day festival around the winter solstice, recognizing the rebirth of the sun god. Today, Christians celebrate "The 12 Days of Christmas," which begins on Christmas Day, welcoming the birth of Christ, the "Light of the World" (Jn 8:12; 9:5; 12:46).
Whether we are religious or not, the return of light brightens our way during this festive season. I believe that my light shines brighter when I share time, food, clothes, or money with those in need, especially homeless children who have no address to put on their letters to Santa.
Terri L. Cummings
Editor-in-Chief
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A Letter From the Associate Editor
I like to be generous in our interpretation of a theme, but we did look for a direct connection to winter solstice (this year on December 21). Many submissions were discarded because they were about winter, but not about winter solstice.
Along the way, I learned that the beginning of winter is named according to an astronomical calendar, and that date coincides with the winter solstice, or by a meteorological calendar, with a date of December 1 (Winter Solstice 2023: When Is the First Day of Winter? What Is the Winter Solstice? | The Old Farmer's Almanac). When a poet sees the starting point of winter as December 1, then winter solstice can be perceived as midwinter.
I also learned more about standing stones and Celtic culture, about Wiccan observances, about Chinese (and other Asian) celebrations (dongzhi), and about St. Lucy’s Day. Some of the poems reference traditions that surround winter solstice. Other poems reflect the emotional state that can be swayed by light or darkness, by short days and long nights.
Charles A. Swanson
Associate Editor
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Featured Poets
Winter
Solstice Prayer
~In memory of Jeanne Hoffman Smith
(Sept. 4, 1929 – Jul. 30, 2022)
duplex
Vivian
Finley Nida
Lord, help me focus on what’s most important.*
Sun lies so low that sorrows surge inside.
Bare trees, wind-scuffed, mourn perished leaves. Inside,
warm comfort’s found in fragrant lentil soup.
Arthritis interferes with spooning soup,
and hand, like bird’s foot, scratches when it writes.
This shortest day leaves little time to write.
Blue parakeet has settled for the night
with quilt draped over cage. Through longest night,
let hopeful dreams prevail, despairing yield.
Now winter wears the laurel wreath; fall yields.
Today the sun has turned around once more.
With greater light, each song of praise hums more
Lord, help me focus on what’s most important.
*Jeanne Hoffmann Smith’s final prayer.
Poet’s Notes: This Duplex poem is in memory of Jeanne Hoffman Smith, the founding donor and inspiration for Oklahoma City University’s Center for Film and Literature, renamed Thatcher Hoffman Smith Poetry Series in her honor. Since 1999 it has brought poets to the OCU campus. Jericho Brown, who invented the Duplex, was the last poet she chose, but sadly did not live to hear.
Previous poets beginning in 1999 include: Robert Pinsky, Jane Hirshfield,
Michael Ondaatje, Mark Doty, Naomi Shihab Nye (’03, ‘22), Li-Young Lee, Billy
Collins, Ted Kooser, Joy Harjo, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Charles Simic, Natasha
Trethewey, Carolyn Forché , Claudia Emerson, Terrence Hayes, Tracy K.
Smith (’14, ’18), Richard Blanco, Marie Howe, Simon Armitage, Chris Abani,
Alberto Rios, Nikky Finney, Ellen Bass (online), and Jericho Brown.
Future poets: April 3, 2024, B.H. Fairchild and 2025, Ada Limón. These events are free and open to the public. For more information, go to www.okcu.edu/film-lit or contact filmlit@okcu.edu.
Editor’s Notes: Prayers often rise from need. Prayers are mixtures of despair and hope, of regret and promise, of failure and redemption. Here, what is most important rises out of caring, of nurturing, of service. One prayer leads to another. I find the poem beautiful, achingly beautiful. CAS
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Stone
Age Life and Winter Solstice
Shakespearean
sonnet
Vivian
Finley Nida
Five thousand years ago on Orkney Isle
some Scottish Neolithic farmers dwelled
in Skara Brae’s ten flagstone homes, same style—
stone hearth, bed space, and cupboard, one room cell
with toilet and a drain that flushed to sea.
On venison, beef, boar, and birds, they dined,
ate fish and berries, honey from the bee
fermented beer from barley they could grind.
Their Standing Stones of Stenness, most
assume
was public place to gather and to view
the grassy mound of Maeshowe, chambered tomb.
They stooped in Maeshowe’s passage to get through.
Inside they watched on winter’s shortest day
as light struck chamber’s wall, and dark gave way.
Poet’s Notes: My
husband and I recently visited Scotland’s Orkney Island and visited several of
the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Sites. From
the Standing Stones of Stenness on the west mainland, between the gap in
two stones, we saw Maeshowe, a large grassy burial mound, our next stop.
The most impressive of the Orkney cairns, Maeshowe was constructed five
thousand years ago before the Egyptian pyramids. The ditch that circles
it originally held water, possibly to separate the living from the dead.
The entrance is narrow, long, and low. We had to stoop to enter before
standing in the large central chamber with three side chambers built into the
walls. About three weeks before and after the winter solstice, the
sun’s last rays penetrate the entrance and shine on the central chamber’s rear
wall. Many theories exist about why it was built to align with both the
stones and the winter solstice’s setting sun, but most think it served as a
kind of calendar to mark the old year’s end and the new year’s beginning with
more light and a return of life to the land. In case you decide to visit, be
sure to purchase tickets well in advance. Tours are limited.
Editor’s Notes: I had long known about Stonehenge before I discovered that other sites of standing stones occur in the British Isles. This poem takes me to one of those other places where standing stones also, as at Stonehenge, seem linked to winter solstice. CAS
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Observing the Sun’s Path
free verse
John C. Mannone
The sun appears to stand still
in the summer, and in winter,
before reversing it’s trek along
the ecliptic. Imagine Helios,
his chariot blazing the heavens
who knows his path well
[unlike his reckless Phaethon]
—so slowly to our eyes we need
to photograph its position in
the high noon sky at the same
time, same place every day
for the entire year. This yearly
culmination, a choreography
across the sky tracing a figure
eight—an analemma—showing
the knot of equinoxes midway,
and solstices—high and low
where the sun stood still.
Poet’s
Notes: A short science lesson in verse using a
bit of Greek mythology and allusions to Psalm 104:19 [learn more about the
analemma here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma].
Editor’s Notes: The scientific information in this poem makes a nice complement to the Wiccan details in Tyson’s West poem, “My First Priestess” (see below). CAS
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Longest Night
modern ballad
John C. Mannone
After England Dan & John Ford Coley
The chill in the air ushers in snow.
The solstice sun is holding on
to its light much longer. Its arc
across the sky much lower.
I cannot see the fire or feel it
like before. Clouds have quenched
the light and my eyes blur from
tears. When will I see you again?
There’s an icy north wind seeping in
the cracks in my room, windows
to my heart rattle in the cold.
Nights are forever without you.
I didn’t know it would be so strong.
I wonder and wait for the longest
night to be over, for sunlight
to fall like rain, to wash me clean
of grief. I can’t stop thinking about
you. I am hoping, waiting for a warming
embrace, for passion, for this winter
solstice to be over.
Poet’s
Notes: There is something about the England Dan
& John Ford Coley love song that resonates, sonically, with me. It must be
the chord progression. I adopted the ballad form, which felt right for the
short love poem, but it’s stripped of its meter and rhyme. Listen to their
poetry here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHDm3qy4abI
Editor’s Notes: I keep hearing the England Dan and John Ford Coley song in my head. John’s poem pays great tribute to these recording artists. CAS
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Moon
Shadows
prose
poem
John
C. Mannone
I love the full moon. My dream is to
ride the trans-Canadian railway at winter solstice during a full moon, and
watch moonlight on snow. If I could write poetry, I’d write about the magic of
moonlight on snow, and the healing of loneliness and dark thoughts.
—Linda McKenna Donovan
It’s the beginning of winter and the nights will be getting shorter but the whole night, horizon to horizon, a lightning storm covering the sky, illumines tracks plowing through Canadian prairie snow. After the thundersnow clouds part, it is magical—lakes with a winter’s stillness and ice-crusted shores, dense pine forests betrayed in moonlight, in daylight, the river valleys boast green in the summer, but now, rolling white blankets; rugged peaks of majestic Rockies envelop quaint towns. Changing landscapes are witnessed through glass-domed lounge cars, and straight up, the stars in that crisp twinkle, and the moon full of glory. Tomorrow finally comes. The long cold moon turns copper in Earth’s shadow, a thousand sunsets captured, while the Sun ducks behind Earth. The perigee moon looms in the wee hours before the veiling.
I don’t ever think of the thousands it cost—Toronto to Vancouver in a four-night passage; this won’t happen again until 2094. Nor will I think dark thoughts, except perhaps for light-pollution-free skies to see stars’ glitter, even in your eyes, and of you, my love, in my arms in the shadows, whether of an eclipsed winter solstice moon, or under no moon at all.
Poet’s Notes: it took a visit to a free [virtual] venue, Francis Coppola’s American Zoetrope— a private place where we could write and share and learn to critique; and though a member since March 2005, I became inactive in 2016. I recently returned to it to find a correspondence about a winter solstice with a fine fiction writer friend, and English teacher who appreciated astronomy. I found it and the instigating statement that triggered this poem—it appears in the epigraph. I’m not Canadian but if I were, I’d save up for such a ride! Because there is a travelogue component to the poem, I felt a prose poem format was more fluid and fitting for a scenic train ride.
Editor’s
Notes: A total lunar eclipse occurred at winter solstice in
2010 (Winter
Solstice + Lunar Eclipse—First in 372 Years (nationalgeographic.com).
As John indicates in his poem, the
next one is forecast for 2094 (Winter
solstice eclipse 1st in 372 years | CTV News). CAS
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Frequent Contributors
Orion’s Longest Night Ride
free
verse
Howard
F. Stein
Tonight,
the longest
Winter
night of the year,
The
great hunter
And
his dogs
Course
their widest
Arc
across the sky.
Companion
and friend
Since
my childhood,
Orion
rides the celestial path
Of
our turning earth,
His
stars, presences
Of
my memory
And
of tonight,
Winter
solstice –
This
is the
The
moment of Orion’s
Most
treasured
Gift
to me – time,
Our
most enduring
Time
of the year together.
We
keep each other
Company
in the long cold.
Editor’s
Notes: A long, long night may present itself as something
unpleasant to endure. However, the gift
of time, in whatever garb it comes, can be a blessing. CAS
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Prayer to the Sun
free verse
Howard
F. Stein
Your
earth tilts
Farthest
away
From
you today.
The
longer you stay away,
Our
anguish of your
Absence
swells.
We
begin to wonder:
Will
you soon
Disappear
forever,
Abandon
us
To
a winter that
Yields
no more to spring?
Is
darkness destiny?
We
await your return,
But
you have come home
Later
and later each day,
Spend
less and less
Time
with us.
Will
you ever relent?
Each
year at this time,
We
ask the same question –
But
fail to remember
We’ve
asked it every year before:
Will
this be the final time
Winter
is but a season
To be outlasted till spring?
Editor’s Notes: During these winter days, the weather and the dark nights feel like a vise. Howard captures that sensation well. CAS
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My First Priestess
free
verse
Tyson West
That's my first priestess―
gnawing the edges of my winter dreams since
for I had tumbled awake once my ethanol mist
fled to Cloud Islay and other islets of disharmony.
Were my impulse to colonize sobriety I knew
I best knead a deity from the mud, silly putty,
and Plato's play dough lining my play pen.
The usual suspects creeped me
for their lust to love me tender
very, very much haunted my illusion of choice―
so much collateral damage.
I have no recall of how the coven found me
in the Coeur d'Alene bungalow temple where
Lady Artemis Wolf Dragon eyed
my geist from the ramparts of her scarves and mirrors
parsing the pungent sweet grass smudge
while her lieutenant and lover
calculated the mist of my sexuality and soul
against the raven feather on the scale―
still all placed their pinkies
in the fissure in my dark side.
My first sabbat as acolyte fell to Yule
birthday of the Blue God
a perfect portal to paddle into the craft of the wise―
top spin in the wheel of the year rolled
to proof if I spiral home deasil or widdershins.
At some shabby aside in our journey
our Priestess sporting her gold tattoo
confided her visions Michael Jackson was to
moonwalk somewhere in her astral.
While we foot witches, watchers, and listeners
never never questioned her dream could ascend his Ferris wheel
to her face―we whispered elsewhither in our jolly corners.
After all her glib fortune telling side hustle
would stub our tarot on her taste for cups of lacrima christi.
With faith and fiction, any arcana, minor or major, can become truth.
We learned her plagiarized lessons, sword
playing the mysteries of the woman behind the curtain,
and bundling forever forest wands
until horrified of her own possibility
we might function in perfect love and perfect trust in spite of
her pentacles of self sabotage,
she one by one borderlined each of us away.
After my sky clad Eostar initiation she lay foundation
to that June esbat, a fortnight before Litha
when she seemed suddenly shocked
she had initiated my cisgender ass
in the name and eight point star of a Sumerian goddess who spoke
then and ever to me in my fine young deliria from five millennia ago.
Our coven hugged until Mabon
then peeled off one by one through Samhain until
we reformed elsewhere without our lady and her lover
to cast our first circle at the crossroads of the following Yule.
In our invocation to the watch towers of the four directions
incense smoke stinging our eyes
the Great Goddess of the Neolithic
enveloped us in a wreath of holly and ivy and faith's persistence.
No matter how imperfect the priestess inhaling the tripod vapor
words of the Goddess chime true.
Consistency crafts greater salvation
than the flashbangs and fantasias
of a pretender suddenly afraid her sideshow charisma
may materialize the tiara and garter
her night sweats prophesied.
Poet's Notes: In the mid-1980s, I joined a Wiccan coven. Our priestess had quite a few character flaws. As with any religion, if a seeker focuses on the spiritual leader and not on a consistent set of beliefs, any coven or congregation can turn into a cult. Our priestess lacked the charisma, cunning, and competency to become a cult leader. Part of the honesty of the Pagan religion is its disorganization and spontaneity. It is a religion without converts. Pagans are not missionaries. They don't have to be. When people who are true Pagans in their hearts hear their beliefs articulated, they say, "That is what I am." In our coven, none of us were deeply concerned about her narcissism and borderline personality. Together, we received wisdom from the Goddess at the edge of the ice, even as our priestess cannonballed into the chilly lake alone.
Editor’s Notes: West’s poem provides an opportunity to learn about terms associated with the Wiccan calendar, terms which also take us back in time. Winter solstice is found under the term many associate with Christmas, Yule. An issue dedicated to winter solstice would not seem complete without references to how various people groups observed the shortest day (or days) of the year. CAS
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Crossroads
Blue
free
verse
Tyson
West
That
caustic June afternoon
I grokked great grace from a gnossienne
Alder, my dance partner, tangoed as we
shared a quart of ice cold Olympia in my Dodge step side
vintage cruise to the river's conjunction with Hangman Creek.
She groused her lover's sudden bursts of anger while
I listened and nodded, but long had learned
a woman's agitation spins as enigma to be appreciated
but never solved.
Alder bled her feelings on me before as had
her lover, Cedar, butch bravado notwithstanding,
vomited her frustrations on my shoes.
These daughters of bilitis felt secure
wrapped in the plaid flannel comforter
of my cisgender insensitivity.
Suddenly, Alder ceased her whine
and in witchy voice proverbed
summer solstice be but a crossroad in time
light ceasing its expanse
at midsummer night's madness
beyond the sigh of ordinary order.
In the buzz of our third quart
and glare of semi-desert sun
over the river's wet rocks and warbling
I grasped equinox irrelevance―
they jot but midpoints to more
of the same.
Only the pillars of Hermes and Hecate corner
a solstice―true mirrors of light and dark―
so sweet bit Alder's truth
so strong the Great Goddess sets
her plays planting a pause here―a gavotte there―
before wrapping her calf around mine
six months later
at that flip in December darkness.
I must murder my thirst and hunger―
suicide my gimcrack portrait of the artist as a young ego
before I may depart on a clear walk at ten degrees
snow screaming under foot to embrace
such pain and wisdom my Goddess brings.
Poet's Notes: I was friends with
a lesbian couple years ago. Each of them would confide in me their occasional
unhappiness with the other. I took no one's side. I simply listened. As far as
our human tribe is concerned, equinoxes, while nice, don't have the impact of the
solstices. Winter and spring days all get longer from the winter solstice to
the summer solstice. From the summer solstice to the winter solstice, days get
shorter. An equinox is only a half way point in more of the same. Yule is the
best point of the year; it is the first point in the year after which days get
longer.
Editor’s Notes: With West’s poems, I often run to the dictionary, or to the Internet, and I did so with the term gnossienne. Wikipedia described gnossienne as a musical composition written in “free time” and “lacking time signatures or bar divisions.” “Crossroads Blue” has a similar tension, lacking the qualities of formal poetry, but focusing on something keyed strongly to a rhythm—the lengthening or shortening of days. I see the push and pull of tension, as well, in the relationships West describes. CAS
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free
verse
Karla
Linn Merrifield
The Continental Divide seizes
the Rockies’ snowmelted streams
and hurtles her infant rivers
east or west according to the wishes
of indifferent mountains who answer
only to gravity. On the morning flanks
of the San Juans, voracious rushing
Wolf Creek seeks the Rio Grande, glutted
with last night’s new white inches,
fattened, craving more, clawing onward
in a northerly direction through solid rock.
There, through a shadow of darkness
at winter’s solstice cast by
frozen cliffs eclipsing the sun,
I come skidding to a halt. Ice! Jacknife-ice!
On a roadway scant miles from the summit,
I brace myself by watching a gossamer waterfall,
jewelling moss with mist in a narrow cleft,
submitting with me to gravity. Down and through
the falls go along the granite fault to instant death,
into a greater depth, into the current on that other
side.
But up and over the pass, down seven melting miles,
ever so slowly in low gear along the dizzying steep
grade,
I arrive at still waters. These easy San Juan River
riffles
reach for the ever-westward-flowing
Colorado;
I go through, through, with the elemental Divide’s
great peaks at my back at last.
Editor’s Notes: I am transported to times I didn’t think I’d make my destination. The snow controlled my car’s tires as much as did my steering wheel, an adventure more like sledding than driving. CAS
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free
verse
Steven
Wittenberg Gordon
Two
years ago, the trees seemed confused.
October
and November passed in Kansas,
But
the trees clung to their greenery,
Apparently
forgetting to bloom.
Even
as the winter solstice came and went,
The
leaves shriveled, turned brown,
Half
littering the ground in a crunchless carpet,
The
rest sullen derelicts on the branches.
Juncos arrived late that year, and the Robins lingered.
This
year in Kansas the trees made a compromise,
Some
turning, albeit late, others retaining their verdure,
Still
others hedging in a harlequin patchwork.
Indian
Summer was once a welcome break,
As
overcoats gave way to shirtsleeves one last time
For
a precious week early in November.
Now
summer lasts too long for its Indian counterpart to manifest,
As
a tide of rain that should have been snow
Falls
during the Tide of Yule, a harbinger of the drought to come.
Editor’s Notes: We see these weather shifts here, too. Summer keeps interrupting winter. CAS
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free
verse
Terri
Lynn Cummings
I
want
more of you.
More
good years
with
un-fused back
two
original hips
mid-night
lips.
I
need
your light
to
gather, grow
show
the way
past
a winter’s
cold
corpse.
I
open
wide
the heart’s
mouth,
free
what
fails to serve
re-tune
the chorus
of
nature.
I
soar
to
the beginning—
re-learn
you
re-earn
you
better
than
before.
I
savor
you, mindful
of each second
clasped
together
like
the lovers
we
were born.
Let’s
slow
your
clock’s hands
my hands. Linger
over
every hidden
moment
in the
day’s
roused dawn.
Forty
years—
that’s
how long
I
slept.
Tell
me
this
time you will
be
mine, once again.
Editor’s Notes: This love poem appeals to me. Some of the poem’s power comes from well-chosen images and metaphors. Love in later life can know—should know—a “roused dawn.” CAS
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free verse
Charles
A. Swanson
I
sit down to practice, the score
before
me. The key
signature
I note first, the sharps
or
flats, those namers
by
number—signs—one, two, three,
even
six. This moment’s sign,
one
sharp—the signature a lessening,
adjustment—the
key
of
G today, and I roam the white
plain
with the one black
recurring
bump. An old friend,
this
familiar key. I still
finger
errant notes, as I plump
down
chords or run
arpeggios. It is adventure
as
much as anything.
But
hide and seek, a melody
ought
to emerge,
but
not so. The sheet music
lies
spread before me,
as
certain as days shortening
toward
winter solstice,
a
pattern, a familiarity, a song
I
know, a stricture
of
sorts, but sweet as well as sad.
I
reach for it, find
melody
and rhythm pocket
and
settle into smaller
spaces.
Fingers caress keys
for
quiet moments, stroke
crescendos
for heart-pounding days,
still
a life full of choices.
Poet’s Notes: No virtuoso pianist, I nevertheless have gained a little more skill over the years, even if I often feel my improvement is in tortuously small increments. When I’m playing for myself, I usually begin by exploring the chords—harmonies and dissonances—in the key of the song I am about to play. Perhaps my free-wheeling is nothing more than a warm-up exercise, but I hope to find the song within the song before I even attempt the notes written on the page I have spread on the music rack. Settling into the written song is both pleasure and confinement. Likewise, as days shorten I find both pleasure and confinement.
*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
free
verse
Charles
A. Swanson
As
days shorten, the two dogs
tickle
me. The rust red
worn-down
jeans they stole
last
week, they tug and tug,
canine
teeth baring, gums exposed,
growls
and gutturals
skittering
like the gravels they churn.
It
is pure game and joy.
Each
leg goes opposite, gripped
and
slobbered. I doubt
they
mind the grime or sweat
they
gnaw and masticate.
More
clay, more litter, more grit
interweave
the fabric,
tough
as rope, tough as leather,
tough
as any chew-toy.
They
don’t know they take me
long
days back to childhood,
to
past dogs and past loves, past
shortening
days I see now.
Light
dwindles, hours darken,
sober
thoughts come first.
A reel, the tug-of-war goes on,
two dogs in the waning sun.
Poet’s Notes: When my dogs first absconded with my jeans, I looked for the jeans everywhere I thought a dog might go. Only a few weeks later did they reappear, and by that time, I assigned them to their new status, the dogs’ chew toy. Fortunately, the jeans were already worn-out, full of my own years of work and sweat. I saw a small irony in the fact that the jeans were the “Lucky” brand. Lucky was also a much-loved dog from my childhood years.
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free verse
former
frequent contributor
And on the fourth day:
sun, moon, stars. Or in other words
time, love, yearning. Many chapters later
I was at the beach trying to catch
the shortest day’s light in a net.
Of course I didn’t. I’m just a poet.
But maybe one of the couples dressed in white did.
They gathered for hundreds of kilometers
up and down the sea’s eastern brow.
Searching for a sandy place
where the air isn’t so heavy
with language or country.
Searching for a perfect picture. Searching
for a before known only by its after.
Poet’s Notes: "Golden Hour" takes its name from that time of day just before sunset when the light is goldilocks-right and all kinds of seeing and understanding are at least fleetingly possible.
Editor’s Notes: I like the admission, “I’m just a poet.” Perhaps it’s a confession as much as an admission. Perhaps, we fear what we attempt and attempt what we fear. We approach the unknowable as if to know it. CAS
About the Poet: Yoni Hammer-Kossoy is a poet, translator, and educator. A past Songs of Eretz Frequent Contributor and winner of the 2020 Andrea Moriah Prize in Poetry, his writing appears in numerous international journals and anthologies. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Yoni has lived with his family in Jerusalem for the last 25 years. Yoni's first poetry collection, The Book of Noah, is now available from Grayson Books. [See below for a review of Yoni’s book. —Ed.]
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Guest Poets
How You Might Spend the Winter Solstice
free verse
a cup of hot chocolate at your elbow,
a book open on your lap
like a moth on the kitchen window,
wings the color of old oak bark
on a horse galloping across the pasture,
summer’s last growth rattling
loud as the bones of winter
like red-capped lichen on a weathered
fencepost, British soldiers on parade,
barbwire festooned with icicles
in a bathtub filled with warm water,
your only light the full moon
at your window
like the first snowflake of the season,
your design yours alone, a stranger
come to grace this good earth
Editor’s Notes: And this poem plays counterpoint to Green’s poem above. Here the person is active, ready to embrace the weather. CAS
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Early
Morning
free
verse
Connie
Jordan Green
If
in the slip of light sliding
through
the eastern window,
the
room warm against the wall
of
cold that has come to stay
this
December morning, you
recognize
a body pulling on
heavy
socks, gloves, hair tucked
beneath
a knitted hat, eyes
bright,
step lively, you will
know
you have come upon
a
worshipper of the winter
solstice,
a spirit going out
into
the world to pay homage
to
the coming of light, grace
and
gratitude in every breath
while
stars fade from the sky,
sun
already rising a little higher
than
the day before, dawn trailing
along
holding tightly to her skirts.
Editor’s Notes: And this poem plays counterpoint to Green’s poem above. Here the person is active, ready to embrace the weather. CAS
Green hooks the reader from the start. TLC
About the Poet: Connie Jordan Green lives on a farm in East Tennessee where she writes and gardens. She is the author of two award-winning novels for young people, The War at Home and Emmy; two poetry chapbooks, Slow Children Playing and Regret Comes to Tea; and two poetry collections, Household Inventory, winner of the Brick Road Poetry Award, 2013, and most recently Darwin’s Breath from Iris Press. Her poetry has been nominated for Pushcart awards. She frequently leads writing workshops.
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Free
verse
As
we breathed a soft breath of midwinter,
the last cruel ember sank; ghostly sick sun
extinguished beyond the dark western hills.
From the wooded grey of the Severn Vale,
the far-friendly fires glowed on the edge of the home.
Yet in the night, each threshold light burned alone.
One by one those doors closed; bolts shut,
locks shot, way barred, as hill to stream to sea,
winter darkness flowed. The bare twig, the branch,
the leaf, the withered grass turned to crystal,
and every frozen blade gleamed; a pale knife,
and the old oak and beech endured, white
as icy bones; wind carved, sea changed, and wrecked,
as if caught in the wild, wide ocean’s claws
and cast away, on grey Antarctic shores
among cold, basalt stones and hungry storms.
We sat, kissed by ghostly lips of midnight frost
where stars blazed in ice and the sun seemed lost.
The spring forgotten beneath the cold soil.
Harvest’s song lost on bluing lips. The world;
an empty house; tiles blown off; windows gone.
Across the doorstep, the north wind creeping,
the roof, a moonbow; spectral, shrouded, still
in the long barrow shadow, on the frozen hill.
We should have gathered wood, blazed our fire bright
to welcome the reborn sun in a beacon glow
yet the fading fire’s flame kept just at bay
last year’s dead dream ghosts, that edged so close
that, nursing our embers, we could do no more
than hope for the new day’s dawn.
Poet’s
Notes: I grew up near
Cooper’s Hill (where the famous Cheese Rolling takes place in the spring). The
hill rises 800 feet above the flat valley and like many of the hills in the
area was an iron age hill fort. Sometime in the 1980s, the lights of the Severn
Vale spread out below from the Forest of Dean, to the Malvern Hills, and from
the towns of the vale. The stars were all visible and bright in the winter sky
away from much of the light pollution of the village. We built a fire to keep
warm but the frost was far harder than we had expected. It would have been a
long dark walk home so we piled more and more of our gathered wood on the fire,
built it higher and higher to keep warm. But, burning so bright, it consumed
itself leaving only embers. I woke in the morning with the foot of my
sleeping bag melted from getting too close to the hot ashes.
Editor’s
Notes: Although this poem encompasses more than imagery, it
is the imagery that draws me in. When
poetry sings, it says more than prose can say, for it begins to thrum in the
blood. CAS
Despoina’s half-sister is Persephone. Despoina is a lesser-known goddess in Greek mythology and was known for fertility. TLC
About
the Poet: Oliver Smith
is a visual artist and writer from Cheltenham, UK. He is inspired by
Tristan Tzara, J G Ballard, and Max Ernst; by the poetry of chance encounters,
by frenzied rocks towering above the silent swamp; by unlikely collisions
between place and myth and memory.
His poetry has been published in Abyss
& Apex, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Strange Horizons and
Sylvia Magazine and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
He holds a PhD in Literary and
Critical Studies from the University of Gloucestershire. For more information see his website: https://oliversimonsmithwriter.wordpress.com
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free
verse
The
shortest day
of
a long year.
Only
St Lucy’s light
to
prevail against
the
liquid dark.
From
the far horizon
night
rolls in
like
a spring tide
flooding
fields and cattle,
obliterating
the individual,
drowning
that lone oak
in
dark anonymity.
In
the pastures
sheep
huddle,
backs
to the driving
east
wind’s chill.
In
the slate quarry
a
whirlpool of black
covers
old scars.
From
the refuge
of
lighted rooms,
we
look blindly
into
our lost world.
Editor’s Notes: Although St. Lucy’s Day is celebrated on December 13, Wikipedia notes that this feast day originally coincided with winter solstice (Saint Lucy's Day - Wikipedia). See below, following “Into the Darkness,” for Das Gupta’s biographical sketch. CAS
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Key Bridge
modern sonnet
Keith Melton
Each stone a redoubt against the current
Icy winds scouring every knoll
A rooftop, a turret, in view of monuments
Masons boasting a talent of steel
Beyond horizon’s rampart, its message
Silent, across a great republic
And her plain of rivers. Winter’s fame
In snowy bursts, whispers numbing as quick
Tides scour, mystery in dark refrain
Ready to receive what the solstice hides
A rising fog to mark its silver reign--
Seasons in ever bruising shards of ice.
For the bridge remains our parapet
Its gate narrow, our days peninsular.
Poet’s Notes: In my work, I seek to explore the lives and circumstances of everyday people aka “Essential Workers” as well as the natural, manmade and spiritual beauty that often sustains them. While exploring the challenges they face a certain tension often becomes evident. To me, this tension is worthy of exploration and an image will startle the poem to life. As the inspiration comes, the structure of the poem begins to unfold – and word choice may suggest its direction. Also, a note about place-making is in order. The interaction of the subject in his/her surroundings fascinates me. Cities and natural landscapes have stories to tell which shape everyday people. In this poem “Key Bridge,” I have tried to illustrate both the manmade and natural environments in the space of the poem and how the bridge in winter is a symbol of both triumph and humility.
Editor’s Notes: I usually think of a bridge in a somewhat clichéd way. A bridge (a bridge event) opens a passage to something beyond, some new potential. However, Melton reminds us that a bridge is also a narrowing (“our days peninsular”), as well as a position suited for defense, and, therefore, a digging in of our heels. CAS
About the Poet: Mr. Melton holds a Master’s in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a BA in Economics and International Studies from the American University. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Amethyst, Compass Rose, The Galway Review, Kansas Quarterly, Confrontation, Mississippi Review, Grand Little Things, The Miscellany, Big City Lit, Cosmic Daffodil, Cape Rock Journal, Plum Tree Tavern, Poet’s Artists and Madmen, Siren’s Call and others.
*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
solstice morn-
ing cold wint-
er sunrise
memories
ingrained in
DNA
it takes mag-
ic to bring
the sun back
Editor’s Notes: In Fisher’s tight form, I catch the short day of winter solstice. I also feel the shiver of winter, the chattering of teeth mimicked by the hyphenated words. CAS
About the Poet: Mark A. Fisher is a writer, poet, and playwright living in Tehachapi, CA. His poetry has appeared in: Reliquiae, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, and many other places. His first chapbook, drifter, is available from Amazon. His poem “there are fossils” (originally published in Silver Blade) came in second in the 2020 Dwarf Stars Speculative Poetry Competition. His plays have appeared on California stages in Pine Mountain Club, Tehachapi, Bakersfield, and Hayward. His play Moon Rabbit won Audience Favorite at the Stillwater Oklahoma Short Play Festival in 2023. He has also won cooking ribbons at the Kern County Fair.
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Winter Solstice, Derbyshire
free verse
Mantz Yorke
That spring we ambled beside the river
to the viaduct that’s now part of the trail
between Bakewell and Blackwell Mill.
Beside a fishing pool the scent of may
hung heavy in the air: we lingered there,
watching a jet’s trail, brilliant white
against the mirrored deep blue sky,
till it wriggled across the rippling
ahead of the dam’s lip and was gone.
Today, the alders on the bank are leafless
silhouettes against a brackeny tan,
their empty cones clinging to the twigs.
The low midday sun has been snuffed out
by dark cloud swept on a bitter wind
from the north. Snowflakes quietly hiss
against my waterproofs and, thickening,
are turning the landscape monochrome.
I walk on into the wind. My cheeks are wet.
Editor’s Notes: In Mantz’s poem, “the scent of may” refers to the hawthorn tree. One season is contrasted with another, one pleasant emotional state with a bitter one. CAS
“…. My cheeks are wet.” This last sentence, this last image says so much. TLC
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Shakespearean
sonnet
Paul
A. Freeman
December 21st, the shortest day;
a neolithic site on Salisbury Plain.
Twixt rimy sarsens, Druids spot a ray
of sunlight and their sacrifice is slain.
In Wales and England standing stones were hewn,
conveyed to their expansive Wiltshire home,
erected to a bearded shaman’s tune
beneath Earth’s black-and-blue revolving dome.
This monumental ring of stones reveals
by movement of the stars, the moon and sun,
the moment that the winter solstice seals
that season’s fate, and shortened days are done.
Stonehenge’s upright stones and lintels still
announce when we’ve survived midwinter’s chill.
Poet’s Notes: The national monument at Stonehenge has always fascinated me. It was a pleasure to write a poem as structured in its way (a sonnet) as the standing stones at Stonehenge with its concentric rings of sarsens and lintels.
Editor’s Notes: Yes. This issue needs a poem about Stonehenge. CAS
The Druids, the dark assurance “… we’ve survived midwinter’s chill,” seemed to call for this black-and-white image of Stonehenge. TLC
About
the Poet: Paul A. Freeman is an English language teacher.
He is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was
taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into
German.
In
addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,500-word narrative
poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially
published, Paul is the author of scores of published short stories, poems and
articles.
He
is a member of the Society of Authors and of the Crime Writers’ Association,
and has appeared several times in the CWA’s annual anthology.
He resides and works in Mauritania.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
modern accentual verse
Bored
by icicles drooling
their
slick clichés, deadened
by
the rasp of terriers barking,
tired
of browsing the Sunday Times,
I
stroke my unshaven chin
to
strike a spark from the stubble.
You
stand at the sink and mutter
curses
on my wayward habits.
But
confined by weather and plague,
we
ought to share our little space
with
literary, literal gusto
we
both find in Joseph Conrad.
Evil
lurks by the frozen pond
where
one glacial erratic taunts
the
inadequate crust of snow.
I
should pitch my all-season tent
in
the middle of the pond and dare
an
early thaw to displace me.
You
would never follow me
to
the pond, the purple early dark
filling
our pockets, the ghost-tracks
of
migrating geese still glowing
in
vapors that smell like ghosts.
No
more thick old novels
to
distract from the rasping
of
tree trunks too closely grown.
The
evil that lurks here consists
of
drownings that haven’t occurred.
Camping
on the ice would reclaim
the
courage I lost with aging.
But
maybe I’d better stay home
and
toy with the image of thrusting
an
icicle into my brain
to
scald away the nonsense
that
you protest by washing dishes
so
roughly that some of them break.
Editor’s Notes: Here, the feelings brought on by winter and short days are given fuller scope. I like the interplay of tensions between domestic partners and how that is echoed in the weather. CAS
About the Poet: William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Venus, Jupiter (2023). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
untitled
Haiku
general submission
by Colleen Anderson
silver limned crescent
Moon’s boat crests night’s ocean
Poet’s note: I always love seeing that sickle moon in a clear night sky. Sometimes it’s tilted in such a way that it looks like a silvery boat. What would a sky boat harvest as it sailed through the galaxy? I wanted to capture the beauty and mystery of night exploration.
Editor’s Notes: Even though only the breadth of a haiku, this poem adds a certain charm to this issue. CAS
I like the word “limned,” which goes unused these days. I, too, have seen the moon boat. TLC
About the Poet: Colleen Anderson is a multiple-nominated and award-winning author with writing widely published in seven countries in such venues as Andromeda Spaceways, Lucent Dreaming, the award-winning Shadow Atlas, and Water: Sirens, Selkies & Sea Monsters. Her Rhysling Award winning poem “Machine (r)Evolution” is in Tenebrous Press’s Brave New Weird. Colleen lives in Vancouver, BC, and her poetry collections The Lore of Inscrutable Dreams, I Dreamed a World, and fiction collection, A Body of Work, are available online. A new poetry collection is coming in 2024.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
free
verse
general
submission
When
Brunehilde finds you in the very heat of battle
bringing
you a horn of mead, to slake your tortured thirst
thank
her kindly, but show her shield and sword in either hand
raise
them high, and launch yourself again
like
a longboat leaving shore, for foreign lands and plunder.
She’ll
laugh approvingly, and beg to be your shield-maiden
so
you might have a moment’s relief, yet still put her off
singing
a war-cry to stir the blood of those around you
–her
voice might join yours in giddy kinship
fiercely
charged in challenge, chorus and allure:
yield
not to her, though, brave one
–and
the raven swirling darkly over her shoulder?
Dare
not let it alight, not for an instant!
It
is the greatest glory to be chosen by her
to
be led to Odin’s table in Valhalla, to that honoured feast
where
the bounty, boast-toasting and fellowship are forever
–alas,
it will mean you lie slain upon the muddy field
your
comrades and clan bereft of your strength
and
that damnable crow pecking at your corpse
so,
weak youth, smile gently upon the pressing and winged Brunehilde
saying,
“Nay, dear one, ask me another day.”
Editor’s Notes: Love poems may be done to death, but who doesn’t love a good love poem? I like the warnings strewn throughout this siren song of love. CAS
About the Poet: A J Dalton (www.ajdalton.eu) is a UK-based SFF writer. He has published the Empire of the Saviours trilogy with Gollancz Orion, and various collections with Kristell Ink and Luna Press. He also runs the online storytelling community http://www.creativewritinghq.com on behalf of Middlesex University - all welcome! He lives with a monstrously oppressive cat named Cleopatra.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
free
verse
general
submission
In
the growing gloom,
marble
knights sleep through history.
Winter
light, glinting on their chain mail,
splinters
into sudden iridescence.
Ladies
rest on pillars of alabaster
dappled
by colours filtered
through
stained glass.
Christ
hangs in agony
through
the centuries
on
the Cross above the altar.
In
darkening glass windows,
horned
devils prod and torture
writhing,
suffering bodies
in
a medieval hell.
Musty
prayer books
slowly
decay and rot
as
motes of dust dance
in
the final shafts of light.
The
names of the Glorious Dead,
recorded
on polished oak,
echo
ever more quietly
through
changing generations.
At
the back, bell ropes hang sleepily,
waiting
for ghostly ringers.
Around
the font throng souls
of
infants whose bodies
lie
waiting in the cold graveyard.
Here
time past and time present
merge
in the winter darkness.
Editor’s Notes: A closed church is one of the saddest things to me. In Das Gupta’s poem, the particular details, haunting in their literal descriptions, gather to form a telling picture. Yet, due to present and progressive verb tenses, the picture is more cinematic than static. CAS
Often, I’ve stood in the middle of a church’s remains and wondered about its congregants. Tombs and headstones may never sum up a life, and I am saddened by it. Perhaps knowing that I, too, will be forgotten one day is what bridges the past, present, and future (for me). TLC
About the Poet: Sarah Das Gupta is a retired English teacher from Cambridge, UK. who also taught in Kolkata, India, and in Tanzania. She started writing a year ago while in hospital, following an accident. Her work has been published in over fifteen different countries and in many magazines, journals and anthologies including: The American Literary Review, BarBar, New English Review, Waywords Literary Review, Berlin Review, Pure Haiku, Danse Macabre among others. Her interests include: history, politics, early music, parish churches, folklore, botany and horse racing.
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Book Reviews
When Distant Hours Call
Poems
by
t l cummings
Editor-in-Chief
REVIEW
by
Vivian Finley Nida
When Distant Hours Call, Terri Lynn Cummings’ third poetry collection, takes readers through time and place to reflect on events that shape personal growth and a meaningful life. Published in 2019 by Village Books Press, the book’s three parts are written with heartfelt compassion and skill.
Part I begins with childhood and focuses on coming of age. The speaker in “Play Ball” announces, “I won’t shutter memories/or ban work of love.” She is ready to pitch but is not prepared for “First Loss.” At seven, her best friend succumbs to cancer. Crying, she pedals her bike away from home and stops where “a field of switchgrass holds its breath.” “Here her shadow/ slants like a broken promise.” A child, she copes with the loss of her friend by turning to fantasy, “A dragon burned my friend to ash.”
As a college student studying anthropology, Cummings recounts a class’s fossil hunting excursion in “Paleontology.” She stands before readers, stunned by the personal discovery that she is no longer a youth. “I wear my father’s hands/hold histories in them / like drops of water/delicate, easy to lose….” Then she is overcome by the mature wonder of historical discovery. “I…glance at my feet. Silence/ white as a stone erases the world / A trilobite, long as my hand-- / the find of a lifetime.” (A trilobite is an extinct marine arachnomorph arthropod. The last disappeared 251.9 million years ago.)
A young professional ready to put trust in a relationship, Cummings writes of finding love in “The Time of Venus.” “Even now, she marvels/how the slow spin of Venus/ lives up to his desire/ for the span of love and beauty-- / a second lasts longer than a day/in every caress.” She follows this with the loss of love’s illusion in the humorous “Pie Junkie.” She eats his slice of pie, saying, “I wanted nothing more than to be transported / from a crowded jail of unwashed laundry / to the sinful affair with crust/and meringue and chocolate / chocolate / chocolate.”
Part II extends loss, hard choices, and tribulations of family members in Ireland, the great first war, WWII, death, melancholy, and lasting repercussions as shown in “Defiant.” “…Bombs/charred the skin of peace, severed branches of families, friends.” The section closes with a haiku titled “Reason.” “Open the mind’s wrist / name the dreams worth living for / beyond greed, grief, gun.”
Part III addresses how to live. Advice appears in “Daily Bread.” “Slow down/ Tomorrow surges / after you with / artifacts of love.” In “The Simplest Matters,” parents thought “the world was kinder when they were young,” but they are no longer living. The speaker’s negative mindset persists. “Circumstances are sorry enough that one may… whistle a tune, or smile / and achieve as much for the universe as anyone.” Further debate about living surfaces in “Alzheimer’s Curse,” which refers to the death of grandsons and asks, “Why not me?” and “Weary,” which ponders, “Why are we never / finished with our own dying?”
A change in point of view provides a shift. The field that held its breath in “First Loss” becomes the speaker in “Muse” and recalls the past, compares it to the present. “A seven-year-old girl imagined I was Oklahoma/Neverland where no one grew old. I taught her/winter scabbed fall and death was not the end… / Shoots raised summer, and the sun, always an/exquisite nude, visited me longer to crown stalks/with tassels… / Bare-bone trees now sigh in pleasure/as hands and feet press limb-to-limb / Her grandchild spies my grassy beard/flies to the land of evermore.”
Hope rises to the pinnacle in Cummings’ title poem, “When Distant Hours Call.” With a sure voice, the speaker in the poem declares, “I want to be true to this season of downy blankets / without bustle or blare toppling small pleasures-- /…present/ in an ever-altering / landscape.”
Through superior craftsmanship, Terri Lynn Cummings’ book shows how loss, which weighs heavy, can be carried, understood, accepted. When Distant Hours Call increases readers’ understanding of how people grow and change through loss to achieve maturity, a broader perspective, and wisdom to lead a more meaningful life.
The Book of Noah
Poems
by
Yoni Hammer-Kossoy
Former Frequent Contributor
REVIEW
by
Charles A. Swanson
Yoni
Hammer-Kossoy’s volume of poems, The Book of Noah, is available from
Grayson Books. Noah is the figure whose
life becomes the touchstone for the poet’s fears of global warming and climate
change. The volume of poems approaches
the controversial subject of planetary chaos through the archetypical flood
that Noah saw coming. The poet
wonders—and sometimes dreams—how he can comprehend and stave off the disaster
of his own time.
Throughout
the book, brilliant poems in various forms investigate the speaker’s role in
the unfolding drama of today. “In His
Generation,” a discursive poem in seven parts, discusses the dilemma. The speaker admits, “I’m struck by how
convinced I am that my personal / actions are making the world a better
place.” Then he becomes distressed that
the city of Jerusalem, his home city, has taken over his job of recycling by
investing “100 / million shekels in a waste processing plant to separate
recyclable / materials from all of the city’s garbage” (“3.”). He wonders whether his efforts have an impact
on the threat he sees.
Other
poems, such as “A Hand in the Dark,” are anything but discursive. Rather, images coalesce to create the
impression of instability, of “flickers” and “static.” Out of the swirl of shifting figures, the
speaker asserts “one genetic bit / scores / the translucent lie / between
seeing and going blind.” “Memory Foam”
teases also. In a prose poem format, the
poet stabs the phrase “unasleep me” into a series of restless bed-tossing
images, all of them imitating the trouble that holds him, bears down on him,
and underwaters him.
As
the volume moves back and forth in style, in time, and in questioning, a sense
of the enormity and elusiveness of global warming unfolds. A poem which epitomizes the difficulty of
capturing the phenomenon of a worldwide potential cataclysm is “Dust
Libation.” An ancient pot is the subject
of the poem, and the speaker describes it as “the clay pot [that] always pops
into mind when I’m prompted / to describe an object.” The pot is a worthy subject, “wandering-in-the-desert
ancient,” dated (by whatever means) to “600 BCE.” By his own admission, the speaker suggests
that this is one of the physical things that is archetypal to him, something
that becomes an obsession in his writing life.
Nevertheless, he says, “I’ve / written too many half-fired poems about
this pot but never know / how to finish them.”
At the end of the poem, he says, “what I’m going to do is throw it / on
the ground and walk away.”
A
somewhat popular modern motif in poetry is for the poet to admit what he can’t
remember or can’t quite capture. His
failures enter the poem and sometimes become the poem’s heartbeat. This poem about the clay pot takes on more
meaning than another failed attempt to write a successful poem about an art
object. Instead, the futility enters the
larger theme, the very trouble of writing—convincingly and warningly—about the
oncoming disaster of climate change.
As
one might expect from a book of poems, the person of Noah, from Genesis in the
Old Testament, makes appearances in the volume, but does not dominate the
text. The last poem in the collection
illustrates Noah’s elusive nature. The
speaker says that Noah “didn’t speak to me for weeks.” This troubling occurrence happened after the
speaker’s wife told him, “Noah didn’t die because he never lived” (“The Death
of Noah”).
Does
Noah emerge as a literary figure, one who becomes a good vehicle for the poet’s
questions, or does Noah emerge as a figure of faith? If Noah did, indeed, live, he is still an
enigma, for he cannot answer the questions the poet poses to him, not unless
Noah speaks to the spiritual man. Yoni
Hammer-Kossoy does more than just appeal to Noah as a useful Biblical trope who
presages and prepares for the destruction of the earth. Hammer-Kossoy, instead, becomes a brother to
Noah, a spiritual descendant of Noah, who sees the trouble coming, who warns
through word and deed, and who senses the disregard his warnings will receive.
The
Book of Noah will reward the reader on many
levels. First, for those who love
poetry, they will find a wide range of poems, and the various forms are handled
with skill. Second, for those who are
anxious about global warming, they will encounter a kindred spirit. Third, for those who are doubters of climate
change, they will find a voice that also doubts, ponders, questions, reflects,
and agonizes. Even though the message of
the book is clear and strong, the poet gives doubters room to come to the table,
to discuss, to ruminate, to digest.
Fourth, for those who are persons of faith, they will find that Noah is
not doubted or diminished or dismissed.
His concerns, presented as real and unmistakably urgent, are the
bridgework on which Hammer-Kossoy builds his own.
The image of the clay pot, an image which suggests an inert and finished thing, becomes instead a metaphor for the time-burdened, dim-in-the-past but still-yet-to-be, thing the poet is working with. I quote Paul Lake here (from “The Shape of Poetry”): “the rules of formal poetry generate not static objects like vases [or, surely, pots!], but the same kind of bottom-up, self-organizing processes seen in complex natural systems such as flocking birds, shifting sand dunes, and living trees.” Hammer-Kossoy’s attempts to “capture” the pot as a “static” object may fail, but his attempt to present global warming and earth-shaking cataclysm succeeds because he pictures it, through many poems, both discursive and imaginative, as a “complex natural” system. Or perhaps not so natural. As man’s sinful lifestyle led to the flood in Noah’s time, so our pattern of living today affects and damages the world we inhabit. This is a book of poems that will richly reward the attentive reader.
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Your Support
Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is a for-profit entity that operates at a loss of up to $7,000 per year. It is sustained entirely by donations of time, talent, and treasure made by our editorial staff, loyal readership, and family of poets and artists.
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Frequent Contributor News
Alessio Zanelli had many publications this quarter and three of the notable ones are: Atlanta Review (GA), North Dakota Quarterly (ND), and English Journal (GA).
Karla Linn Merrifield has several full-length poetry manuscripts out on submission to as many publishers from the US to Great Britain to Australia as possible. Fingers crossed!
John C. Mannone celebrated eight continuous years as a Frequent Contributor (FC) to Songs of Eretz. This may be a record for an FC. Meanwhile, his publications include:
"Song of the Mountains" (Middle Creek Publishing and Audio), released in November 2023, and nominated for the prestigious Weatherford Award in Appalachian Literature. It has four poems first published in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review.
Though John is a college professor in physics, next semester (Spring 2024) he is honored to be teaching a course in creative writing to high school students at Career Magnet Academy in Knoxville, TN.
AWEN. Issue 122. November 2023. Atlantean Publishing, UK. "Wall Clock" (co-authored with Seth Allcorn); "Heather, A Flower"; "Love's Request."
Clio's Psyche. "Edvard Munch's 'Scream' -- and Ours." 30(2) Winter 2024: pp. 208-209.
Oklahoma Today. "Tapiola," May-June 2023. p. 41.
Mary Soon Lee’s poem "What Xenologists Read" appeared in Analog, November/December 2023. Two more poems, "Orchid Dragon" and "Phoenix Dragon," appeared in Analog, November/December 2023.
Vivian Nida and Terri Cummings presented their two-voice poems, accompanied by a PowerPoint production, to two book clubs.
Terri Cummings was selected to present her poetry at the Southwest American Pop Culture Association in Albuquerque, NM, February 2024.
Charles A. Swanson has two poems in AvantAppal(achia), an ezine that favors experimental writing: Cur(rent) Is(sue) (avantappalachia.com)
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We hope you enjoyed this issue and encourage you to come back again in 2024. The themes and deadlines are as follows:
Season Theme Submission Period
Spring Holding your breath Feb. 1-15
Summer Respond to Keats's May 1-15
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Fall Something you can hold Aug. 1-15
Winter A dramatic monologue Nov. 1-15
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SONGS OF ERETZ POETRY REVIEW
