The first even though midway through

I decided I was not too ambitious but I was merely impractical. I came up with this project too late (sort of). I have sixteen days left of April, National Poetry Month, so I have to read 1.875 poems a day in order to have 30 poems read, one for each day of the month, but the end. I read two yesterday:

"Emaciate Buddha" by Brett Eugene Ralph from Black Sabbatical

and

"Wind Camp" by Joanna Rawson from Unrest

I was pleased with myself for choosing two contemporary poets to begin with. I really thought I was just going to go the easy route and only read "the classics." I found these on Ron Hogan's literature blog Beatrice. I highly recommend you read his blog. He is a writer but what's more is he is a very active impresario of literary arts in New York. In all narcissistic honesty, I would like to be the Ron Hogan of Omaha. I just don't read enough. I am not involved in the literary circles I wish to be.

Frequently I do searches for writing and reading groups around Omaha and I am also dismayed and tickled by the ones that I find. There are abundant middle-aged to elderly women who write and read droll romance and romantic sci-fi. Interesting, but certainly not what I am looking for.

I was pleased to see that Jeffery Koterba, Omaha World Herald cartoonist and recent author of a pretty good memoir (and a jazz musician to boot), was mentioned in a Washington Post article about tourette's.

Oh, and the poems were pretty good. I liked wind camp better. It reminded me of a poem an old classmate of mine wrote in college in which he pondered a tree that seemed to be alive and personified by the enormous amount of black birds rattling around in its branches. He was delighted by the birds but Rawson took a little more offense to the natural activity of these little guys. Her's seems to fit with the Hitchcockian paranoia birds engender or the Poe-esque madness that comes by giving a little too much control of one's peace to incessant bird banter.

And the Ralph poem reminds me of a poet I used to be in monthly reading group with. He was bald too. This was when I lived in Cincinnati and the guy read this one poem nearly every month about him sitting next to the Ohio river and perceiving himself to be a circle on the ground and attaining a zen sort of "okayness" with his state. I was never sure if it was the state of Ohio, the state trying to write poems for a living, or a more cerebral sort of thing. Anyway, Ralph's poem conjured that up for me.

I like the poem but I am trying to figure out why we scarcely see the guy this poem is talking about. Is it that we won't see him? Is he actually invisible? Because if he is displayed like the second stanza makes it sound like he is it seems as though he would be a bit of a spectacle. But, I have a feeling he embodies that seemingly unattainable spiritual emptiness/wholeness that most say they desire but won't commit to. Or perhaps the guy is just a self-made martyr. Either way it is an intriguing picture.

brandon