New Poem of the Week: Cottonwood Midlife

cottonwood midlife

cottonwoods, coming to leafless terms
with the lessoning light of the season

can now, so softly and safely reveal
the secreted nurseries of bird nests

…[More]

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If you like this poem, consider reading a few of my new poems on my blog and checking out my book Span (Rhizome Publishing 2011, 2012) which can be purchased as an eBook and read on most devices or as a beautiful paperback to be held in your hands and taken with you on your day.  The cover art by Mathias Valdez of Last Leaf Printing takes the book as object” concept to a lovely level.  Span also makes a great, inexpensive gift for the book or nature lover on your list.

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To buy Span now with Paypal, Click on image below.

     

Span | A Collection of Poems by David A. Martin
Paperback, 144 pages.

$9.95 + tax and shipping.
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A new early winter poem of the week

This morning’s meditation at the creek produced a nice little poem which speaks to the outer world as a mirror of the inner world and how there are times which we notice the difference between the way of the mind and The Way.

Stillness helps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cold mornings

the creek is telling white tales
it heard in the dark,

ice at the lips of its banks

. . . [More]

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This poem is from my recently begun, new notebook, having submitted worthy and well-worked poetry from the other filled and falling apart notebooks in manuscript form.

If you like this poem check out my other Selected New Poems on my blog or consider the eBook or paperback purchase of my book, span (Rhizome Publishing 2011, 2012) which is a collection of Human Ecology* poems from 2000-2010.

*Human ecology is the subdiscipline of ecology that focuses on the human niche. Broadly speaking, it is a study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments

Human Ecology has a wide territory and manifesting in geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, and natural ecology. It is my hope that my poetics can be seen to have contributed to this spectrum by adding literature, biography and ontology to this list.

A Farmer’s Veterans Day Poem

Veterans Day

history’s blood shed
brings us all to this moment
to choose a new dream

enemy revealed
as a man much more in need
of brotherly love

hardest row to hoe
is any row in a field
sewn only with weeds

[More]

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This poem is from my recently begun, new notebook, having submitted worthy and well-worked poetry from the other filled and falling apart notebooks in manuscript form. This poem is what is a series of linked “american” haiku or micropoetry.

If you like this poem check out my other Selected New Poems on my blog or consider the eBook or paperback purchase of my book, span (Rhizome Publishing 2011, 2012) which is a collection of Human Ecology* poems from 2000-2010.

*Human ecology is the subdiscipline of ecology that focuses on the human niche. Broadly speaking, it is a study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments: anthropogenic biomes called anthromes within which are habitats connected by road networks to create what has been called technoecosystems.  Human Ecology has a wide territory and manifesting in geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, and natural ecology. It is my hope that my poetics can be seen to have contributed to this spectrum by adding literature, biography and ontology to this list.

New Review: Poet James E. M. Smith on Span

 

“Historically, the natural world that we take for granted and that surrounds us closer than we think has been a gratifying subject for poets ever since the third century. The ancient Greeks wrote their `idylls’ – praising the virtues of simple rural life.Most notably the Transcendentalists – Thoreau, Muir, Emerson and Whitman among them realised the negative drain of politics and religion on a community and instead focused their attentions on the unity of man and nature, believing a simple life lived in natural surroundings achieving self-sufficiency was the key. Their poetry went beyond the painting of pretty pictures, it wasn’t all about seasons and birdsong and expressing romantic sentiments – indeed it touched on the transcendental.

In Span, David A. Martin is continuing the exploration, holding back the grasses of uncharted territory, showing us the interconnectedness – the ever changing complex relationship of man and nature as we move through this new century. What he does is quite miraculous. Here we have a writer who can broach this vulnerability, at times even confronting our occupation/destruction of it as the human race but do so in a way that is deft and urgent without being sentimental or sanctimonious.

 

To pigeonhole Martin as simply a nature poet isn’t going to encompass what is on offer here in this collection.

 

Early on in `the apple tree’ we learn there were many things that he had hitherto kept to himself. This is the perfect start – each successive poem serves as a revelation or insight of some sort.

 

Evidently Martin is equally at home writing acorn tight three line poems as well as the sprawling streams of forty-liners.

 

…[More]

 

New Poem of the Week; an American haiku

The new Poem of the Week is an “american” haiku. American haiku usually follows (but sometimes strays from) the 5-7-5 syllabic line break “rules”, but often has no seasonal reference word (kigo) and is, more likely than not, missing a kireji which is a “cutting word” or “turning word” which gives traditional haiku that double-exposure quality.  Although the poem below does fall into this genre, I believe that it does, in fact, embody a metaphorical “fourth line” generating quality.

The dog, half-asleep,

. . . [More]

 
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This poem is from my recently begun, new notebook, having submitted worthy and well-worked poetry from the other filled and falling apart notebooks in manuscript form. If you like this poem check out my other Selected New Poems on my blog or consider the eBook or paperback purchase of my book, span (Rhizome Publishing 2011, 2012) which is a collection of Human Ecology poems from 2000-2010.

Human ecology is the subdiscipline of ecology that focuses on the human niche. Broadly speaking, it is a study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments: anthropogenic biomes called anthromes within which are habitats connected by road networks to create what has been called technoecosystems.  Human Ecology has a wide territory and manifesting in geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, and natural ecology. It is my hope that my poetics can be seen to have contributed to this spectrum by adding literature, biography and ontology to this list.