An unpublished poem of mine, “silver, now and then” has been selected and is posted to the Library’s (PCCLD) Website to celebrate National Poetry Month this week. It is one of my rare poem for me in that it is less Lyric than it is Imagistic yet still speaks story.
Spring is a time of reawakening.
Just as the Earth is waking up and the life force in dormant seeds has begun to work toward germination and sprouting this is a time when we can begin to see some changes in the areas of our life we were working on. On hikes I find myself eyeing the buds on the tips of the cottonwood branches and watching for the aspen catkins to pop open. When I am in the yard I examine the garden beds for sprouts, gauging the progress the poppies are making and searching for early signs of crocuses or daffodils.
It’s a great time to check in on those critical areas of Family, Finance, Health, Relationships and our various goals and to do lists. How are we doing? What can we see as “markers” that progress is being made in these areas or other parts of our life. Are we making decisions and taking action in the direction of our dreams? Do we need to change direction a bit, slow down or speed up? Do we need to redirect a bit more of our time or energy in a particular direction or maybe just get back on track?
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“Change your thoughts, change your life.”
~Wayne Dyer
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alas, poor deer
pale, curved beauty of the moon here, half buried until now,
pitted and lined and neglected like old china plate, unearthed
living green algal creep in the clutches of cranial sutures
the meek inherit the porous structures
vaticania stained by the catholic creep of microbes
clutching deep like a river, branches and swells
penetrating and taking its timely place,
filling in the blanks between the banks
of ossified oxbows and switchbacks
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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.
Recently a call went out to poets to send their poem, nature, animal poems to the Han Shan Poetry Project which would hang them on trees in a forest threatened to be sold to developers. Han Shan was an ancient Chinese poet who posted his poems on the trees and rocks of Cold Mountain where he roamed and which was his home.
Gary Snyder first introduced me to Han Shan through his translation of Cold Mountain Poems, containing poems of Han Shan’s which had been found and collected. Han Shan’s wild zen poems about nature of the wild and the nature of man were very influential in my personal growth and in the evolution of my craft. To read the haiku Owl Light I sent to this project click on the link below.
Read the poem on my blog An Illuminated Path of Heart by clicking here: Owl Light
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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.
in search of snow
sunday, and choosing not to kneel down in the fabrications of man,
much preferring my sun-star seen through fir forests, and to walk grinning
on the surface of the lake’s icy reflection and listen to it muse to itself,
to pass through mountain meadows wheeling with a murder of crows, where
the winter solstice-bound sun was waving in the knee-high seed-heads,
beaver ponds frozen and pondered, mysteries of ice formations and rainbows
in the clouds, . . . [More]
Read the entire poem on my blog
Photo: Copyright Amy Martin 2012
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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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
final frontier
the mountain isn’t going to come to you,
you have to go to the mountain
is the epiphany i am having
just before he quietly breaks the silence
without turning to me he says,
“That’s the final frontier.”
we are gazing outward from our planet
through the starry skies of our short arm
of the Milky Way Galaxy
. . . [More]
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This poem is from my notebook “the nameless way woven with crooked genius.” If you like this poem, please copy the link or the short link and share it with others on Facebook, Twitter or whatever social networking spaces you frequent.
If you would like, 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. Thank you for enjoying my work.
The Beauty of the Moment
Be mindful, grateful.
The last hummingbird of summer,
is often seen without knowing it.
~David Anthony Martin
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This poem is from my notebook The nameless way woven with crooked genius and will be considered for inclusion in my next book of poetry currently being set to manuscript, Deepening the Map. If you like this poem, please check out other samples of my poetry here on my blog. You might also be interested in the poetry in Span, my collection of poems published by Rhizome Publishing which has just gone to paper back.
SPAN
span is a selection of poems written by David A. Martin, reflecting a unique undercurrent in the reawakening of environmental consciousness in the American west. (Read detailed description and reviews of Span below)
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To buy Span now with Paypal, Click on image below.
David A. Martin, an environmental educator and naturalist, holds man’s separation from nature and man’s return to union with nature in both hands as he focuses on the beauty and elegance of Nature wherever he finds it. These poems illuminate the simplicity and complexity of the inner and outer worlds of the poet.
Much of Martin’s earlier polemic works expressed the consequences of alienation from nature as being disastrous to the individual, humanity and the rest of the world. The poems in span exemplify the reunification, or possibly, ascension of the poet and the child within the man living in harmony with nature as a place of hope, healing, redemption and salvation of not only the individual, but also the human race and the rest of the world.
His mature poetry celebrates the connection to and a reverence for the complex and intricate beauty of the natural world from the perspective of an embedded and informed Human consciousness. When asked about whether he considers himself a “Nature Poet” he replied “I have endeavored to live in, enjoy and explore Nature my entire life, so yes, it has a large place in my writing, but I would consider the genre of my work to be Human Ecology. I write a lot about the connections I find in the outer manifestations of Nature to my inner world and understanding of my place in it. My poetry is quite often born of ontological musings.”
“David Anthony Martin is a nature poet the way Frank O’Hara was a city poet. He has paid attention, assimilated the beauty and mystery of his surroundings, and let it color his poetry in delicate ways. He says, “everything will be alright just shut up and listen.” He draws from dreams and folktale and myth. He contemplates streams and trees and bears. And he does it in language that is beguiling, sly and as lovely as a September peach. These are poems to carry in your metaphorical pocket like small runic stones, with lines that you will want to contemplate again and again. Like this brief poem called “stream of consciousness:” “the moon is not in the quick silver stream, the moon is in the still, void-dark lake.” Span is delicious reading.”
~Corey Mesler, author of Before the Great Troubling and Notes toward the Story and Other Stories
“Thoreau, Cid Corman, Lorine Niedecker, Whalen & Snyder, Sam Hamill and now David Martin, a wilderness walker returning as the missing lynx in the lineage of nature based poetry heartbeating it’s way into our gorges & forests – it has the aroma of wild mushrooms & the flow of a raging springmelt. The poems span the distance between old friends. ‘Less like a voice / more like a knowing'”
~Mike Parker, author of Don’t Fall Off The Mountain and Wallflower Sutra
To buy Span now with Paypal, CLick on image below.
an illuminated path of heart 