Elvis Presley was a favorite subject of folk artist Howard Finster (1916-2001) — and prints of the work (“Baby Elvis,” 1988) shown at right are available (but not cheap) at Skot Foreman Fine Art.
Born on January 8, 1935, today marks the 78th anniversary of Elvis’s entry into the earthly sphere. If you’ve never listened to the King’s version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” take a few moments today to honor a great artist on his birthday — and listen to him sing the song here.
Cheers!
GIFT
by Czeslaw Milosz
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was born in Lithuania and lived for many years in Poland. He moved to the U.S. in 1960 and subsequently became and American citizen. From 1961-1998, he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1980, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Painting: “Cliffs and Sailboats at Pourville” by Claude Monet (1882)
“There’s nothing better when something comes and hits you and you think ‘YES’!” J.K. ROWLING
In 1990, while looking out the window during a train ride, J.K. Rowling got the idea for the entire series of Harry Potter books. Now that’s an epiphany! Here’s now Rowling describes the experience:
I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one… I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen). I began to write Philosopher’s Stone that very evening…”
EPIPHANY
by Joanie Mackowski
A momentary rupture to the vision:
the wavering limbs of a birch fashion
the fluttering hem of the deity’s garment,
the cooling cup of coffee the ocean the deity
waltzes across. This is enough—but sometimes
the deity’s heady ta-da coaxes the cherries
in our mental slot machine to line up, and
our brains summon flickering silver like
salmon spawning a river; the jury decides
in our favor, and we’re free to see, for now.
A flaw swells from the facets of a day, increasing
the day’s value; a freakish postage stamp mails
our envelope outside time; hairy, claw-like
magnolia buds bloom from bare branches;
and the deity pops up again like a girl from
a giant cake. O deity: you transfixing transgressor,
translating back and forth on the border
without a passport. Fleeing revolutions
of same-old simultaneous boredom and
boredom, we hoard epiphanies under the bed,
stuff them in jars and bury them in the backyard;
we cram our closet with sunrise; prop up our feet
and drink gallons of wow!; we visit the doctor
because all this is raising the blood’s levels of
c6H3(OH)2CHOHCH2NHCH3, the heart caught
in the deity’s hem and haw, the oh unfurling
from our chest like a bee from our cup of coffee,
an autochthonous greeting: there. Who saw it?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joanie Mackowski’s poetry collections include The Zoo (2002) and View from a Temporary Window (2010). She received a BA from Wesleyan University, was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and received a PhD from University of Missouri. A teacher at the university level for many years, she has worked as a French translator, a journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a juggler. She is the winner of the 2003 Kate Tufts Discovery award, and the 2008 Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson award.
NOTE: “Epiphany” by Joanie Mackowski was originally published in Poetry Magazine (November 2011). I meant to run this poem on Sunday, January 6, 2012 (the traditional day of Epiphany), but here it is a day late!
PHOTO: Diego Infante, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
“There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.” MARK TWAIN
Photo: Mark Twain and a cat friend. Twain enjoyed the company of cats and was often surrounded by his feline friends while writing.
THOUGHTS ABOUT WRITING
by Haruki Murakami
“As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.”
“I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.”
“…if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.”
“…at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style…”
“When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.”
“When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real.”
“Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).”
PHOTO: Novelist Haruki Murakami with a cat friend. Cats figure in many of Murakami’s novels — especially THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE (one of my all-time favorite novels), available on Amazon.com.
“…any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty.”
PATTI SMITH
PHOTO: Singer/songwriter/poet/writer/performer PATTI SMITH with her cat friend.
NOTE: Smith won the National Book Award in 2010 for her memoir JUST KIDS, available at Amazon.com.
Silver Birch Press Silver Anthology contributor jax NTP and contributor and co-editor Joan Jobe Smith have organized a reading in Long Beach, California, to celebrate the book’s recent publication. Details in poster above (designed by jax NTP — thank you!). A range of writers featured in the Silver Birch Press Silver Anthology will read from their work at the event.
In case you can’t read the fine print, here are the details…
EVENT: Authors reading from their work featured in Silver Birch Press Silver Anthology
DATE: Sunday, January 13, 2013
TIME: 2-4 p.m.
PLACE: The Wine Crush
LOCATION: 3131 East Broadway, Long Beach, CA, 90803
This promises to be a fun afternoon — and we hope some of our readers in Southern California can attend and meet the authors.
“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”
W.H. AUDEN
Photo: Poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) and his cat friend. Critics consider Auden one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
JANUARY MORNING (Excerpt)
by William Carlos Williams
Long yellow rushes bending
above the white snow patches;
purple and gold ribbon
of the distant wood:
what an angle
you make with each other as
you lie there in contemplation.
Photo: Poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) with kittens. By training, William Carlos Williams was a medical doctor and often made house calls for sick children (he was a pediatrician). The photo with the kittens was probably taken during such a visit.
Silver Birch Press 