BLEND IT LIKE BECKETT

Poem of the Week

Letters from God to Keene

By William Doreski

Today as I walk to the square

I find letters from God dropped

in the street where retired old men

stoop to read them but fail

because the light’s so drab and frozen.

The bandstand gloats like a tombstone

as three girls smoking marijuana

watch the traffic circle the park.

God’s letters drift around them,

but they’re too giggly to pause and read

the good or bad news of their lives.

I’d wave and wish them luck but

they’d think me too old to flirt

with such lurid young creatures;

so I stagger to the pastry shop

and order coffee and donuts

and listen to heavyset workmen

complain that the letters from God

are harder to read every year,

the prickle of his holograph

like cataracts scratching their eyes.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, USA. he is now retired from teaching in the english department at Keen state college. I came to knew about him through his contribution in Arc Magazine june Issue 2021. He sent me five prose poems, they were in striking horizontal boxes. Kafka in Place, published in Arc Magazine. He began writing when he was in grammar school growing up in connecticut.

Doreski poems are stitched in a narrative arc and they are buffered with day to day elements. Letters from God to Keen is a great poem which represents real life experience and here we see the intriguing last line suffused with philosophical energy. A mystery of the unknown remains unknown as we are wrapped in our illusions. This self cocoon prevents us from reading the eternal truth of life and being self indulgence in the day today life comes as a big barrier in decipherence of mysterious holographs of God. Poems based upon real experiences invites the readers to try their hand on poetry, even if they are not poets.

William Doreski teaches creative writing, so this type of real narrative arc comes easily to him. An exemplary one!

William Doreski says about poem “Letters From God to Keens” and his writings:

I saw a couple of young girls sitting in the gazebo in the square smoking a joint, and noted the trash blowing around, and thought, 'What if instead of trash, those are important messages going unread?'

When I slump at my desk and wrestle with placing one word after another, I’m unaware of or indifferent to larger social or political issues

I reject the notion that what lies outside the body is more real than what lives in the mind. The ideal poem would in every line, sentence, and phrase juxtapose those two worlds and force them to fight to a draw.

Poetry has to be, first and perhaps foremost, an ongoing lesson in using language responsibly and with a view to enriching human experience

I think the purpose of poetry is to educate our imaginations, and therefore it should be primarily imaginative—not journalistic, autobiographical, etc.

Biography:

William Doreski was born and grew up in small-town Connecticut and lived in Boston, Cambridge, and Arlington (MA) for many years before moving to New Hampshire. He attended various colleges, and eventually received a Ph.D. from Boston University. For 34 years Doreski was a professor of English at Keene State College. He has published several collections of poetry, and three critical studies—The Years of Our Friendship: Robert Lowell and Allen Tate (University Press of Mississippi, 1990), and The Modern Voice in American Poetry (University Press of Florida, 1995), Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors (Ohio University Press, 1999)--and a textbook entitled How to Read and Interpret Poetry (Prentice-Hall). His critical essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many academic and literary journals, including Massachusetts Review, Yale Review Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge and many others.

Prizes won: Aesthetic Poetry Prize 2010, Clay Potato Fiction Award, 2004, Poet Lore Translation Prize, 1972.

Autumn’s Fiery Leaves

The trees with red leaves always catch my attention in autumn. Fiery leaves are a manifestation of short duration of sunlight. Plants and trees begin to redistribute their chlorophyll to trunks and roots in autumn and winter due to scarce sunlight. Autumn or fall season timing is from September to December.

And it all lead to changing of landscape as other masked pigments of trees carotene xanthophyll, anthocyanin begin to take hold of the fabric. Unmasked anthocyanin is responsible for red colors or call it fiery red.

The revolving earth around the sun remains tilted from the vertical axis and it brings different proportions of sunlight to various parts of earth. This earthen tilt is responsible for four seasons: spring, summer,autumn and winter. So we call it – A riot tucked in tilt

Coloring autumn is an illusion as it brings stressful conditions to human beings and trees. Dipped temperature and short sun makes life miserable and for me it is the season of cold rashes on skin. Anthocyanins absorbs green and yellow light and gives rise to fall’s mauve, scarlet, violet and red sketches.

Actually packed anthocyanins in autumn are saviour of crying tree making the look of landscape colored one!

Photo courtesyy : rightfully owner

Fall Jokes

If money grew on trees, what would be everyone’s favorite season?

fall

What happens when winter arrives?

Autumn leaves

Why do birds fly south in the fall?

Because it is too far to walk

Why did summer catch autumn?

Because autumn is fall

What is the best book to read in autumn?

Gourd of the rings

from internet