Sunday, January 09, 2022
POEM: I CANNOT DELVE IN FANTASY
I cannot delve in fantasy
For I have lived too much, you see,
And ghosts and goblins are not real,
Not as real as what I feel.
I have dared face Satan's wrath,
When he dared to cross my path,
And neither shall forget that day,
When he turned and ran away.
I have not time for unseen fears,
In these, my final, dwindling years,
Don't deal in dreams, just what I know,
Already been where few dare go.
Labels: donovan baldwin, dying, fantasy, poem, poetry, Satan
Friday, December 31, 2021
ESSAY: HAPPY NEW YEAR 2022
I wrote the mini-essay below on December 31, 2018.
Oddly enough I was thinking similar thoughts this morning. Where I sit right now, in Fort Worth, Texas it is 7:20 AM, Friday, December 31, 2021. In Sydney, Australia, it is 12:20, Saturday, January 1, 2022.
In other parts of this world I live in, it's already a new day, with opportunities, terrors, and, I'm sure, a few hangovers... okay MANY hangovers.
Still, no matter what day it is, or hour OF the day, it IS the start of new time, and time is only measured by mankind, not by the Universe. So, it's YOUR time. Make of it what YOU will. You already in the New Year, get going... I'm right behind you... by a few hours.
------
Essay from December 31, 2018
I'm 73 [76 in 2021], going to be a year older in March. I know that it's easy, and fun, to try to make the new year better than the old one, but, the fact is, and it took me years, decades, to learn this, not just know it, but to feel it in my being... each day is the start of a new year.
The New Year, a fun thing to think about and celebrate, is just a date on a calendar arbitrarily drawn up by long dead humans who did not understand it themselves.
If you want to be "better", start tomorrow... the 1st, the 2nd, the 3rd, etc. Any day can be the start of a new future.
You will make mistakes, you will take two steps forward and one back, but, you can keep moving towards your goals. You don't need a new calendar year to get started.
Happy New Year... day, week, month, year... life.
Labels: 2022, donovan baldwin, essay, happy new year
POEM: MIGHTY LITTLE ATOM - THOUGHTS ON AN ESSAY BY ALDOUS HUXLEY
So central to everything,
All being,
Things in existence,
Beautiful and ugly,
Useful and useless...
Ourselves.
Yet, so seldom sung,
Or praised,
For what is an atom
That one cannot hold
Or see,..
Specious argument,
For can we see or hold
Love,
Respect,
Honor,
Duty,
Beauty?
And yet we sing of these!
So, let us admire and
Write poetry about
Atoms,
Molecules,
And more.
Labels: Aldous Huxley, atom, donovan baldwin, poem, poetry
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
ESSAY: ART HUMANIZES THE MIND... PERHAPS
Thinking Out Loud... Revisited (From Dec 29, 2018)
In "Seven Discourses On Art" (1769), Sir Joshua Reynolds uses the phrase, "...art worthy of his notice that tends to soften and humanise the mind."
This has long been what I have understood about "art", ever since the genteel nuns of my youth tried so hard to beat the concept into my rather unmalleable brain.
I guess that's the point, at least mine.
The goal of "education" was to learn to earn. You were supposed to become someone who could contribute realistically to the common good, and make a living doing it. You also learned how everybody else thought and followed in their footsteps.
Rather a harsh reality to my mind.
Yet, concurrently, it was somehow assumed that there would be, should be, a strange group of admirable, if weird, individuals who would stray from this straight and narrow path, and produce... "art".
It was further assumed that art WOULD "soften and humanize" us humans.
Yet again, over the decades, I have come to notice that sometimes, it seemed to me, we artistes (so to speak), see and comment on the real, the painful, the difficult to deal with and/or understand.
I think maybe, in that way, we contribute to the "humanizing" of the human hordes.
Softening?
Toughening?
Perhaps both... concurrently.
Introduction of the concept of intentional malleability, at least.
Open our mind to the "other"... another way of thinking or viewing reality. Just thinking out loud... as often happens.
Come to think of it, isn't "art" sort of just "thinking out loud"?
Labels: art, article, donovan baldwin, essay, humanize, Seven Discourses on Art, Sir Joshua Reynolds
Monday, December 27, 2021
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Thursday, December 23, 2021
CYCLES A POEM OF THE SEASONS
Trees are bent with apples red,
Farmers' fields are turned and tired.
It's cold, with gray clouds overhead.
Soon the snow will lay a blanket,
On grass and road, on farmer's field.
Within a white and silent shroud,
The world will be quite shortly sealed.
Yet, in the home, as in a man,
A fire will burn, a song will sound.
Life will let the Winter pass,
Until, at last, the Spring comes round.
The geese shall change their clothes once more,
As hills put on their yellow flowers.
Farmers' fields will all turn green,
As white clouds rain down April showers.
On through Spring and into Summer,
'Til the first act of the Winter play,
Fields and geese trimmed round about,
With apples red, and feathers gray.
Labels: Autumn, donovan baldwin, fall, poem about seasons, poetry, spring, summer, winter
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
POEM: ROME EXPRESS BY NIGHT (1968)
Leaving behind laughter and pain,
Bringing joy or sadness,
Onward rolls the Rome Express
Pounding over the invisible German countryside,
Where, in other times, the young men died.
Faces tell stories, some of which are lies,
A smile may cover sadness,
A gloomy visage may hide a happy heart.
Strangers, strangely intent on remaining strangers,
Eyes avoiding eyes, souls avoiding souls,
In dark windows of the cars,
Outward looking eyes,
Mingle with the stars.
American soldier, German hausfrau, Turkish laborer,
In the compartment, rich and poor mingled,
Poured into this tiny, mobile room.
Across the compartment sits a Sikh,
With his uncut hair and beard.
An old woman takes black bread and apple
From her bag to make a meal.
The train passes sleepy German villages
In the night,
Where, not too long ago
A war was fought,
Now, peacefully fading
Into the night,
And memory.
{Photograph "Windows" by Dana Popescu.)
Labels: Dana Popescu, donovan baldwin, poem, poetry, Rome express, strangers on a train, trains, windows
Monday, December 20, 2021
POEM: WHERE DO LOST POEMS GO?
Where do lost poems go,
The ones arrived too early,
Or too late, or when the Muse
Has ceased her chant, and
Recanting of her desire to
Share her words with this
Mad poet,
Withdraws,
Veil covering her face,
Leaving him with but fading memory,
Of the most beautiful poem...
Never written?
The ones arrived too early,
Or too late, or when the Muse
Has ceased her chant, and
Recanting of her desire to
Share her words with this
Mad poet,
Withdraws,
Veil covering her face,
Leaving him with but fading memory,
Of the most beautiful poem...
Never written?
Labels: poem, poem by Donovan Baldwin, poetry
