the luxury of waste
first world apathia
photo by: Elle Arra apple discarded in a parking lot
In a time where the flesh of life is folded onto itself so many times over, that the origami of our being is now nearly indistinguishable; in a time where the dirge of a very probable race-war in these beautiful, yet not so united States, is at full crescendo among the rafters of this play house; in a time of global economic crisis knocking at the door, already having entered some places like Greece, where rations are presently $60 a day; in a time where thirst, and hunger are the norm for many Countries in Africa, we waste.
We, First Worlds have had the luxury to waste; to waste time cast off to hours of escapism, money thrown to frivolity, food discarded haphazardly as though it were not a sustainer of life, one which many pine for with dizzy heads and aching bellies. We waste days to lethargy and lament because we can.
Our greatest global waste however, is that of love. We undervalue each other, we waste love to inane arguments and unnecessary discord. Love is wasted in empty entanglements never finding fruition to full friendship, strewn about us like articles of undergarments after a one night stand. Love is wasted in hate and spite, war, abandonment. Can we afford this? Do we with our first world egos and obsessions with self, have the luxury to waste love? Won’t we be the death of ourselves? Can’t we start now to revel in love, to let go the notion of every man for him or herself, to truly come together as a balm for the ails of our fellow-man?
are you tired of living a wasteful life? do you want to begin living with more purpose and conscientiousness? it starts with love. love something bigger than yourself, love yourself, and love everyone around you, all else will fall into place, but love is the first step.
Practical Application:
- Love someone/something greater than you, whom/that you depend upon on some level, for thrive.
- Love something/someone lesser than you, who couldn’t possibly do anything for you in return.
- Love yourself. Even when at your ugliest, with your flaws, missteps, and ill spoken words. Love yourself.
poetry & love,
‘Elle
away for inspiration
get away to other worlds
“where are you in those times you are not here? i am away to other worlds; some interior, some exterior. i return always with trappings from my travels, they serve as defibrillators.“
Sometimes we must away to other worlds in order that we might gain greater breath, insights, expound the beats in our chests, and come back to the moment with lift and heft. I’ve been on such a journey with the assignment to refuel my soul.
This weekend I went to the Hunter Museum of Art in Chattanooga, TN. I went specifically to see the Monet & American Impressionism special exhibition. I was filled with wonder and awe, at all the beautiful works of art. Permission to photograph was not granted in the special exhibition room, however it was in the lower area of the museum. Below is one of the things of beauty I took in to revive my weary spirit under the weight of these strange times in which we live.
(when was the last time you got away from the path, ventured off from all mundane normalcy to find that second wind? what did you discover in the stillness away from it all, in yourself?)
photo taken by: Elle Arra. artwork by: Tony Scherman. titled: II Mostro. 1998 encaustic on canvas
poetry & love,
‘Elle
to the woods
a sign of endearment
prose in image by: Mary Oliver
Sometimes “the woods” is just a day, a day when we may have prefered solitude, but we let you spend it with us. Other times the woods are the trunk and branch dense confines of our minds, the thoughts we’re insecure about, but offer you as wildflowers. The woods might be a shared bed, an open heart, or words of poem. Be open to the subtle ways in which quiet souls let you in, they are taking you to their woods, and that means you are profoundly important to them. – Elle Arra
poetry & love,
Elle
a leveling
checks and balances
“Let us then be admonished, each to tend the scale under the weight of his own soul, and in such doing – balance the whole world.” – Elle Arra
“Libra Scales” by: Ulrich Schnell.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/onkelulle
It is easy isn’t it, for us to find ourselves caught up in the weighing of each others faults? All we achieve in this is a further imbalance. Let us all attend to our own missteps, seeking the order of our own thoughts and words, and deeds.
poetry & love,
Elle
a tremble of anatomy, by word
speak past the flesh
words
brindled with the skin of
our longing, lay us a twine
of quivering muscle.
© Elle Arra
self-portrait entitled ” Dissection of it All” by: Diana Eastman http://www.deeastman.com
There are those words, that when spoken, crawl in through our pores, open the skin completely, expose the organs, travel the blood to marrow, and embed in us. those are the damn word i live for. speak them into me, crack the bone.
poetry & love,
Elle
lest love escape
a loosing of love
Sometimes we bite our tongues until there’s copper fluid swimming between our teeth, holding back for the fear of loosing, or losing love. Sometimes we clench our jaws trying to chew the moment down to rational when there is no rationale for love. May this strange, blooming, bent and beautiful love find its way to knowing you, and may you never lose it, and may you ever loose it upon one another.
Romy Schneider & Alain Delon dancing in their home in France circa 1959. Photo by: Michel Brodsky
poetry & love,
Elle
for broken people, who wear their hearts on their sleeves.
bloodlet, but never stop loving.
Sometimes, we who give all, who open our veins and bloodlet to feed and nourish those we come to love, find that we are syphoned off to nearly nonexistence. I say “don’t open” in the center of my ache, but on the contrary, never close. Always love, find new ways to love deeper and harder. But do move your heart away from anything and anyone that brings it tremendous chaos and pain.
“incompiuto” by: Colette Saint Yves
poetry & love,
Elle
a fateful saturday
saturday the smallpox
It’s the year 1716, the Augustan Age. England is a bustle with growth and a keen focus on aristocracy, opulence, and the myth of beauty in young women. That latter aspect is what we will focus on in just a moment.
In this time, England was filled with elegance and refinery. They ate and drank, indulging especially in meats and cheeses, they took their snuff and pipes, and pursued higher learning. This was a time of distinct focus on beauty for beauty’s sake. The 18th century marked a notable gleam with its glittering Vauxhall Gardens, poets, and young ladies full of refined charm and feminine beauty. These were times of courtly wasps in high fashion garb, embroidered and accessorized, coiffed to perfection. Opulence abounded and there was an overall celebration of finery and status.
Mary Wortley Montagu – an aristocrat – was the epitome of her times. She was young, and beautiful, she was a poet who moved in the highest circles of the Court. Until it all came to a shattering end for her one Saturday morning. Mary, at just 26 years of age, contracted small-pocks. This unforeseen tragedy marked a change in her thinking and perception of society. We’ll explore the paradox and parallels of this personal upheaval in a time of great beauty and success.
To have been a young woman at just the start of her life, really, and have contracted small-pocks, was a brutally tragic blow to Mary Wortley Montagu. Small-pocks was a terrible, terrible disease that ravaged the country and boasted its piles of mounting corpses. Before it took a life, it completely destroyed the bodies of it’s victims. When Mary awoke at 26 with this dreaded disease, she knew her life as she had known it with all of her favor and privilege, was over. And now, it is at this time, we come to her poem “Saturday; The Small-Pocks”.
A young woman, who had been beautiful and celebrated for her beauty all her life, is now permanently scarred, ruined, and invisible to the world that once revered her. She writes a poem about tremendous loss in a time of booming surplus and 
accelerate wealth.
In the poem “Saturday; The Small-Pocks” Montagu sheds light on the striking contrasts between her now – moral acuity, and the current social standard of her time. We readers can glean the harrowing parallels between her time and ours. Nothing has changed. We uphold unattainable standards for a fleeting beauty which never should have carried the weight we put on it. We celebrate wealth and beauty and overlook anything beneath it. In 18th century England – much like present day – people and things of beauty presented as the highest form of currency. They were just that – currency, traded in gossip for the length of a set of breaths and then on to the next. “Owned” in the hearts of covetous and thirsty admirers. Bought and sold with cloth and coin, esteemed while paradoxically being diminished.
The profundity in the opposing elements juxtaposed each other is heavily felt: The backdrop of the height of beauty and surplus, towering over this one small, young woman and her loss of the same. Her eyes open and she is now painfully aware of the shallow falseness of society, and the myth of beauty. In her poem, she addresses her own self-deception by projecting her thoughts and beliefs prior to contracting the disease, onto her fictional character Flavia. She writes initially in satire through the voice of Flavia who is essentially the personification of the both herself and the disingenuous society in which she lives; and then the poem takes a turn, the satire is dropped and Mary is speaking to us in her present lament, and it is there that we see her awareness dawn.
These two lines of her Heroic Couplet stand out to me: “how am I grown a frightful specter to myself unknown” “even youth itself – to me is useless now” Even youth itself is useless to me now – the irony is that youth and beauty were always useless. She was unable to discern this while one of the elite darlings. Her porcelain visage now sullied, she became denigrated and was able to see the vain social constructs of beauty as they truly were. Hers was a quiet learning of the ugly, insincere world in which she was once a major part which is the poetic precursor to the poem itself. I can relate to Mary in having altered my beauty for which I was known, after having my second child. The weight gained rendered me seemingly invisible in a society where I had been praised. Even my artistic and intellectual qualities became of no avail. While not nearly as tragic a fate, and while mine is alterable, reversible, I can sincerely empathize with the loss felt by Mary Wortley Montagu, and the fickle vanity of the public. The key to this poetic social commentary of hers I think, is to find the ways in which we can change the perceptions of beauty, and properly order its relevance and weight; to find within ourselves some unalterable beauty and fix our beliefs on that, because all else will change given time and circumstance.
These thoughts were written in response to a course I am taking at Stanford University called 10 Premodern Poems by Women.
I will explore further the perceptions of beauty, specifically within the scope of women writers, in a coming entry. This is a huge topic of debate, with vehemently stated opinions on either side. until then…
poetry & love,
Elle
girls who read
Bedtime story:
You Should Date an Illiterate Girl
[read to the end to get the message]
“Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it
lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her. Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice. Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.
Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well.
Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.
Do those things, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick. Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived. Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness. 
Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.”
by: Charles Warnke
originally posted here
This is a most brilliant read, an extremely close and dear friend of mine sent it to me earlier last week and I’ve only now had the time to sit and read it. What a great literary expression of what it is like to love a woman who reads (and writes). We are a force, indeed, but damn if we aren’t the most beautiful creatures when we are in our element. Damn if we don’t love hard and deep, and inspire the beauty to shine from those who fall into our arms.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. And I hope you have at least one woman in your life who reads. Love her, and let the fullness of her vastly emotive heart envelop you. Love her, even in those moments when you cannot stand her. Love her, even long after you have had to leave her, or she has needed to leave you. Love her.
poetry & love,
Elle
Outline
Rachel Cusk’s “Outline“
I’ve just finished reading Rachel Cusk‘s ingenious book “Outline“, from my hotel suite (sometimes you need to get a suite, just because!) and I find myself deeply impressed by her ability to take a series of autobiographical conversations and form them into a beautifully dense, slow-moving novel. It is a stroll through the lives of those she encounters, full of rich detail and shocking revelations. Very little is said about the narrator herself, but we see her, and learn a tremendous amount about her based on these interactions.
She seems a quiet, introspective soul who has a keen ability to extract the pains and passions of those she encounters. I quite identified with this character as I have felt my life slightly shadowy as I absorb those around me.
The book is a very even paced read, and does not employ any wild Voltas or spectacular fireworks, save for the explosive revelations and intimate details she draws out of the people she meets and comes to know. Within those confessions, are some wickedly brilliant lines of literature. The human condition, the human experience – this book is wrought with it. There is something everyone can identify with.
If you need loud excitement, this is not the book for you. If you are able to enjoy a quiet, slow-moving unfolding of rich characters, this is the book for you.
tap to read review
poetry & love,
Elle
a lighted window at dusk
the randomocity of life
We are all so interwoven, and deeply connected, to the point of sharing molecules when in proximity, yet; we rarely touch. Oh, we feign collision, with haphazard words and aimless grope of eye contact. Yet, we do not touch. In this technology age of heightened interconnectedness there is no real intercourse of souls. Let’s be more than a lighted window at dusk, let’s touch.
I‘ve missed touching and being touched by you all while on my brief sabbatical from word. I hope you haven’t forgotten me! Ready to touch?
poetry & love,
Elle
bury the days {forward & backward}
a reversal of word
“bury the days”
death of thoughts, fallen
into translated paradox
and
contradiction—
seemingly. bewildered
am i physical
or
meta?
human-sub sinking
marine aqua deep
breathing—
but dead.
“bury the days”
dead— but
breathing deep
aqua marine
sinking sub-human
meta or physical?
I am bewildered
seemingly contradiction
and
paradox.
translated into fallen
thoughts—
of death.
© Elle Segarra
It’s Day 30 ◊
The final day of our poem-a-day challenge for National Poetry Month has come! This is the end of an experience. There have been moments of great stride, as well as tremendous fatigue, but I have enjoyed this. I’ve got a couple days worth of comments from some of you that I need and want to catch up on, and I will, just give me a day or two to go lay in a writing-free fetal position haha.
Now that this month is complete, and I can get back some of my time, I’ll soon be sharing with you some of the amazing projects that are just below the surface. I’ll also be contacting some of you whom I’ve seen to be of great talent in word, to be a part of some of those projects! I’m super excited, but honestly, I’m more afraid than anything. If you knew how much I have stalled because of fear, you’d be ashamed of me. Working on that now. Also learning to let go of things that are harmful, deterrents, irrational. I am highly sponge, I absorb the essence of a thing and allow it to sink in to my core, and then I marinate in it. I internalize the harshness and ugliness that is cast my way whether intentional or un. I destroy myself to preserve those around me. All of this is counterproductive and lacking in self-love. I am working on believing the beauty about myself, and allowing someone who thinks otherwise the right to that- albeit untrue -opinion. Letting go, burying the days. The truth is: if someone doesn’t come to us with the burden on their heart as it pertains to us, or with the skewed image they hold, they simply don’t care enough, and neither should we. To clarify: the “neither should we” does not assert that we should not care about the person, we should always harbor love and forgiveness for one another, but we should not care about the situation if the other party is unwilling to resolve it either by addressing it, or just quietly altering behaviors. I’ve never known how to “not care” I live and operate through the filter of feeling, sensing, emoting. These attributes feel as much a curse as a gift at times…
For now, on to the prompts: Writer’s Digest has asked us to write a “Bury the__” poem, of course we are to fill in that blank. I chose “days”, because there is so much that transpires and does not transpire in our days which add up to weeks and months, and compile to years and decades, and span ages. There is so much said and left unsaid. So much lost even in the gaining. There is so much for which we are internally repentant, or for some acridly indignant. But we cannot abide the holding of these evils, we must bury the days. Sometimes there must be a death of things that will not iron out, that will not show themselves rightly. This is a touchy moment for me, and subject matter, as I am fiercely loving and loyal, and abhor falseness and cruelty. I despise- to the point of often irrational reactive behavior -injustice. I have destroyed myself countless times in trying to right wrongs, or call untruths as such, trying to fight for what is just and true, both within myself (because I am just as flawed and broken as everyone else, but I am always able and willing to look into myself and accept my flawed nature and rework it, refine it to better character) and in those I come close to. The truth is: this is a futile battle, we don’t hold the Libran scales of balance, and it is not our stead to weigh and price the souls around us. I am learning, or perhaps unlearning.
I also live with an extreme amount of guilt and pain, and though I’ve always been a proponent for “no regrets!“-which is a very “pretty” idea, but highly idealistic and unrealistic; and quite frankly – naive. (thank you Laine Anne Theodore for causing me to think deeper on that in a previous post where you gently countered my assertion)- I have deep regrets that I don’t think I acknowledge to myself save for rare occasions such as tonight. I’m learning to bury the days, the pains, the issues, the misunderstandings, the regrets, the failures, the frustrations. I’m learning to bury it all, and live in and operate from love and gratitude. I’ve always applied those two qualities to others, but never to myself. Working on that.
This month of writing daily was not just used for showing my work and showcasing others, but I was coming clean, to myself and to you. I was digging into my chest and ripping out whatever was rotted or ugly, I was assessing and correcting my character – not always before your eyes, but often in my private moments of quietude. I have pushed myself to open more where I’d prefer to hide behind cryptic lines of prose. I am always seeking growth and unity, however, I realize that there will not always be harmony, that not everyone will return kindness, that I will not always behave in a manner that reflects love and light. I think we need to learn to accept that we are all things, and that is the beautiful bent that is human being. We are loving and kind, but also selfish and biting. We are giving and open, but also very much closed and dismissive. We are so much bad, but damn if we aren’t also so much good! We would do well to get a shovel and bury the days, because they do not equal the sum of a soul. Bury the days.
So, I’ve just waxed extremely verbose and most of you probably quit reading ages back in this post (if you’re still treking along with me, and you decided to comment, include in your comment “Benedict Cumberbatch” so I know who stayed awake through my monologue and who switched off haha) but I needed to divulge what I did, I needed to expel the course energy from my breast and let it dissolve. I needed to be honest with you, and hopefully, compel you to be honest with yourselves, or at least just to stop and think a bit about your life, your comportment, your action and reaction to the varied stimuli in which we all swim daily, and to ask you to take a shovel, and bury the days. Live in love and gratitude and nothing else, because all else good will come from those two things. Jason talked about some similar internal turmoils. Have a read when you find a moment.
NaPoWriMo has challenged us to write a poem, and then try to write it backwards. This is a style which a very close friend (David Williamson) introduced me to many years ago on his own website. He called it Deux Langue which translates to double language. He and a nice sized group of us gathered regularly on his site to write these poems which read forward and backward and kept a cohesive and coherent theme. It was a movement. Sadly, the site was lost and all the beautiful Deux Langue poems lost with it. In this style the trick is to write a substantive poem that reads perfectly both forward and backward. Structure and punctuation may alter but the words may not be reordered. It is an intense challenge but so exciting, and once you knock out 2 or 3, they began to flow from you with greater ease. I love this style because it causes for a slowing of thought and a careful ordering of words, as well as a deeper look at intent of word. As discussed at length, my poem today was about burying the days.
Have you ever written a Deux Langue? Do you think you might like to try one? What do you think about the concept in general?
Have you considered doing any Spring Cleaning of the soul? What does that look like for you? When it comes to things you cannot reconcile, do you address them head on in attempts to correct them, or do you walk away from them, on to new experiences?
Poet Showcase
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Anne Waldman a phenomenal poet with storms in her face and hair, and fire in her words.
“The author of more than 40 collections of poetry and poetics, Anne Waldman is an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry movement, and has been connected to the Beat movement and the second generation of the New York School. Her publications include Fast Speaking Woman (1975), Marriage: A Sentence (2000), and the multi-volume Iovis project (1992, 1993, 1997).
Her work as a cultural activist and her practice of Tibetan Buddhism are deeply connected to her poetry. Waldman 
is, in her words, “drawn to the magical efficacies of language as a political act.” Her commitment to poetry extends beyond her own work to her support of alternative poetry communities. Waldman has collaborated extensively with visual artists, musicians, and dancers, and she regularly performs internationally. Her performance of her work is engaging and physical, often including chant or song, and has been widely recorded on film and video.
Born in Millville, New Jersey, Waldman grew up in Manhattan on Beat poetry and jazz. Early encounters with Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, and Thelonious Monk drew her attention to the full range of musical possibilities in poetry, as did her reading of poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Gertrude Stein. She was educated at Bennington College, where she studied with Howard Nemerov, Bernard Malamud, and Stanley Edgar Hyman.
In 1965 she attended the Berkeley Poetry Conference, where the Outrider voices she encountered inspired her to commit to poetry and to found Angel Hair, a small press that published an eponymous magazine and numerous books. Upon graduation she returned to New 
York and became assistant director, and then director, of the St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project, a role she continued for a decade and where she found support for her own work from poets such as Ted Berrigan, Allen Ginsberg, Diane di Prima, and Kenneth Koch. In 1974, with Ginsberg, Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Her honors include grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has had residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Center, the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, and Rockefeller Center’s Bellagio Center, and has received the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award. She has twice won the International Poetry Championship Bout in Taos, New Mexico. She was “poet in residence” with Bob Dylan’s famed concert tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue, in 1975–76. Waldman has also edited several anthologies, including The Beat Book (1996). She co-founded the Poetry Is News collective with writer/scholar Ammiel Alcalay in 2002.” – cited
“The Lie” – Anne Waldman
what no one knows about my friends
a review of beautiful souls
a haiku for friendship
♣
this, the bond of friends
give them flowers while alive
be a balm for ails
Kent Sutton:
Musician / Award Winning Film Director and a childhood friend from elementary school
Here is a three minute reel of some of his directorial work from his film “Abandoned“. It is beyond brilliant, evocative, powerful!
Amina Mwongozi:
Musician / Chef, and recent friend for whom I have made (quite proudly) a promising love connection!
Amina Mwongozi
Amina is the owner and operator at Cakes & Cardamom. She is also an extremely talented musician living and performing in Nashville, TN.
Here is Amina making caramel, they look so delicious. I’ve had her cookies and they are phenomenal!
Caramel MakingHomemade caramel. Easy, delicious, customizable and the best part — #itshomemadesoitshealthy
Posted by Cakes and Cardamom Catering and Confectionery on Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Meet my friend the Chef
Jermale D. Eddie:
Director of outreach at his church / owner of the beautiful and thriving Malamiah Juice bar, and childhood friend.
About the Eddies
In 2012, Jermale Eddie was introduced to the practice of juicing after watching a documentary recommended by a friend. He sought out more information and was amazed to learn the immense nutritional benefits associated with drinking fresh juice. Jermale bought a juicer and began juicing regularly at home for himself and his family. He was glad to discover that in addition to the significant health benefits that juice provides, the fresh juices are also delicious. This was proven by the ultimate test when his (then) 3-year-old son tried the juice and wanted more. Jermale enjoyed trying new juice and smoothie recipes and educating himself on the specific nutrients found in various fruits and vegetables. He often talked to friends and family about his new journey with juicing.
He discovered that people were very interested in learning more, and many of those he shared with were inspired to start their own juicing journeys. He also encouraged a friend to try juicing to reset his metabolism and shed some pounds. The friend agreed to try a juice fast for 15 days, but after seeing the results, he continued for a full 60 days and lost 55 pounds. While being monitored by a family doctor, he was also able to discontinue two medications. Jermale’s wife, Anissa, first raised the idea of starting a juice bar in Grand Rapids, and the vision for Malamiah Juice Bar was born. “Malamiah” is a combination of the names of their two sons – Malachi and Nehemiah. It is their hope that this business can be part of the legacy they pass on to their children.
Dr. James Lee III:
James is a world renowned composer/musician, visiting Professor/Fulbright Scholars Grant at University of Campinas and Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Morgan State University, and childhood friend.
Below is an interview with Dr. Lee III
(his compositions can be heard at his site)
It’s Day 29 ◊
Only one day left in the poem-a-day challenge for National Poetry Month! I will tell you – on May 1st, I am not writing a single solitary word! I’m not even going to write my name haha. My poeming muscles are sore and tired; and a day of abstinence from putting any two or more words together is just the massage they need! But for now, the prompts:
NaPoWriMo has challenged us to write a review poem. This is of course mostly whimsical and light, but there are some very serious poets out there regaling the interwebs with Yelp reviews of the grandest order. If you haven’t seen or heard of this poetic subculture, take a look at the detailing of it on this blog. In fact, stay a while and read through the other posts on that blog, you’ll find some truly brilliant poetry there, I promise! Writer’s Digest has prompted us to write a what no one knows poem.
Combining the two, I decided to review some personal friends of mine who are doing amazing things, and inspire me daily. What no one really knows is that we all know some pretty phenomenal people, and sharing the beauty they bring to this world is a great joy. I hope you enjoy getting to know just a few of my brilliant friends, I’ll share more friends periodically. Oh, and I wrote a simple haiku about the love of friendship and how we ought give them their flowers while they are still above ground, and not after. Posthumous accolades suck, celebrate people now, we’ve all got plenty people in our lives we can celebrate, let’s do that. Let’s beautify the world with the gifts
Poet Showcase
Suheir Hammad was born in Amman, Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents on October 25, 1973. Suheir’s family
Suheir Hammad
immigrated to Brooklyn NY when Suheir was five years old, and she was raised there until the age of sixteen. Her parents moved to Staten Island while Suheir was in high school. Enough of that personal history, thanks.
Suheir has been able to travel throughout the world via her poetry. She has read her poems in Ivy League Universities and on Brooklyn’s street corners. Her work has appeared in award winning anthologies, and in zines stapled together by queer youth collectives. As far as we know, Suheir was the first Palestinian starring in a Broadway show, and she continues to be the first Palestinian in many artistic spaces throughout the States.
– cited
As an adolescent growing up in Brooklyn, Hammad was heavily influenced by Brooklyn’s vibrant hip-hop scene. She had also absorbed the stories her parents and grandparents had told her of life in their hometown of Lydda, before the 1948 Palestinian exodus, and of the suffering they endured afterward, first in the Gaza Strip and then in Jordan. From these disparate influences Hammad was able to weave into her work a common narrative of dispossession, not only in her capacity as an immigrant, a Palestinian and a Muslim, but as a woman struggling against society’s
Suheir Hammad
inherent sexism and as a poet in her own right. When hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons came across her piece entitled ‘First Writing Since,’ a poem describing her reaction to the September 11 attacks, he signed her to a deal with HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. She recited original works on tour for the following two years. In 2008, she was cast in her first fiction role in cinema, the Palestinian film Salt of this Sea by Annemarie Jacir, which premiered at as an official selection of the Cannes International Film Festival. She is now working on her third publication which will be a book of prose. She will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre‘s 2011 projectSixty Six Books where she has written a piece based upon a book of the King James Bible – cited
“Talisman”
by Suheir Hammad
the act of writing is
holy words are
sacred and your breath
brings out the
god in them
i write these words
quickly repeat them
softly to myself
this talisman for you
fold this prayer
around your neck fortify
your back with these
whispers
may you walk ever
loved and in love
know the sun
for warmth the moon
for direction
may these words always
remind you your breath
is sacred words
bring out the god
in you
Powerful poetic social commentary
by Suheir Hammad
Because we spicy women of tint and hue are “Not your erotic, not your exotic“
poetry & love,
Elle
of bridges & matter
a matter of bridging
“of bridges & matter”
skin redolent of the night’s
trappings, conflate of our
matter – a panacea for latent
ills. We shown the lights of
Vauxhall in our Garden of
twining bone. the gate of
distance clicks shut behind us,
and we swallow the hours whole.
© Elle Segarra
It’s Day 28 ◊
National Poetry Month is fast coming to a close. I am feeling the wear today, perhaps it’s the fact I got three hours of sleep last night. Yeah, that’ll do it! At least the sacrifice of REM cycles was for something I love – arts and literature. Makes it a bit worth it then, no? Let’s talk about prompts: I’ve never been one to write to them; structured meter, yes,on occasion, but not prompts save for a handful of times. Having my thought guided has been an interesting experience, challenging and informative. It’s nice to occasionally step outside of the vacuum we tend to express from, and open ourselves up to angles and methods we may never have otherwise considered. I hear people who are implicitly against it, and emphatically for it. I’m on neither side. I’m for whatever compels in a given moment.
I will say, that this month has caused me to come to know many great peer writers ( I could never name you all) and many great established writers that I likely never would have sought otherwise. I’ve learned forms of poetry I didn’t know existed (and will probably never employ again haha). But to absorb knowledge and insight broadens us and grows our own abilities to express with more depth and meaning, so for that, I am grateful. Will I participate in this challenge again next year? Not sure. But I will take away so much wealth from this experience. I’ll keep close so much joy from all of your interactions with me here, and your inspiring words. Wait, why does it sound like my resignation letter, or like I’m leaving to another orbit, eternally?? It’s just the end of a month haha. Lighten up Elle, lighten up.
On to the prompts already. NaPoWriMo has challenged us to write of bridges, and Writer’s Digest‘s prompt is matter. Today I wanted to express something meaningful in few words, so I sought to convey the bridging of our human matter in convergence, and how that joining can eclipse all woes.
Poet Showcase
Kelli Russell Agodon is an award-winning poet, writer, editor, and essayist from the Pacific Northwest.
She is the author the award-winning collection of poems, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (2010) Winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize chosen by Carl Dennis, Winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Prize in Poetry and a Finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room was also chosen as one of the 20 best books of poetry for the GoodRead’s Readers’ Choice Awards.
Kelli is also the author of Small Knots (2004), Geography (2003), and co-editor of Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry.
Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and was the editor of Seattle’s Crab Creek Review from 2008 – 2014.
Her most recent books are a third collection of poems, Hourglass Museum, was the runner-up for the Julie Suk Poetry Prize in 2015, along with The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice , which she co-authored with Martha Silano.
She has recently completed a memoir entitled, Retreat.
She lives in small seaside community in Washington State with her family where she is a paddleboarder, mountain biker, and hiker.
She has a fondness for fedoras, typewriters, and jazz.
She loves dessert, but despises cheesecake. – cited
“Sorrowful Waltz in the Garden”
– Kelli Russell Agodon
Beauty is imperfect and messy. God
is imperfect and messy and the wild
garden overflows with too much
fruit. Eve’s a little messed up these days.
She’s a ball of nerves from that frigging
apple. Adam’s buying her St. John’s Wort,
telling her to see the doctor, take a pill.
Beauty is the darkness we are
made of. She said this once, in a book,
or a poem, or maybe it was a hiss she heard
when the weather changed.
Adam is trying to hold her up
with his arms, but she’s aching
for more. Even Eve doesn’t understand
what she’s feeling so she leans into him.
Either way, it’s Sunday morning
and the sinners stay in bed, reach
beneath the bedsheets for skin,
for a little more of anything, imperfect
and messy, this wild
garden overflowing with too much.
poetry & love,
Elle
fed
a hay(na)ku of the poets purse, and satiety
“fed”
fed
on prose,
never fully sated.
…still,
looking back–
I’d trade nothing.
who
has known
a greater wealth?
words–
were all
we ever needed.
© Elle Segarra
It’s Day 27 ◊
There are only 3 days left (after today) in this month of poeming, we’ve accomplished something, and it feels good! I have challenged myself many times in many ways over the course of the month; and I’ve discovered some great poets and writers as I researched the gems to share each day. I hope you’ve been just as poetically fed as I have this Poetry Month. Today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo is to craft a hay(na)ku which is simply a tercet, or series of tercets all completing a thought within the three lines. They can be strung together as I’ve done above to create a broader thought while still having each thought able to stand alone. Writer’s Digest has prompted us to write a poem about looking back, or not looking back.
The Rule:
-
One word in the first line
-
Two words in the second line
-
Three words in the third line
-
Tercet must be a complete thought
I wrote about the looking back we tend to do, thinking there may have been better times, or that we may have missed something. There is even the flawed thinking that obsessing over our seemingly wrong turns of past, can in some way alter the now. The only thing that can alter the now and shape the future is what we do with now, forgetting the missteps of yesterday recognizing that even though there may have been agonizing consequences to some of the steps, there were no missteps. All things were necessary to decorate the interior temples that we are.
Poet Showcase
Kathy Acker a punk poet and “daughter of Donald and Claire (Weill) Lehman, a wealthy Jewish family, Kathy Acker was born in New York City on April 18. There is some question as to her year of birth, however: the Library of Congress lists her birth year as 1948, a few sources have listed 1947, but most obituaries state that she was born in 1944. The pregnancy was unplanned, and Donald Lehman abandoned the family before Kathy was born; Acker’s relationship with her domineering mother even into adulthood was fraught with hostility and anxiety because Acker felt unloved and unwanted.[citation needed] Her mother soon remarried, a union that Acker later characterized as an essentially passionless marriage to an ineffectual man, and Acker was raised in her mother and stepfather’s respectable upper-middle-class Jewish home on New York’s Upper East Side.[citation needed] As a girl, Acker was expected to act with ladylike propriety in this oppressive, well-to-do environment, yet she was fascinated by pirates, a fascination that continued until the end of her life. She wanted to grow up to be a pirate, but she knew that only men could be pirates. Thus Acker experienced early the limitations of gender. However, she found that reading about pirates was a way of running away from home, and she turned to books as her reality. She 
associated reading and writing with bodily pleasure and remained a voracious reader throughout her life.[citation needed] Acker took her last name from her first husband, Robert Acker; though named Karen, she was known as Kathy by her friends and family. She studied classics as an undergraduate at Brandeis University with other well-known students such as Angela Davis, and aspired to write novels but moved to San Diego to further pursue her studies. Acker’s first work appeared in print as part of the burgeoning New York City literary underground of the mid-1970s. She claimed that her early writings were profoundly influenced by her experiences working for a few months as a stripper. She remained on the margins of the literary establishment, only being published by small presses until the mid-1980s, thus earning herself the epithet of literary terrorist.[citation needed] In 1983 a text by Kathy Acker was published in an art catalogue of a fancy gallery in Vienna, called Molotov.[1] The book was dedicated to the photographs of Marcus Leatherdale and also contained another text by Christian Michelides, the founder of the gallery. 1984 saw her first British publication, a novel called Blood and Guts in High School. From here on Acker produced a considerable body of novels, almost all still in print with Grove Press. She wrote pieces for a number of magazines and anthologies, and also had notable pieces printed in issues of RE/Search, Angel Exhaust, monochrom and Rapid Eye. Towards the end of her life she had a measure of success in the conventional press—the Guardian newspaper published several of her articles, including an interview with the Spice Girls, which she submitted just a few months before her death. Acker’s formative influences were American poets and writers (the Black Mountain poets, especially Jackson Mac Low, Charles Olson, William S. Burroughs), and the Fluxusmovement, as well as literary theory, especially the French feminists and Gilles Deleuze. In her work, she combined appropriation, cut-up techniques, pornography,autobiography, persona and personal essay to confound expectations of what fiction should be. She acknowledged the performative function of language in drawing attention to the instability of female identity in male narrative and literary history (Don Quixote), created parallelism in characters and autobiographical personas and experimented with pronouns, upsetting conventional syntax.
In In Memoriam to Identity, Acker draws attention to popular analyses of Rimbaud‘s life and The Sound and the Fury, constructing or revealing social and literary identity. Though she was known in the literary world for creating a whole new style of feminist prose and for her transgressive fiction, she was also a punk and feminist icon for her devoted portrayals of subcultures, strong-willed women, and violence. In April 1996 Acker was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. In January 1997 she wrote about her loss of faith in conventional medicine in a Guardianarticle, “The Gift of Disease.” In the article she explains that after unsuccessful surgery, which left her feeling physically mutilated and emotionally debilitated, she rejected the passivity of the patient in the medical mainstream and began to seek out the advice of nutritionists, acupuncturists, psychic healers, and Chinese herbalists. She found appealing the claim that instead of being an object of knowledge, as in Western medicine, the patient becomes a seer, a seeker of wisdom, that illness becomes the teacher and the patient the student. After pursuing several forms of alternative medicine in England and the United States, Acker died a year and a half later from complications of breast cancer in an alternative cancer clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. She died in Room 101, to which her friend Alan Moore quipped, “There’s nothing that woman can’t turn into a literary reference.” – cited
poetry & love,
Elle
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