A quick introduction to my next post. Dan had suggested a few weeks ago that it would be nice to have a poem a day post to carry us through the year. I had already compiled almost a year’s worth of poems last year, in another blog, but had not fully shared my efforts. So here, at Dan’s prompting, is my first week of poems, restated for the new year.
This, with future weeks, is being compiled in a new blog, Every Thought Is A Prayer, which is still under construction but eventually will have 366 entries. Some of this you have seen, some will be new. Some of it is not even poetry, but, as the title suggests, every word of it is presented as a prayer.
The first poem brushes up what I had posted a year ago, when I started the last blog. As that poem now begins and ends, let this be my wish for you all:
I begin with the challenging premise of God...
May good be in your days, every day,
In your challenges and in your prayers;
May this be your premise now,
In the beginning and throughout the year.
This is also my invitation for you all to share, by poems or otherwise, your own thoughts and diversions. Vive the Symposia!
- Jon
A blessed New Year indeed! This project may take on many forms, and I'd like to promote the 'comment' feature as a way to keep involved. A poem once a week is ambitious, but certainly comments on is what we naturally do (or should). We may comment on what that editor contends--'Poetry precedes religion'--and that philologically he's not so grounded: 're-lig' means to make connections, denotatively, and humans have been doing that forever, preceding the more aesthetic results that come with sustainable poetry. Connotatively, 'religion' has come down to institutional practice; ironically, perhaps, poetry is just as prone to channel reductionistic practice!
ReplyDeleteYour lines from 'Walled Gardens', where "Self became the paper", inspired in advance the poem I wrote yesterday (also inspired by a line in "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", which becomes its title). See original format at http://lostmenagerie.blogspot.cz/2016/01/random-precision.html:
random precision
To that lonely guy three blocks from Main Street,
lighting with familiarity his fist of fireworks,
watching each ascending squid-by-slowly-
sympathizing-squid into the New Year’s sky,
turning powder gray (three blocks away),
complementing his groomed demesne and
matching coat: keep that corner in your glow;
whispering, my son affirmed this better show,
unassuming self-respect, if seeming incognito.
Re: religion and poetry. God, or God's Word, is the poetry and premise here. To distinguish from my small case efforts, call it Poetry with a capital P, just as Word is capitalized. Religion is the reducer, yet the facilitator; necessary yet fleeting; illuminating yet imperfect. And whether we follow John the Baptist or Joseph Smith, attend Luther's church or Peter's, find inspirations in Moses or even Mohammed, our hope is to get the enduring message beyond the mortal messenger.
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