Tagged: Literature

From my notebook: two new poems

I’ve been going through a notebook I’ve been keeping since 2010—kind of a “scratch” book, to horse around in. Poems, lyrics, essays and short stories, in very raw form.

Found the following two poems, which may or may not make it into my next compilation, slated for release Spring, 2018:

Learned Behavior

We emulate our gods
by turns jealous and paranoid
desirous of silver and gold
hiding our indifference
behind impassive masks
reluctantly doling out favours
callow, prone to deceit

* * * *

Nothing to do with rockets

hopeless trajectory
miles off course
navigational malfunction
spiralling out of control
threatening civilian populations
programmed for self-destruction
to prevent serious harm

shipplanet

© 2017  Cliff Burns (All Rights Reserved)

Please be patient…renovations currently in progress

In a few months, this blog will be ten years old.

Time to upgrade the old gal, select a new theme photo, clean out some of the clutter, etc.

I’ve paid particular attention to my “Other Media” page, tossing some older efforts and adding fresh renderings of my best, most popular tales, along with a few recent electronic pieces.

More changes to come, but do let me know what you think of the “new look”—your opinion is important to me and, no, I’m not just saying that. Honest.

cliffepidaurus

The author, at Epidaurus (July, 2016)

I have “Seasonally Adjusted Reading Disorder”

whiteheadAutumn has arrived, which means my reading tastes are in the process of changing.

During the summer, I tend to favor faster, more plot-driven narratives–thrillers, mysteries, noir—but once the leaves start turning, taking on brighter hues, I seek out more somber, atmospheric efforts.

John LeCarré, for instance, is the perfect fall read. His complex novels, populated by morally compromised characters and deep, dark secrets, are well suited for cooler, drabber days and nights. British novels, in general, are better enjoyed during autumn and winter than they are brighter, cheerier times of the year. Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel aren’t really appropriate for the beach and only a complete fool would pack Orwell or Rushdie in with the suntan lotion and towels.

Glancing at my bookshelves, I can tell you in an instant which books match each season.

Contemporary Fiction (Spring-Summer)
Literary Fiction (Autumn)
Historical Fiction (Summer)
Biography and History (Winter)
Poetry (Autumn-Winter)
Science Fiction (Summer-Autumn)
Critical Essays/Creative Non-Fiction (Winter)

Breaking it down by individual author: Jim Harrison (Spring); Cormac McCarthy (Autumn); Jonathan Franzen (Spring); W.G. Sebald (Autumn); Colson Whitehead (Autumn); Richard Russo (Spring); Raymond Chandler (Summer); Don Delillo (Autumn); Alastair Reynolds (Summer); David Mitchell (Spring-Summer); Italo Calvino (Autumn-Winter); Denis Johnson (Autumn); Thomas Pynchon (Autumn-Winter).

There are exceptions, of course, cases where those generalizations don’t apply. Works relating to politics, ecology, religion and philosophy are sprinkled throughout the year. And every so often I can’t resist plucking up some big, fat biography (ex: Robert Caro’s magisterial portrait of Lyndon Johnson) and just having at it. A two or three day binge that leaves me disoriented, out of step with everyday life. Barely able to prepare and eat a five-minute boiled egg. And, no, I do not exaggerate.

It’s become sort of a tradition that I tackle a real forearm-strainer right after Christmas and heading into the New Year. The kind of tome you have to bench press. Hardcover, if possible. A single volume history of World War II or the collected essays of Christopher Hitchens. To counteract the effects of all that turkey, red wine and good fellowship.

Tell me I’m not alone, that someone else out there has to deal with their own version of Seasonally Adjusted Reading Disorder (SARD). Perhaps we can start our own support network, help each other overcome our entrenched habits, learn to read what we want, when we want.

Oh, and, by the way, did you hear there’s a new LeCarré book out this month.

Wouldn’t you know it?

You might call that a coincidence but I’d say it’s right on time.

le-carre

“Relativity” (poem)

Relativity

When we were young we
killed time indiscriminately
savagely using swords and
laser beams slaughtering it
by the hour with hyper-active
games mindless babble or just
lying on our backs making
shapes out of obliging clouds

Now time flees from us while
we are sleeping or otherwise
occupied each new morning
revealing the extent of the
damage and no matter how often
how hard we try to save or slow
time it runs down runs out always
too soon never long enough

 

© Cliff Burns, 2015 (All Rights Reserved)

Listen up, NaNoWriMo Wannabes: Richard Bausch quote

“…these people…want to be considered serious writers; but they have come to believe that they can accomplish this by means of a convenient shortcut. And the industry that produces how-to manuals plays to them, makes money from their hope of finding a way to be a writer, rather than doing the work, rather than actually spending the time to absorb what is there in the vast riches of the world’s literature, and then crafting one’s own voice out of the myriad of voices.

My advice? Put the manuals and how-to books away. Read the writers themselves, whose work and example are all you really need if you want to write. And wanting to write is so much more than a pose. To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most—suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another—are defeated.

This work is not done as a job, ladies and gentlemen, it is done out of love for the art and the artists who brought it forth, and who still bring it forth to us, down the years and across ignorance and chaos and borderlines. Riches. Nothing to be skipped over in the name of some misguided intellectual social-climbing. Well, let me paraphrase William Carlos Williams, American poet: literature has no practical function, but every day people die for lack of what is found there.”

Richard Bausch, in The Atlantic Monthly

***

Would the posers and wannabes out there PLEASE note: when you’re a real writer, every fucking month is “national novel writing month”.

Now go back to flipping burgers or whatever it is you do, and leave literature to the professionals…the people who, through years of sweat and sacrifice, have earned the right to call themselves authors.

Shame on you for daring to include yourself in their company…