An Array of Utopian Flowers
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Confronting Wildfire: Retrofit Communities, Not Forests
Posted on September 17, 2018 | 1 Comment -
San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dangers Compound
Posted on September 4, 2018 | No Comments -
Waste Colonization, Plastic Pollution and the Pacific Gyre
Posted on August 27, 2018 | No Comments -
Rise for Climate Los Angeles: September 8
Posted on August 22, 2018 | No Comments -
San Onofre Beach as Permanent Nuclear Waste Dump
Posted on August 7, 2018 | 2 Comments
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poetry Archive
LA Poet Wanda Coleman on Smog Addiction and Angel Wings
Posted on July 7, 2017 | No CommentsIn "Angel Baby Blues," from Wanda Coleman's collection Heavy Daughter Blues, she offered a take on the failed promises of her home in Southern California. A prolific poet, fiction writer, and journalist, she was considered for a time Los Angeles' unofficial and controversial Poet Laureate.
Poet Antonio López on the “Road Rage” of Clashing Histories
Posted on June 30, 2017 | No CommentsAntonio López won the Poetry Award at the 2017 Santa Barbara Writers Conference with 'Which Cobija Feels Most Comfy?: A Letter to Sister Nabra', about the murder of a teenage Muslim girl beaten and killed by a bat-wielding motorist near a Virginia mosque.
Bukowski’s ‘Born Into This’ – Treachery, Hatred, Violence, Absurdity
Posted on June 29, 2017 | 1 CommentThe documentary, 'Bukowski: Born into This' rehashes stories of the inimitable misanthrope, poet, and author Charles Bukowski. Post features the poem, 'Dinosauria, we.'
Political Haiku: The Revolution Will Not Be Roboticized
Posted on January 12, 2017 | No CommentsMark Morris lays down some poetic effulgence in the budding genre of political haiku, or as he endearingly calls it: Hacku. Let it flow in the Era of the Orange One.
Labor Taskmaster: The Yule Cat Monster of Iceland
Posted on December 26, 2016 | 1 CommentChristmas legends make the freezing nights pass faster and the children - and laborers - behave. Iceland's Jólakötturinn, or Yule Cat, warned lazy children would be eaten by a monster cat, which has roots hundreds of years back, and popularized by a poem by Johannes ur Kotlum.
Picnic Recipe: Minted Orange Summer Rice Salad
Posted on July 11, 2016 | No CommentsWith such crisp and fresh flavors, this salad is a perfect addition to any summer day. And, it is quick and easy to make! Even 24 hours later, the left overs continue to burst with immense flavor, so much that you might consider chilling the finished dish overnight for best results.
Geo-Fauvism and Anthropocene: Altered Planet, Wild Literature
Posted on June 4, 2016 | 2 CommentsWelcome to the Anthropocene age, where humans have transmogrified the planet, its oceans and atmosphere, caused mass extinctions and wholesale contamination that will remain for millennia. Beyond the politicians and scientists, the way forward remains in the hands of writers, artists, and designers taking inspiration from wild earth in a movement called Geo-Fauvism.
Charles Bukowski: Madness is Never Ordinary
Posted on September 25, 2014 | No Comments"In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of "sadism" it is because it exists, I didn't invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil, if such a thing as evil abounds." -- Charles Bukowski
Goethe’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”: Power Over Wisdom
Posted on August 13, 2014 | 1 Comment"The Sorcerer's Apprentice," an ages-old fairy tale interpreted as a poem by Goethe, made famous today by Disney's "Fantasia," illustrated the dangers of power over wisdom, and the risk of human creations getting out of control.
Dead Sparrow Awakening – By Jerry Collamer
Posted on December 4, 2013 | No CommentsJerry Collamer muses on the sanctity of life, the impact and burden of death, and the awakening of a child to the reality of the world.
Lady Lazarus: The Hurt Imagination of Sylvia Plath
Posted on April 25, 2013 | 2 CommentsRobert Pinsky on Sylvia Plath: "Thrashing, hyperactive, perpetually accelerated, the poems of Sylvia Plath catch the feeling of a profligate, hurt imagination, throwing off images and phrases with the energy of a runaway horse or a machine with its throttle stuck wide open."
Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Subversive Champion of the Disinherited
Posted on March 11, 2013 | 3 CommentsAlmost forty years after his violent death, Pier Paolo Pasolini, filmmaker, poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, painter, actor, and all-around intellectual public figure, remains a subject of passionate argument. Best known for a subversive and difficult body of film work, loaded with Renaissance and Baroque iconography, he championed the disinherited and damned of postwar Italy, mingling an intellectual leftism with a fierce Franciscan Catholicism.
Emily Dickinson: A Mystic of Stillness Who Mocked Heaven
Posted on December 28, 2012 | 1 CommentEmily Dickinson was a great poet whose life has remained a mystery. The time has come to dispel the myth of a quaint and helpless creature, disappointed in love, who gave up on life. Unafraid of her own passions and talent, she embraced the world around her, yet faced a debilitating illness and family intrigue.
Dirty Realism: The Anti-Social Satire of Charles Bukowski
Posted on August 18, 2012 | 3 CommentsI go outside - and all up and down the street - the green armies shoot color - like an everlasting 4th of July, - and I too seem to swell inside, - a kind of unknown bursting, - a feeling, perhaps, that there isn't any - enemy - anywhere
Jack Kerouac’s Lowell Blues: Cast-off Boots of Time
Posted on July 1, 2012 | 1 CommentJack Kerouac wrote in 1950: “I wish to evoke that indescribable sad music of the night in America–for reasons which are never deeper than the music. Bop only begins to express that American music. It is the actual inner sound of a country.”
To Erzulie of the Seductive Summoning Sea
Posted on July 30, 2011 | No CommentsHere we follow poet Lenelle N. Moise's surreal submergence into her mother’s passion for water, the sea, vodoun. Imagery, juxtapositions, fluidity, they haunt this reverie, influenced by unseen forces, diaspora and the Haitian sea goddess Erzulie.
