Saturday, June 23, 2012

Finley VS Jesus (and a French poem)

Just yesterday I started a 3rd and final Blog site entitled "Church of the Warsaw Saints".

If "Last American Baker" deals with the palate, and "Poets are Lame (and other things Mike Finley taught me) deals with the heart.....

Well I guess my final Blog is going to target the soul.

Anyways, yesterday Finley see's my newest revelation on a Facebook site, it actually looks pretty decadent LOL. I super imposed a picture of myself holding a picture of JP2 over an ancient Polish shrine located inside a cathedral.

I have every confidence that God is smirking at my P.O.V.

Anyways, several hours pass, and I get a post from Finley that he won't be able to travel down the road with me on this concept.

At this point in his life God seems to be a tenuous topic for him.

So several more hours pass, and I am sitting in the parking lot of Snap Fitness (it was treadmill day) and I decide to call Finley real quick from my bread truck.

A tired and confused voice answers my call, as usual, I've interupted Master Yoda from an early evening nap....

"Hello, Mike Finley." he says

"Blessing and pardons upon you brother, 3-2-1, you have been absolved from my newest blog." I say

Then there is a brief silence before Mike asks his next question...

"So what made you pull the plug on the other 2 Blogs to cover religion?"

Oh-Oh, there must have been a misunderstanding, I informed Mike that CHURCH OF THE WARSAW SAINTS was a third Blog installment that wasn't bumping the others, but was in addition to them.

Even though there was silence on the other end....I could hear him smiling before responding.....

"Good, I would hate for my thoughts to rank behind those of Jesus."

Then we both began to howl with laughter.

Eventhough Finley has fired God, I have not.

I have every confidence that God is smirking at his P.O.V.

With that said, let me leave you with a masterpiece that Finley wrote while in Paris.

It is called.....

RUE ANDRE BARACQ

You couldn't sleep and the cats in the courtyard
Could tell you were a tourist
And poured a cinema of deprivation
Into every plantive yowl

Did you know what it was to be homeless
Without a dish to call ones own
Without a calf to lean into and vibrate

And this clamor continues for hours
Until you understand existentialism
Because everywhere you go people

In this city restore themselves by morning
While you lie awake fretting
About the mobs of faceless
And the general strike

Animals who should not even be
if the country had a spaying program
Or a wheelchair ramp
Or an elevator to the loading platform

The unintended offspring of the night
lean into their crutches and mewl
And this is the way Paris is

A city of battered beautifuls
The gorgeous and the gaunt
And never more mighty at the base
Than the heft of a kittens paw

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Most Important Poetry Topic Is?????

You've heard me say it a million times.

Finley will read my poems, yours poems, and before he even begins to offer up an opinion, Mike likes to qualify what he has just read....

"The poet just left me with a present here." or on the otherside of the coin "This guy didn'y have his audience in mind when writing this. He just had a need to shine a spotlight on himself."

So if that is the case, what does Finley write about?

The question is complex. I have read a 1/2 century of his work, and his themes have varied, but in the last 5 years I've noticed his focus has pointed to nature, expectations...but mostly family.

Switch gears with me here for a second now.......

So just the other day I get an e-mail from Saint Paul's own Poet Laureate Carol Connolly.

And at the bottom of the mailing was an attachments that that let "Creepers" like me stare into a site where Poet Laureates send each other ideas, encouragment and poems.

One of these poems talked about families, and the first person of thought about while reading this was Finley.

OK, hush up for just a sec and give this a quick look-see.



by Dorianne Laux, who lives and teaches in Oregon.



Family Stories

I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family,
how an argument once ended when his father
seized a lit birthday cake in both hands
and hurled it out a second-story window. That,
I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger
sent out across the sill, landing like a gift
to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine
it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus,
and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed
the people in his stories really loved one another,
even when they yelled and shoved their feet
through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle
of cheap champagne, christening the wall,
rungs exploding from their holes.
I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury
of the passionate. He said it was a curse
being born Italian and Catholic and when he
looked from that window what he saw was the moment
rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous
three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship
down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk
deep in the icing, a few still burning.
 
The End -
 
Whatta ya think?
 
Pretty cool huh?
 

 

The Wisest Advice Ever Given is,,,,,

"If we all made fools of ourselves, we would remain friends forever."

Mike Finley

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Is Robert Bly a Good Poet?

Earlier this evening, I spent a 1/2 hour in the basement of Half Price Books, poking through poetry books.

I ended up walking out with a smile pile and went home to read them.

The NBA finals were on, and I've been pulling for Lebron to get his ring, after all...it's his 3rd attempt.

So I didn't want to get too engrossed in my late night studies.

When I got to the Robert Bly book (entitled The Night Abraham Called To The Stars), I kinda had to chuckle.

I know Mr. Bly is from my home state of Minnesota, and that he was a major player in the poetry world.

But I'm only 48, so for me to act as if I get him, or understand his vibe would be a lot like the time I watched Karate Kid with my son.

I hadn't seen the movie in a long time, but I gave it a huge build up.

My teenage kid wasn't all that enthused to watch this flick, but then I reminded him how if he hadn't listened to his fathers wisdom.....he would have never experienced Cool Hand Luke.

He has the movie poster in his room, and even takes it to college each fall.

So I slip the disc in and while Daniel-Son is doing that wax-on wax-off stuff my kid says.....

"Dad, are you serious? That kid is a pansy. He can't fight, and he's wearing white pants that are way to tight. His "Junk" is bulging, it should be illegal to make me watch this stuff.

I turned the disc off immediately, my kid was right on every account.

Something carry into the next generation better than other, however...Ralph Macchio just isn't one of them.

So I pick up my phone, call Finley and tell him how I just bought THE NIGHT ABRAHAM CALLED TO THE STARS and he mentioned that it was a good book.

But then I asked the question every time I begin reading a poets work for the first time.....

"Do we love him, or hate him?"
*I ask the same about female poets as well......

Now I'm sure some of you folks are thinking.....

"What a dolt, why not read him for yourself and draw your own conclusion?"

Yeah, you have a point, but part of having a mentor is milking their opinion so you can expedite your own LOL,

So let me back up and repeat......

"Finley, do we or or hate Bly?"

Most of the times Mike will roll his eyes, tolerate my questions, and if I catch him in the right mood, sometimes he'll even drop a hate bomb here or there, but tonight he answered with something like......

"What is a poet? A poet has to have something to say right? Allen Ginsberg was a good writer, but what did he say? I think his thoughts just kind of floated around. A poet....a real poet, or at least the poets I respect have to have been through the fire.

If they have, then they really have something of value to share with their audience.

You should check out Wilfred Owen.

He was a World War One soldier who wrote poems about things he witnessed on the battlefield."

So basically when you are the pupil, you should not leave your wondering to supposition.

I think that was my Zen Masters way to tell me to assess Bly's work myself, and see if any of his writings present a gift to me, instead of himself.

But also I think he's telling me to shut up and check out that bad a** poet he digs from a hundred years back.....the soldier cat.

Alright-Alright, I might be annoying, but I'm doing my work.

Check this piece out.......

I Saw His Round Mouth's Crimson

I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendor burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.

Wilfred Owen

The End,

Pretty cool stuff, and with that said.....stay tuned and somewhere down the road, I'll give you a take on the Famous Mr. Bly from a post hippie perspective.



Thursday, June 14, 2012

When Finley Wins His Nobel Prize

Take a second to read this article from the New York Times, and then we'll talk a little later.


Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-Winning Polish Poet, Dies at 88
By RAYMOND H. ANDERSON
Published: February 1, 2012

Wislawa Szymborska, a gentle and reclusive Polish poet who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, died on Wednesday in Krakow, Poland. She was 88.
Enlarge This Image
Soren Andersson/Associated Press

Wislawa Szymborska with her Nobel Prize medal in 1996.

The cause was lung cancer, said David A. Goldfarb, the curator of literature and humanities at the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, a diplomatic mission of the Polish Embassy.

Ms. Szymborska (pronounced vees-WAH-vah shim-BOR-ska) had a relatively small body of work when she received the Nobel, the fifth Polish or Polish-born writer to have done so since the prize was created in 1901. Only about 200 of her poems had been published in periodicals and thin volumes over a half-century, and her lifetime total was something less than 400.

The Nobel announcement surprised Ms. Szymborska, who had lived an intensely private life. “She was kind of paralyzed by it,” said Clare Cavanagh, who, with Stanislaw Baranczak, translated much of Ms. Szymborska’s work into English.

“Her friends called it the ‘Nobel tragedy,’ ” Dr. Cavanagh, a professor of literature at Northwestern University, said in an interview on Wednesday. “It was a few years before she wrote another poem.”

Ms. Szymborska lived most of her life in modest conditions in the old university city of Krakow, working for the magazine Zycie Literackie (Literary Life). She published a thin volume of her verse every few years.

She was popular in Poland, which tends to make romantic heroes of poets, but she was little known abroad. Her poems were clear in topic and language, but her playfulness and tendency to invent words made her work hard to translate.

Much of her verse was contemplative, but she also addressed death, torture, war and, strikingly, Hitler, whose attack on Poland in 1939 started World War II in Europe. She depicted him as an innocent — “this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe” — being photographed on his first birthday.

Ms. Szymborska began writing in the Socialist Realist style. The first collection of what some have called her Stalinist period, “That’s What We Live For,” appeared in 1952, followed two years later by another ideological collection, “Questions Put to Myself.”

Years later she told the poet and critic Edward Hirsch: “When I was young I had a moment of believing in the Communist doctrine. I wanted to save the world through Communism. Quite soon I understood that it doesn’t work, but I’ve never pretended it didn’t happen to me.

“At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.”

By 1957, she had renounced both Communism and her early poetry. Decades later, she was active in the Solidarity movement’s struggle against Poland’s Communist government. During a period of martial law, imposed in 1981, she published poems under a pseudonym in the underground press.

She insisted that her poetry was personal rather than political. “Of course, life crosses politics,” she said in an interview with The New York Times after winning the Nobel in 1996. “But my poems are strictly not political. They are more about people and life.”

Ms. Szymborska “looks at things from an angle you would never think of looking at for yourself in a million years,” Dr. Cavanagh said on the day of the Nobel announcement. She pointed to “one stunning poem that’s a eulogy.”

“It’s about the death of someone close to her that’s done from the point of view of the person’s cat,” she said.

That poem, “Cat in an Empty Apartment,” as translated by Dr. Cavanagh and Mr. Baranczak, opens:

Die — You can’t do that to a cat.

Since what can a cat do

in an empty apartment?

Climb the walls?

Rub up against the furniture?

Nothing seems different here,

but nothing is the same.

Nothing has been moved,

but there’s more space.

And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase,

but they’re new ones.

The hand that puts fish on the saucer

has changed, too.

Something doesn’t start

at its usual time.

Something doesn’t happen

as it should. Someone was always, always here,

then suddenly disappeared

and stubbornly stays disappeared.

Wislawa Szymborska was born on July 2, 1923, near Poznan, in western Poland. When she was 8, her family moved to Krakow. During the Nazi occupation, she went to a clandestine school, risking German punishment, and later studied literature and sociology at the prestigious Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

Her marriage to the poet Adam Wlodek ended in divorce. Her companion, the writer Kornel Filipowicz, died in 1990. She had no children, and no immediate family members survive.

Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish exile who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, said of Ms. Szymborska’s Nobel selection: “She’s a shy and modest person, and for her it will be a terrible burden, this prize. She is very reticent in her poetry also. This is not a poetry where she reveals her personal life.”

Her work did, however, reveal sympathy for others — even the biblical figure who looked back at Sodom and turned into a pillar of salt. Ms. Szymborska speculated in the opening lines of “Lot’s Wife” on why she looked back:

They say I looked back out of curiosity,

but I could have had other reasons.

I looked back mourning my silver bowl.

Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.

So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape

Of my husband Lot’s neck.

From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead

He wouldn’t so much as hesitate.

From the disobedience of the meek.

Checking for pursuers.

Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.

Her last book to be translated, “Here,” was published in the United States last year. Reviewing it for The New York Review of Books, the poet Charles Simic noted that Ms. Szymborska “often writes as if on an assigned subject,” examining it in depth. He added: “If this sounds like poetry’s equivalent of expository writing, it is. More than any poet I can think of, Szymborska not only wants to create a poetic state in her readers, but also to tell them things they didn’t know before or never got around to thinking about.”

In her Nobel lecture, Ms. Szymborska joked about the life of poets. Great films can be made of the lives of scientists and artists, she said, but poets offer far less promising material.

“Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic,” she said. “Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?”

Paul Vitello contributed reporting.

End Of Story..................

OK, I'm back,

First Off, Finley loves to talk about poets and history of poets.

However....most of the time these people he adores are Irish or American, but I want to throw a Pollack into the conversation.

This Wislawa chick was pretty cool huh?

I dig her piece about the cat in an apartment with a dead body.

I would never think to write about this, it sounds more like an Alice Cooper song, but anyways......as I read about this poet, I chuckled when the other poet said the Nobel would ruin Wislawa, and how she would cower into the shadows.

LOL...Finley wouldn't.

If Mike Finley won the Nobel......he'd do everything from socializing with the worlds most acclaimed writers (to help them along of course) to hosting Saturday Night Live.

Can't you see him with his hands tucked into the pockets of his jean jacket and announcing.....

"Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome back....Aerosmith"

The more I get to know writers, not individually, but as a collective whole, it makes me appreciate how fortunate I am to have such a reckless rebel as a mentor.

Like many writers, Mike is sensitive, you'll never hear him describe himself as bulletproof, but evening knowing that about himself....

He puts himself in the direct line of fire, like 9 times every day.

You would NEVER find Finley cower after winning an opportunity.

He would milk it for every ounce of marrow he could.

I want to be like that too.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

In Front of the Curtain with Cecil

Mike Finley has recently had a vision.

The thing that makes me chuckle is most people get visions from God,Angels or Drugs......

But Finley's main insiprations typically come from his own mind.

He's never told me this, but I think the thing he values most is ideas that make him smirk.

Recently Mike has been using social media to pimp an idea of his call "LIEF".

Lief is going to be an online magazine that (and in the following description is my own and not his) will be embraced by the weak, weary, socially retarded and unloved.

So yes.....basically it will be a platform for poets and writers.

Mike confessed to me that recently he's been thinking how blessed he has been by the many writers that have shown his kindness and encouragement of the years, and now he wants to be in a position to give back.

"Yeah, I don't even know if I'll even submit anything to my own publication" he says....

"In fact, I'll just kinda be like Cecil B. Demille during the 10 Commandments. Remember how he just smiles and looks important smooshing his hands together, while wearing that tuxedo and standing in front of that inpressive curtain. However..(Finley laughs) my fear is that I'll look more like Daddy Warbucks.

But I really would like to assist serious, up and coming writings with technique and a platform."

I've seen some of the prototypes on Mike Finley's Facebook page, and I gotta tell ya, I think this should be a solid concept.

If you get a chance, why not submit something.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

The Different Madonna's

My wife is nice.

I like her.

She doesn't ask for much.

So when she does, I like to make it so.

Recently she became engrossed in a conversation with my daughter (while we were visiting the kid in Omaha) and the 2 began talking about how fun it would be to see the Madonna concert in November.

I knew as my wife and daughter discussed this that it would never happen.....the reason being that they are...how do I say this nicely?

They are both kinda cheap.

Sure they really wanted to go, b-u-t....perhaps it wasn't practical.

Anyways, I went down to the Excel Center box office and the "ticket guy" kinda chuckled when I said I wanted to tix for the Madonna show.

He wasn't a complete dick about it, he was just kinda surprised.

So I get the tickets, slide them into my pocket, and as I walked outside I thought to myself.......

Doesn't Finley have a wonder column about Madonna?

Well maybe not the same Madonna but...............

Submitted for your enjoyment....


"Bathtub Madonna"

by Michael Finley

Computer User Columnist

I noticed the other day that a neighbor had removed his statue of the Madonna from his bathtub shrine.

If you do not know what a bathtub shrine is, it is a shrine, generally Catholic, in which a statue, usually of Mary, sits in an alcove created by an old clawfoot bathtub sunk about half its length in dirt.

The impression one gets, looking at a bathtub shrine, is of the beatific statuette surrounded by an elliptical white aura, made of hard porcelain, hopefully without an etched gray ring.

In this case, it seemed to me that the statue might have been taken in for the winter. Ceramics crack easily in subzero temperatures, and nothing is less edifying than a holy figure exploded across an arctic lawn.

At the same time, seeing the shrine empty left me feeling empty -- that our intercessor had been taken in for the duration, and we would have to fend for ourselves until spring. Some intercessor, that can't withstand a little cold.

I know something about Mary, because I attended a minor seminary in 1963-64, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, the Kennedy assassination, and the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan. Every morning we rose at 5:30 to pray on hard kneelers before a statue of Mary. Our school was run by the Society of Mary, or Marists. I was 13 years old.

But even there, I would not rate the cult of Mary as being very intense, except among a couple of the prefects, who were awfully Italian and had that shiny-cheeked expression of fervent mama's boys. We said the rosary, and we honored her as the mother of the savior, but it was not a passion, as I imagine she would have to be to sink a 500-pound bathtub into your lawn.

It is common practice to make fun of things like this. I read my "Golden Bough." I know Mary is just a continuation of various nature queens, holdovers from pagan times. And I remember Tom Lehrer's song in the 1960s, "The Vatican Rag." It summed up for the secular mind the stupidity of the bric-a-brac, the "outer signs" of religion, dashboard Jesuses and clattering beads.

I, being guilty of intellectual pride from an early age, scorned all that stuff. It seemed to me that public, graven images were never as good as the images the mind privately gives rise to, much as television can't be as vivid as radio.

It becomes especially tough when the icons in question are cheesy -- like the pictures I see of Christ in religious bookstores, depicting him as a kind of beneficent white rock star, with a Miami Vice growth of beard and a quarterback's chiseled demeanor. What if Jesus was a little goofy-looking? What if he had a lazy eye or a snorting laugh?

I ask that not to be irreverent, but to overcome the obstacle that reverence imposes. Jesus shouldn’t have to look like George Clooney to be persuasive.

One thing I learned after I lost my child's faith, late in my 20s, was that it is possible to have excremental taste and still be a good person. In fact, I believe it gives you an edge -- because it is evidence you aren’t trying to impress with your air of Gnostic cool. The kindest, best-hearted people you know are always kind of cubist.

Another thing I have learned is that people need strings around their fingers. The reason we clip little nostrums and doggerel to refrigerators is because we accept that part of our condition is amnesia. Everything sweet and true to us seems to want to escape from our mental grasp. And being smarter doesn't make us the slightest bit smarter, really.

The point of an icon or talisman is to physically remind us of something. It is a form of magical learning. It asks us to see beyond the current array of bright crap to what is deeper and darker and more meaningful.

And if you are sunk perpetually in crap, you might never unclench that figure in your fist. Because its portent is potent: it's a nutty world, and the last, least person could tell the joke that saves us all.

Of course God loves us, which is to say, of course we are lovable, and good. So why don’t we believe that? Why don't we really believe that?

Why do we need to keep relearning it, week after week, and year after year?

Maybe the guy with the bathtub forgets it less often.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Happy Endings

Lately, I've been working on poems that have been influenced by Russia.

I'll end up telling you more about this in the future, i'm sure.....

But not too long ago I was writing a poem about the famous Muttnik Laika.

On one of my last days in Moscow, i saw on the news that they had made a statue of the 13 pound furball and placed it in a place of honor by one of their goverment buildings.

It was kind of a big deal.

The Russians very-very much hold a reverence for Laika, after all....she is the only living creature that has been sent into space with no hope of returning.

Many Americans and Brits have pointed fingers in the face of Russians as a whole, feeling that the sacrifice was barbaric and unwarrented.

Truth be told.....most of the Russian science team and project workers would agree.

THEY DID NOT WANT TO SHOOT THAT MUTT INTO SPACE.

But we live in a world with countries, religions and politics.

These components can almost always gaurentee sorrow.

The bottom line is after Sputnik #1 made the first space flight.....Nikita Khrushchev refused to take his foot off the pedal.

Khrushchev was hell bent on seeing if the Russians space craft could house a beating heart.

The scientists worked around the clock to slap together some Jimmy Rigged space contraption, but with a limited window of time, they didn't have anyway to put together a ship that could resurface into the atmosphere safely.

The scientics were sick about this. They loved Laika and the other Mutts they recruited from the Moscow dog pounds, often times they referred to them as their voiceless children.

Anyways, it was really important to me to capture the sorrow of the Russians who were forced into this horrible situation.

So like so many other hacks.....I too wrote a Laika poem.

I wrestled that poem like the Arch Angel Michael wrestled against God.

But finally I had my poem finished and sent it straight over to Finley.

I don't recall exactly what he said, but let me loosely paraphrase......

"Well.....well, it's pretty entry level for many reasons. Number one....if you are going to write about a historic event, just remember....we already know the story. We already know the outcome. so you have to approach common themes from uniques angles. Also, how did you end it? didn't you have the dog burning alive in a tin can? You never want to close a poem by putting your reader in a position of suffering. Don't make them regret that they invested the couple minutes they did to read your piece.

Instead, be clever, be curious. This is a big topic, but If I were writing it, I'd end the poem with the children laying out on the driveway or back yard hugging and petting the mutt."

WOW......I mean it, what genius.

Closing with explosions, death or suffocating hope in not only uncool, it's entry level.

I took Finleys suggestion, rewrote the piece, and within weeks it was published in a national poetry magizine.

This would have never happened if I didn't take Mike's strong advice.

So with that said, sit back...relax and enjoy -

MUTTNIK

Laika heard the children laughing
From what appeared to be a distant room
The most beautiful sound she ever woke to

When Victor brought her home from work last night
And took her straight to bed
It seemed natural to assume they were alone

Fraternizing was considered unprofessional
But this secret would remain safe
By this time tomorrow she would be gone

Boarded onto a tin can
Filled with rocket fuel and no parachute
All the more reason to break protocol

This is why the entire science team
And the launching crew
Held their tongues and looked away

While Victor escorted her
Off the project site
So her last day of freedom

Could be spent outdoors
Getting belly rubs
From his daughter

THE END






Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Avoiding the Finley Stick

When somebody has wisdom in a topic that is of interest to you, if you are anything like me, you try to tap every last ounce of it, down to the marrow.

But then there is always certain variables attached, right?

Variables like disagreeing, perception, lack of clarity.......

If there is one thing I have learned from Finley, just one thing....

It would have to be that if I want to be a good poet, I have to keep boiling excess off my poems.

Bad poets use too many words -

Bad poets get in the way of their message -

Bad poets don't understand the value in simplicity -

Bad poets roll in their emotional paint -

Anytime, everytime I try to get artsy with a poem, it's like Finley will stare at it (or any poets work that infuses extra drama for that matter) and shake his head while reminding me to "Cut the fat off and use words that people use in everyday conversation."

I gotta tell ya a secret, but you can't tell Mike, because if he finds out....he'll hunt me down and "WHACK" me with a tree brach, but sometimes I like words twisted together that don't make "Nut's and Bolt's" sense, but somehow evoke a mood.

A couple days ago I read a poem by Carl Sandburg that I don't understand. I really can't even decipher the jist, but somehow it makes me feel good and I don't know why.

Is this one of those zodiac deals?

Anyways, I'll share the poem with you, and if Finley ends up reading this posting, i would be interested in his opinion of 2 things.

#1 - what on Earth was Sandburg talking about here?

#2 - how would Finley have approached this piece?

Remember, as much as I worship Sandburg, he wasn't 1/2 the rebel poet Finley is.


My People

Carl Sandburg

MY people are gray,
Pigeon gray, dawn gray, storm gray.
I call them beautiful,
And I wonder where they are going.