Poets United Midweek Motif ~ News Media

TODAY!

The 2017 Celebration of World Press

Freedom Day will be in Jakarta:  

"Critical Minds for Critical Times: 

Media’s role in advancing peaceful, just 

and inclusive societies."

“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.” 

― Will Rogers

“In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the . . . . freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin. . . .” 

― Hélder Câmara

“The English-language press in India supports the project of corporate globalization fully. . . .  Let's support everything that leads to the conditions in which the massacre takes place, but when the killing starts, you recoil in middle-class horror, and say, ". . . . Can't we be more civilized?” 

― Arundhati Roy, The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile

Midweek Motif ~ 
News Media

So, our medium is poetry . . . 
which doesn't exclude news or the variety 
and uses of media in our world.  
Who controls whom?

We'd love to read your stories.

Your Challenge:  Either write a new documentary poem OR a new poem that comments on News Media.

Notes and Quotes from the Media War from HonestReporting

Excerpt from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower 

by William Carlos Williams

. . . . 

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides. 

(Read the rest HERE.)

excerpt from The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

by Bob Dylan

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gathering
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes, on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
 . . . .

Read the rest HERE. (The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Co.)

From Blue Front

BY MARTHA COLLINS

There were trees on those streets that were named

for trees: Sycamore, Cedar, Poplar, Pine,

Elm, where the woman's body was found,

where the man's body was taken and burned—

There must have been trees, there were trees

on Seventh Street, in front of the house that stands

in the picture behind the carriage that holds

the boy's mother, the boy's cousin, the boy—

And of course there were trees on Washington

Avenue, wide boulevard lined with exotic

ginkgoes, stately magnolias, there were trees

on that street that are still on that street,

trees that shaded the fenced-in yards of the large

Victorian houses, the mansion built by the man

who sold flour to Grant for the Union troops,

trees that were known to the crowd that saw

the victim hanged, though not on a tree, this

was not the country, they used a steel arch

with electric lights, and later a lamppost, this

was a modern event, the trees were not involved.

. . . . 

(Read more HERE.)

🙈 🙉 🙊

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Childbirth)

♡♡♡

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ A Grain Of Sand

“It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.” — Robert W. Service

Source

“Faith as tiny as a grain of sand allows us to move mountains”— Paulo Coelho

“In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand

In every leaf that trembles in every grain of sand”— Bob Dylan

“Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.”— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I became Latina

Midweek Motif ~ A Grain of Sand 

 I read somewhere, “Sand is serious and entertaining”.

In fact sands could be fascinating story tellers of the distant past.

In 1922, a famous necklace with a scarab beetle carved from a glowing, yellow-green, gem-like material which could not be recognized at the time discovered from Tutankhamun’s tomb, came to be known as a unique silica glass (28 million years old and 98% pure, from a particular part of the Libyan desert) in the 1990’s.

There’s a realm of fantasy under our feet when we walk on a beach. We are unaware how the meiofauna there, are striving hard to stop the beach going anoxic [starved of oxygen], in their home of a grain of sand. For them only the sparkling shores have not yet turned into a sticky, stinking mudflat.

A single grain of sand matters in this grand scheme of our universe.

Let A Grain of Sand find its way into your lines today J

Auguries of Innocence

by William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

A Robin Red breast in a Cage 

Puts all Heaven in a Rage 

A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons 

Shudders Hell thr' all its regions 

A dog starvd at his Masters Gate 

Predicts the ruin of the State 

A Horse misusd upon the Road 

Calls to Heaven for Human blood 

Each outcry of the hunted Hare 

A fibre from the Brain does tear 

A Skylark wounded in the wing 

A Cherubim does cease to sing  

The rest of the poem is here 

   

 View With A Grain Of Sand

by Wislawa Szymborska

We call it a grain of sand,

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.

It does just fine, without a name,

whether general, particular,

permanent, passing,

incorrect, or apt.

Our glance, our touch means nothing to it.

It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.

And that it fell on the windowsill

is only our experience, not its.

For it, it is not different from falling on anything else

with no assurance that it has finished falling

or that it is falling still.

The window has a wonderful view of a lake,

but the view doesn’t view itself.

It exists in this world

colorless, shapeless,

soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,

and its shore exists shorelessly.

The water feels itself neither wet nor dry

and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.

They splash deaf to their own noise

on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beheath a sky by nature skyless

in which the sun sets without setting at all

and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.

The wind ruffles it, its only reason being

that it blows.

A second passes.

A second second.

A third.

But they’re three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like courier with urgent news.

But that’s just our simile.

The character is inverted, his hasts is make believe,

his news inhuman.    

A Grain of Sand

by Robert William Service

If starry space no limit knows

And sun succeeds to sun,

There is no reason to suppose

Our earth the only one.

'Mid countless constellations cast

A million worlds may be,

With each a God to bless or blast

And steer to destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so

To guide each vital stream,

With over all to boss the show

A Deity supreme.

Such magnitudes oppress my mind;

From cosmic space it swings;

So ultimately glad to find

Relief in little things.

For look! Within my hollow hand,

While round the earth careens,

I hold a single grain of sand

And wonder what it means.

Ah! If I had the eyes to see,

And brain to understand,

I think Life's mystery might be

Solved in this grain of sand.  

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ News Media)

. . . . 

I Wish I'd Written This

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

By Bob Dylan

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son?
And what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin'
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you meet my blue-eyed son ?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what'll you do now my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner's face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singing
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Well, I had to, didn't I, now that he's just won the Nobel Prize for Literature?  (Hastily shunting the post I had prepared for this date to a future occasion.)

Many people are complaining that the prize went to a musician. 'The words can't stand alone,' they claim. Well, I do believe it was Dylan's words that the judges considered, and to my mind they certainly can stand alone – though it's good they have had music to carry them to a wider audience, because they are often important words.

How I would love to have written the above, with its power and fury – and, yes, its lyricism. And he was innovative. Those extended sentences, and the repetition of the heavy syllable, 'hard', give it a relentless feel which is all too appropriate.

Two of the criteria for the Nobel Prize for Literature are that the writing should be a force for good (I'm paraphrasing) and have world-wide influence. Anyone who was around in the sixties knows what a huge influence Dylan had at that time, and that he certainly intended to be a voice for change. I chose this particular song because, alas, it is still all too current. It is not nuclear rain which threatens the environment now (though it is not an impossible eventuality) but our environment is still threatened and there are other ways by which whole landscapes die.

Well, this prize is evidently a controversial decision, which is probably a good thing – nice when literary matters spark heated debate! – and opinions will differ. Mine, as you realise by now, is that the prize is not only richly deserved but way overdue. Please feel free to heartily endorse this view in the comments, or take passionate issue with it. (Yes I know, I am being unashamedly biased, but you do get some right of reply, LOL.)

I will conclude with some excellent words from my friend, Aussie poet Lyndon Walker. I think he makes the case very well in support of Dylan's win:

A very controversial decision which I strongly support. A writer who opened up worlds for examination. Deeply questioning the status quo in his own country and forging a new vision of race and sexual relations at a time when these things were in turmoil. Always ahead of the social zeitgeist. ... A writer who veered from gritty clear sighted documentation of social injustice to magic realism of unequalled poetic vision. Worth the prize.

He is not alone in this view. While many people are ridiculing it as a 'category error' on the part of the judges, some high profile poets, novelists and songwriters are applauding the decision. They include Salman Rushdie, Kate Tempest, Billy Bragg and Andrew Motion. Here's the link. 

(And why did I choose this particular album cover by way of illustration? It was my first ever Dylan album, and I still have it – along with a number of others. 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall' is on this album.)

Material shared in 'I Wish I'd Written This' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.