I hope that you will find
these so-called poems
of real, tho peculiar, use.
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Tho you won’t find them so,
it’s true,
if you are satisfied
with yourself, or with
the dynamic situation
in which you are—
in which we all are—
embedded.
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What is a “so-called poem”?
Here is a good definition, from John Bennett, extraordinary novelist from Washington State, USA:
“ERIC … it’s like you don’t write poems, but social-concern tracts that in their relentless sincerity, border on being poetry….”
Cuban poet Jose Francisco de Asis Garcia says:
“Luego de leer estos versos, tiernos y aciclonados a la vez, no te queda otra alternativa que levantar tu justa voz junto a la vigorosa del poeta o resignarte a ser, por los siglos de los siglos, un poeta sin opinion.”
(“Reading these poems, tender yet cyclonic, you can’t but raise your just voice together with the poet’s, or resign yourself to being, century after century, neutral.”)
While the late Hugh Fox—Los Angeles & Michigan, USA-based novelist, poet, & publicist for the otherwise forgotten, ancient, global Sea People—said:
“You’re an honest-to-God CLASSIC, up there on Classic mountain with Whitman, Bukowski…all the Forever Poets!”
///
Besides having been published in periodicals or posted online from many of the states of the USA, many of these so-called poems, as noted on their pages, have been published or posted from India, China, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Nepal, Taiwan, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Ireland, England, Scotland, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, & Switzerland, often in translation. I’m grateful to those who published, posted, translated them. I write them, carefully, in hopes of transmitting them to as many receptive readers, hopefully while I’m still alive, as possible.
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This web-site was previously called “100 So-Called Poems,” &, before that, “Eat Some, Plant Some.”
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Picture: NOAA
