Manifest Destiny
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regardless of how one feels about Manifest Destiny, there can be little doubt that it was a real American thing in the 19th century
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Poetry about Texas
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Poetry about Texas
This short book is a Texan’s reflections on home through the lens of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets; or reflections on Four Quartets through the lens of Texas. It is available on Amazon for $6.99.
“Jagged, hopeful men
High on the dream of independence declared
At Washington-on-the-Brazos
Built and built again
A hardscrabble Capitol of whiskey-breath
Poker games and livestock
By the dusky molten bronze River
Singing low, they dug deep”
Excerpts from Four Texas Quartets:
“It is told by our Storytellers
That before the age of barbed wire
A steer driven from deep down in Texas as far as Kansas
Would sometimes turn around
Walk back along the trail and eventually
Arrive where he started”
A Thought or Two on Sailing Beyond The Sunset
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Sailing Beyond The Sunset is, for me, a complete poetic experience. It contains my memories, as illuminated by the poets who have guided me and helped me to see: Blake, Tennyson, BH Fairchild and always, above all, Eliot. And then my little attempt to bring it all together in a way that is fitting for me, but hopefully, also, accessible to others. I have no idea if the latter part of that is successful. But I am very satisfied with the first part.
Read MoreSailing Beyond the Sunset by Mark Cole
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On occasion in high school, Vickie would suddenly answer. Only to Victoria and respond only in a Masterpiece Theater accent to our delight and astonishment.
Not that we watched that show, or any other show, on channel 3. Real TV of course was found on channels 2, 6 and 8 out of Amarillo. Channel 7 (out of Albuquerque) was a Mountain Time
Read MoreCadillac Ranch by Mark Cole
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The Ten, Just a-gleaming in the sun and a-howling at the moon, Resolute, Stark , Brittle , Honest, Weird, Nude, They just lean In formation Into the wind. Not exactly defiant, but certainly not compliant.
Reflecting on Postscript by Seamus Heaney and Leaving Tulsa by Jennifer Foerster
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I’ve been blessed to see wild swans in County Sligo, Ireland with my four-year old daughter. She was four at the time. I thought then of Yeats’ wild swans at Coole, of course, but that was before I had read this poem by Heaney. Certainly Heaney is in every way Yeats’ successor. I think other poets of lesser stature would think twice before mentioning wild swans, just out of deference to the great Yeats? On that same trip, we also saw wild river salmon, jumping upstream. You have to be patient, of course, but my four-year-old was, and these are the moments that can, as the poet says, blow your heart wide open
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