Poetry Treasure

Been upgrading Jeff Lewis' page on the website. Adding text and...hopefully someday...images. Jeff is a great artist as well as a profound poet. Here's a poem from the book section called, "Playing the Rivers Backwards." Click on the title above to hot link to the book's page.

Baptism River

Certainly not the Jordan,
this root beer brown surge,
the anaconda pour,
this tireless roar
into the heads of poets,
the beds of dreamers,
the solitudes of saints
or the hells of madmen.

Certainly I have no squaw to convert,
her beargrease oiled head to immerse,
her loyalties to split between Mighty Manitou
and He who walks across Gitchigume
in tyrant splendor
upon the backs of our enslaved dreams.

I dunk the carburetor of a star.
May you make light knowable,
may you fill our cylinders with photon Cupids,
our dreams with vehicles
we can drive to the bottom of the big lake,
the Big See,
to our childhood museums on the bottom of Begin.

I dunk the typewriter.
May all the old ink wash away,
all the old writing written into us,
all the curses, all the tragedies.
May you now write only the truth
or lies graceful enough
to tempt the Word from its hole,
to rise to the mayfly
in creations complete
and consummated in morninglight.

I baptize thee in the name before names.
I baptize thee in the first creation.
I baptize thee in the language before language—
before all this gibberish
to father the First Nation
of the First People
who speak their own origins.

I baptize the television.
I give it over to the current,
the python of it
I have wrestled to the Pythia One channel
from the Aorta of Words.
The river takes it, an offering,
delivers it to the lake
where in slow motion
it falls gracefully over drop-offs
to land on a ledge
to broadcast a world above
made in the image of our deepest dreams.

VISION OF THE FUTURE OF PUBLISHING

I had a dream, a dream where people of all races, creeds, wallet size, could become published authors. It wasn't so much a Martin Luther King Jr. dream as it was an Ezekiel Saw the Wheel dream of a future where every literate (and many no-so-literate) persons, places, and things (think spambots) had an audience, a fan base bigger than Mel on Flight of the Conchords. The world wide web will become that world that I saw in my vision. The big publishing houses in New York, London and Superior Wisconsin will toss agents out 50th story windows because the "Internet" will vet all content in the future. If a "manuscript's" website gets more than 30,000 hits the publisher will take the electronic file and bring out the book, pitch it to Oprah if it is fiction all dressed up in non-fiction finery, and sell a hundred thousand copies. Eventually the author will receive a tiny, tiny, portion of the profit, which will be slim to none, because profit margins in publishing are slim, to microscopic. But, the author will have been discovered, the author will have been read, the author will have had the exposure and the deepest longing of any writer gets met. What is that need? The need to connect. That's the beauty of the "Internet," the world-wide-web, the old WWW, an author can sit in his nook and connect with thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even one or two, readers/fans without going to those pesky booksignings.

INAUGURAL POEM

So, what did you think of Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem, Praise Song for the Day? Yes, I'm taking a poll. Post a comment and let us all know...did the poem work for you? What about the delivery? Was there a deeper meaning that you've discovered? Post a comment, if you would.

IRISH LIVESTOCK EYES ARE SHINING

It's that time of year again when plans for the annual Ireland trip are being made. It looks like the end of Feb. first two weeks of March again. Planning on visiting my Irish livestock happily living on the edge of the Burren near Corofin, in the shadow of famed Burren mountain Mulloughmor. The brown donkey in the middle, with the white nose and blaze, is Daisy. I'm half owner of this fine, fantastic, funky, female, four-footer, whose sole purpose in life is supposed to be producing offspring for the profit of her human "owners." The "venture" has yet to produce a foal. This...of course...makes me a "Half-Assed Irish Businessman." It'll be fun to get back to the Burren and all my Irish livestock.

It looks like I might be a doing a Q&A session at next year's Ennis Book Club Festival. Check out this year's schedule: http://www.ennisbookclubfestival.com/. It's a fun event with tons of great author/reader interaction, tours of Ennis, coffee & scones, some Guinness consumption, (well, maybe lots of Guinness consumption) and lots of book talk.

It'll be fun to be back in Clare and do some more work on the Dave Davecki novel "DIERland" where Davecki gets involved in tracking down a band of irritating druid-wannabes who are murdering folks and selling pre-Christian Irish artifacts to the highest bidders in Russia.

Looking inside the Book

Take a look at the Kat's Magic Bubble page by clicking on the title above. See some of Pegi Ballenger's awesome inside artwork for a book that is both inspirational and courageous. Jeff Lower's story of his daughter's last days is both truly sad and truly inspirational. It took courage for Jeff to give his story to the world. We're thankful for the many reports of how the book has helped families in similar situations.