{"id":49952,"date":"2022-02-23T12:20:16","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T17:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=49952"},"modified":"2022-02-23T22:01:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T03:01:35","slug":"a-poem-for-patriots-and-upside-the-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2022\/02\/a-poem-for-patriots-and-upside-the-morning.html","title":{"rendered":"‘A Poem for Patriots’ and ‘Upside the Morning’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two books by Mark Terrill have arrived with ekphrastic (if I may be so bold) poems of great appeal: The Salvador-Dali-Lama Express<\/a><\/em>, a slim volume of 32 poems, attractively produced in 2009 by Main Street Rag Publishing Company<\/a>, and Great Balls of Doubt<\/a><\/em>, a collection of 96 poems with illustrations by Jon Langford, published in 2020 by Verse Chorus Press<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are two poems <\/em>with images from daily life and the thoughts they arouse, both excerpted from The Salvador-Dali-Lama Express.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Choice Chapbook Series<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Upside the Morning<\/strong><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
              I catch myself catching myself\nstanding in the garden\nin the throes of thinking\nif it's beauty that gets a hold on us\nor us that gets a hold on beauty.\n              Compared to the tiny green bugs\ncrawling down my arm\nmy metaphysical ineptitude\nis about the size of a small car.\n              I look over toward the shed\nand see you standing there\ntending to your seedlings \nwith almost unconscious devotion,\nframed in an opening in the trees,\nnow uppity lush and leafy green\n              in the first burst of spring,\nbacklit and gloriously golden-edged\nby the morning sun, like some kind of\nhighly charged radiant fauvist miracle,\nand can't help but wonder just who\n              has a hold on what.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
A Poem for Patriots<\/strong>\n\nBrand new shiny unopened bottle\nof Russian vodka on the kitchen table\nnext to invisible unknown \nmystery cake from the baker hidden away\nin vaguely surrealist brown paper wrapping\neach with their own promising portent . . .\n\nThe squeak of the ironing board in the next room,\nJoan Baez murdering Bob Dylan in the background;\nred, green, blue and yellow plastic Easter eggs\nswinging in the breeze in the neighbors' trees;\nthe words\u2014purblind yet mercurial\u2014\ncan still only say what the words mean.\n\nOn TV between shots of suicide-bomber carnage\nand discreet mini-camera shots of the underside of\nthe turned down cards of tournament poker players\nI saw in a documentary how the American lotus\ngrows up out of the same mud and muck\nlike any other lotus in the world. \n <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two books by Mark Terrill have arrived with ekphrastic poems of great appeal: “The Salvador-Dali-Lama Express” and “Great Balls of Doubt.” Here are two poems with images from daily life and the thoughts they arouse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,26,18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-books","9":"category-literature","10":"category-main","11":"category-news","12":"category-political-culture","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/cover-THE-SALAVADOR-DALAI-LAMA-EXPRESS-365-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-cZG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49952"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50020,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49952\/revisions\/50020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}