Jeannine Hall Gailey, “Rescuing Seiryu, the Blue Dragon”

4. a “turn,” or a sudden change of heart, if you will, found in the third line of the prose sections. Jeannine Hall Gailey goes from introducing a seemingly easy-going, cheerful visitor to a terrifying, blood-soaked seer in her haibun “Rescuing Seiryu, the Blue Dragon”:

You met the dragon in the garden. Sometimes he flies in circles outside your window. This morning he appeared as a young boy. / He shows you a vision of your parents, lying in a barn. With his face so close you smell hay. / He bleeds from the wounds of paper birds, from a swallowed curse. Can your healing rice cake keep him from death?

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/more-birds-bees-and-trees-closer-look-writing-haibun

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On the Rant! Rant! Rant!

I’m on the rantpage again. I have three points, and I think I can make them all alliterate, but this is no Baptist sermon — it is a RANT.

1. ALLERGIES: Spring has sprung like a bat out of hell and smacked me right in the sinuses. Lord have mercy. I’ve been eating raw, natural, LOCAL honey for six weeks, and this was supposed to be some kind of magical cure for what my father calls “hay fever,” but it WASN’T.

But I found a poem about honey, that is admittedly more cheerful than this rant, and I’ll post it in hopes of finding some REDEMPTION FROM MY MISERY. I found the poem in an anthology, actually. Speaking of which, that brings me to my next point!

2. ANTHOLOGIES — specifically, this one poetry anthology I’m reading right now. Caveat lector! This is not the 250 Poems anthology of which I wrote earlier, but another that shall remain nameless (for its own sake). The anthology that I’m currently reading assumes that just because a poet won the Pulitzer or served as poet laureate or professed English literature at an ivy league university, that poet should be in the canon of American literature. Well, I’m not so sure. Pedigree politics. Affiliation games. Me and Wily Coyote say PISH.

But even when the poets are good souls and great writers, why do editors have to misrepresent them so badly by choosing to anthologize their BAD poems? Or by choosing poems that emphasize the editors’ major themes (and/or prejudices) rather the poet’s?

And why does this particular poetry anthology make it look like most poets in the 20th and 21st c. were depressed to the point of self-harm or suicidal ideation? I like edgy, truthful poems … but not every writer in the last two centuries always wrote about the darkness. They had other things on their minds sometimes. Where are those poems? I know we live in an evil world, but where is the last poem that escaped Pandora’s box? Show me THAT, please.

Show me the light in the dark. The real hope. But the flip side is, of course, false hope, which brings me to …

3. A.I.G.: Yes, the bonuses. C’mon. Like those guys needed more money.
I’ll post a poem called “Ethics” … b/c that’s what these folks need. BADLY. Much more than they need Ben Franklins. I’d like to give them my two cents … no, wait, they already have that … so maybe a piece of my mind … or better yet, my ALLERGIES!

Their new money is probably as good as my local honey for curing their disease: greed.

That thought concludes this rant.

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My first rantpage

Sometimes poets need to rant. When they do rant, I suppose we could say they’re on the rantpage (a neologism). Take myself, for instance. I am a poet, and I need to rant. Here’s what I want to rant about:

1. www.poetseers.org – Outstanding site. Definitely better than mine. (rant, rant) Go visit it, and get lots out of it. That’s the only way to redeem the situation.

2. Pablo Neruda is a better poet than Czezlaw Milosz. (rant) It’s true. We can argue if you want, but that won’t change the obvious. I realize that comparing these two poets is like … comparing apples and oranges … or a bird of paradise and a rugged pine … and maybe there’s no point in comparing a Latin American poet to a Polish one, but seriously, no one with sense can deny it: Pablo Neruda is the man.

3. Why is that only TWO women poets have rec’d the Nobel Prize??? (rant, rant, RANT!!!) I’m happy for Gabriela Mistral and what’s-her-name, but what about the rest of the women poets in the world? Sappho is weeping somewhere.

This concludes my first rant.

(I’ll try not to let this mode dominate my poetry place discourse.)

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