Jerry Ward's Blogspot

RETURNING TO THE POETRY OF POETRY Leave the shadows cast by Emily and Walt.   Walk in rain shine. The mischief-begotten claim                 "Even among the most barbarous and simple Indians where no writing is, yet have they their poets, who make and sing songs, which they call areytos , both of their ancestors' deeds and   praises of their gods   ----   a sufficient probability that, if ever learning come among them, it must   be by having their hard dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet delights of poetry"                 Philip Sidney, Apology for Poetry (1595) is obdurate.   Imperial capitalism came, delivering abuse of wit and quicksand of alien poesy. The publication of Erdrich, Heid E., ed. New Poets of Native Nations .   Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2018. is an opportunity   for rituals of giving back to poetry what belongs to poetry:   language. It is a prelude to embracing Joy Harjo, the new U

OUR DEAD The dead more beautiful more intelligent in its silence than the living in its noise. The dead Everything invented me. I invented Nothing. more beautiful Trillions of speculations targeting eternity more intelligent allowance of dirt to bury dirt in its silence chaos more jazzy than the living jazz most entangled in its noise. Jerry W. Ward, Jr.             June 30, 2019

A WARNING Drinking a demitasse of "love" each day   is salvific. Drinking a pint of unconditional "love" is an act of unconditional suicide. Make your own choice. Jerry W. Ward, Jr.             June 28, 2019

New Orleans: A Paragon of Contradiction   Like Washington, DC, New Orleans is a paragon of contradiction.   It has a longer history than our nation's capital in the practice of Catholic and catholic corruption, and that fact has made it one of the most magnetic urban centers in the United States of America. It is a haven for excess and a breeding ground for "isms" -----sexism, racism, classism, elitism, and so forth.   Any well-designed study of American cities which came near to "objectivity" in its use of qualitative and quantitative factors would arrive at a tentative conclusion: the Crescent City does have a unique "history" (all cities have unique histories), but the problems it deals with daily and the choices of its elected official in addressing those problems   are not unique.   The conclusions of an honest and holistic study , of course, would provoke howls of protest from many   native-born residents and   from   opportunists who prof

Our Post-Truth/Pre-Future Aesthetic   Economy Among standards of decent behavior, empathy is a commendable idea and a matter of some risk should one choose to practice it.     Narrative Four    [[   https://narrative4. com   ]]   has set achieving "fearless hope through radical empathy" as its goal.   Founded in 2012, Narrative Four is one of many efforts to use narratives based on the exchanging of stories to promote communication and astute understanding among diverse populations, to increase the use of art as a means of improving humanity.   The effort is commendable, but it belongs to the realm of social engineering and the psychology of   behavior modification.   There is the rub.   Creation of personal narratives, the use of critical listening to determine what is essential in speech acts, and use of first person retelling of another's story simply can't be divorced as a stand-alone enterprise from global entanglement .   And that fact may pro

COLD WAR DIRT AND FASCISM'S FERTILIZER Understanding why fascism is thriving in the United States of America in 2019 pivots on inquiry about the human will for power , especially its manifestations in ideological compacts which reinforce vulgar ideas regarding social order and disorder.   The will for power functions also in American practices of democracy and communism, in the totality of narratives created in the name of history.   Inquiry is not easy and neat.   It is messy, as messy as the entanglements that characterize the actual, the real, and the fantastic. Thus, we must hold fast to doubts about the capacity of language to provide us with "truth."   Language   provides data, information that is either instructive or deceptive, prompts for laughter and cause for tears.   Neither foe nor friend, language (an array of American English with grace notes from non-English languages) in the USA is more or less a necessary, convenient, demonizing and enthrall

Checklist of Arthenia J. Bates Millican materials for eventual   transfer to JERRY WARD PAPERS, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University BOOKS Seeds Beneath the Snow .   New York: Greenwich Book Publishers, Inc., 1969. The Deity Nodded . Detroit: Harlo Press, 1973. Seeds Beneath the Snow: Vignettes from the South .   Washington: Howard University Press, 1975. Such Things From The Valley .   Self-published, 1977. Trek to Polaris: Selected Works by Calvin Shepherd Jackson . Ed. with a Preface and Bio-Sketch by Arthenia J. Bates Millican. [   Bound xeroxed typescript, 49 pages, for The Sumter County Historical Commission ], 1989. A Journey to Somewhere: A Novella .   Self-published, 1985. [   Bound xeroxed typescript, 100 pages, with an introduction by Jerry W. Ward ] The Bottoms and Hills: Virginia Tales .   Warrenton, VA: Propertius Press, 2019.   [ draft version without illustrations] The Bottoms and Hills: Virginia Tales . [ unb

SALT:   a theater collage 1st draft                June 18, 2019 Author's Notes:   SALT    ---The challenge is to transform poems written between 1970 and 2019 into something worth being dramatized.   I am writing a collage with a purpose, not a play.   The model is Tom Dent's Ritual Murder, which is anchored in/focused on actuality ----i.e., the inability of the human mind to account for all the factors contributing to despair, self-hatred, and so forth, produced in duration (time) and historically describable location (space, place).   Frustration and resilience   are central in SALT. The weight of knowing crushes the juice out of reason. Assaulted   and condemned again and again, the mind can go bad; it can actually embrace more bad than good as it ponders that "often tomorrow make the mistake of becoming yesterday." We'll see.   We'll hear. (revised from September 9, 2017) Abbreviations: W = woman M = man W/