[ARTS]: Big and Little Poetry--free verse, any verse.

[Shawnzen]

"Soft belly

Pretzel legs

Gentle cosmic mudra

Sitting with the unwanted

And learning to not want"

Gassho
Sat today

[Tai Shi]

Schwanzen, thank you most interesting and so very good! Keep up your writing. Thank you very much!
Gassho
deep bows
sat / lah
Tai Shi


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[Seikan]

"Soft belly

Pretzel legs

Gentle cosmic mudra

Sitting with the unwanted

And learning to not want"

Gassho
Sat today

Excellent Shawn! I'm sure that many of us can relate to this image from our own practice.

Gassho,
Rob

-stlah-


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[Tai Shi]

Big and Little Poetry--free verse, any verse.

I WOULD
Not see these so what
Days without grinding
Oxy, God it’s gone!
I yawned
Zazen Sunday
Sit, withering pain
I rise again, like wind
Trees, and even
Nearly October,
Hearing birds,
Are round
Crickets lay
Their eggs,
Become fodder
Next year’s grass,
Perhaps I shall live
To see, smell, "Oh,
Taste, and see" grass
Mulch for grass.

Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

Poetry

As it turns out through editing, omission, and inclusion, none of the poetry in my book resembles poetry of Treeleaf Forum. Some is Buddhist, much is not. A few poems from the book have been shared here. I am the poet of every poem in my book.
Gassho
sat / lah
Tai Shi


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[Gareth]

If time and space, as sages say,
Are things which cannot be,
The sun which does not feel decay
No greater is than we.
So why, Love, should we ever pray
To live a century?
The butterfly that lives a day
Has lived eternity.

- T.S. Eliot

Gassho,
Gareth

Sat today

[Risho]

If time and space, as sages say,
Are things which cannot be,
The sun which does not feel decay
No greater is than we.
So why, Love, should we ever pray
To live a century?
The butterfly that lives a day
Has lived eternity.

- T.S. Eliot

Gassho,
Gareth

Sat today

Beautiful!

Gassho

Risho
-stlah

[Tai Shi]

Thank you Jundo for your work and explanations. Here is the compendium of Soto Zen.
Gassho
sat/ lah
Gassho


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[Tai Shi]

Fall and Buddha Nature

Rites of fall clouds moving
East on Tuthill Park in prairie
This day blooms late marigolds
In afternoon crude wind
Passes me by. Girls with
Ringlets hug their coats
Against winding sun
I am old, look on in disbelief
Of my own Buddha nature
In this wrinkled day of light.

Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai Shi


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[Tai Shi]

Do keep writing everyone with all you brief or long or short. Do share with us.
Gassho
sat / lah
Tai Shi


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[Jundo]

Here's to the poets ...

Nobel reminds us why Glück's poetry matters now

https://us.cnn.com/2020/10/08/opinions/nobel-prize-literature-louise-gluck-matters-hofmann/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Tai Shi]

I, too, have read Louise Gluck, so in our time, why is it that the greatest poetry is the poetry of depression? This poetry reflects some beauty of and landscape when I chose Theodore Roethke as the poet of my MFA exam, and in that question, and as Roethke had the same disease as me, for 18 years I avoided the hospital after being discharged from one revolving door, and because of other health reasons brought into the Behavioral Health Hospital, a revolving door again like Roethke; he drank too much, and it is said he could be seem crossing the campus of University of Washington talking to the trees. Here 772 new cases of Covid-19 here in South Dakota, 29 new death in three days. It was blood clot to the brain for Roethke in his 50s. I've beaten the odds for a person with mental illness at age 69 because most with mental illness die early. I mean to go into my 80s and beyond. This link tells of Roethke's life. He won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bollinger Prize in Poetry, and more He was Shielded at U of W because he never earned the PhD but the MA in English, and here again a tragic figure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edfly5jPb80

So, should I too remain true to my craft? I've chosen to read instead of The Dharma of Recovery, and a clastic, Loving Kindness which I read eight years ago, and I practice with Metta, and Tonglen. I propose a difficult book to review my knowledge of prosody, The Making of a Poem, Mark Strand and Even Boland, and entirely new to me, Recommend by RobD, Haiku: A Poet's Guide, Lee Gurga; these are after all part of my art, the first I doubt I can read cover to cover, so I will skim, adequate in time left in Ango, then new poetry for me, Haiku. In these pages and in my own computer files sometimes I will practice form and content. Yet, as I have done, perhaps others will practice here the craft of poetry.
Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

Poetry

I’m not to be negative about contemporary poets because there are many since WS Merwin. and Richard Wilbur who can and are positive in poetry— I’m sure! I just haven’t kept up, and I for one don’t shake my stoke of coal into the furnace of life. I know there are many positive poets, and I can be joyous in my own poetry and have been since I wrote the beginning and end of a thesis on tacking stock of the best that my life has yet experienced. My life is good. If I were to die tomorrow, I have enjoyed the content of beauty no man like me is ever supposed to know. I sought out the best corners of my reality, set up camp there and asked no more. But, it took me decades to understand this and as an 18- year-old boy I thought I was grown up, as a 22-year-old man I thought death had caught up with me. Somehow the small part of me said yes and I went to school, got married, became a father, love my little family, and write some good poems have for the better part of my life. It is me who wants to live! And, each of us wants to live, deserves to live no matter what we say to ourselves. I know the universe is no cipher going nowhere because if humanity should not survive, and I believe it will, there are trillions of worlds out there. There is in my mind no way life could escape this reality. To save all sentient beings, but perhaps we will be superseded by life saving us, that if we survive in small form, perhaps sentient beings will save us, beings beyond the small confines of Star Trek.
Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai Shi


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[Tai Shi]

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sharon-olds

This poet graphically depicts my home life as boy and early adult seeking everything until i met my precious Marjorie. Our love discovered as I was sudenly transported to somehow be transported to the World of Soto Zen Buddhism, seeking first the winding path to Buddhism and beyond.
Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

Kokuu recently had a Haiku translated in a Chinese Format and published in Chinese and English. He is an excellent poet
Gassho
st
Taishi


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