Ooty Lakes, India: Hi Sivakami, SoulFlashan [soulflash] Poets & Readers, Transcendent poetry? "Water ~ Into Warmth" ~ a poem ...

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Hi Sivakami, and SoulFlashan Poets and Readers, 

I found a {banana} slug on my smart phone (Android) in my sporran (pouch) in front of my kilt at the end of Scottish Country Dancing in Berkeley today and, with a bit of free time, wanted to email again. Not sure how it got there, however. (The banana slug is the UC Santa Cruz mascot I think, where you studied in the 1970s, Sivakami, if I recall correctly, for a year or a quarter; I don't know any of the poetic UCSC banana slug school cheers, however). I'm inspired by the influences of the 1960s and 1970s, here in California, however, as I sense you may partly be, Sivakami, and I hope I can bring a kind of “banana slug” approach to improving my poetry - to moving towards transcendence (poetically) even in its writing. 

So thank you for your helpful comments and thoughts, Sivakami, about my poem “Monsieur Nikhil Bannerjee, master raga player, moved me along the way” in “[soulflash] Digest Number 3255”! I greatly appreciate your and other Soulflash friends’ thoughts and comments, and perhaps I will also be able to come into fruitful, generative conversation with all of your poems. I’ve been in this SoulFlash email group since at least 2008 I was surprised to see recently, but haven’t read every [soulflash]  email, to say the least. 

One question I have is how best to edit parts of a poem that some might find prosaic, for example, to transform it into one which is highly poetic, and even transcendent, in these regards - either as principles or focuses? So how would I make the previous poem I shared further poetic - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/01/brya-ebenus-jamaican-rain-tree-making.html - and in a way which might inform further revisiting, reconsideration and rewriting of my other poems, I ask myself? This is a kind of intellectualizing poetic question, I suppose, and relates to my querying approach to thinking, but I suspect I will also learn further poetic ways of thinking about writing and editing poetry in SoulFlash’s conversations by and with poets. 

I'll share another poem soon in a different thread. 

Thank you and warm regards, 

Scott

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Hi M and A, 

Thank you, M! What are some of your current new understandings of poetry? For example, one question I have is how best to edit a poem that some might find prosaic to one which is poetic, and even somewhat transcendent in these regards? How would I make this poem further poetic - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/01/brya-ebenus-jamaican-rain-tree-making.html? This is a writer's intellectual poetic question, I suppose. What do you think?

...

L, 

Scott

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Water ~ Into Warmth

Even

Brown leaves are on the ground,

And Harbin is quiet-cold in mid-November,

Yet still the pools draw, releasing

Us home in waters' beauties ...

Into the warm water ...

Kissing us,

These waters

Ease, cleanse & free, -

And we open this eve,

Bathing in the warmth,

And, oh, come home ...

In Morning

Receptive rhythms are all around -

Folks coming out from morning yoga, and ...

This temple,

Near which I awake,

Is a rose,

- a cobb & straw bale splendor -

And up there,

In the pool area,

Is watery wonder

- a warm, blue easy-world -

Flowing forth from earth ...

Into the warmth, and out, at ...

Harbin, in which I butterfly awake,

In my car-cocoon,

- MMmmm, the cool, autumn night -

Now, with rising sun,

Is hot, in the morn ...

So many women are beautiful here ...

One walks by, near the temple,

With her clothes on -

We are all naked in the pools,

Where her nudity sings to me -

And, whiling, most genders find

Clothing-optional ease

Here, at home, in Harbin ...

Into the warmth, and out, at Harbin, where ...

Young women ease,

Take off their clothes,

And find freedom, here,

To soak ...

Oh, the countercultural '60s,

From whence this comes,

And by which

New communal forms

Do emerge -

Thanks to social change ...

And we find

Open, nude intimacy,

Here, more free

At Harbin

Than in the

Norms of modernities ...

What, ahead, will change bring? ...

Writing, writing beautiful Harbin,

A place, a valley,

A vision, a song,

A reality ...

Yet loving bliss doesn't yet

Abound for me, or we,

Or us, or here -

Like wondrous, bow strokes

Over Yo-Yo Ma's

Bach-light, cello strings,

Creating sonorities

- yea the music -

Of our neurophysiologies,

Flowing together ...

Fourhands' Guitar, yes,

Any time, with time,

In time, ~ now & together ...

Into the warmth, and out, at Harbin, where ...

Improvisational, countercultural

{raga?} virtuosity, ~

With Bonobo life,

Finds home in

Harbin's warm waters,

On which golden

Fig leaves fall

In the autumn.

--
Scott MacLeod

http://scottmacleod.com/

World University and School
http://worlduniversityandschool.org/

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See, too: 

Water ~ Into Warmth

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/water_11.html

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Lake,_Ooty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalanche_Lake,_Ooty

Famous Lakes in Ooty
http://www.indiafamousfor.com/famous-lakes-in-ooty.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooty

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