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Archive for the ‘Poetry on Blogfinger’ Category

East 100th Street by Bruce Davidson. ©

East 100th Street by Bruce Davidson. ©

By Paul Goldfinger, Photography Editor  @Blogfinger

The cities of America went through tumultuous times during the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Many experienced social upheaval and riots. Asbury Park had riots over the July 4, 1970 holiday which practically destroyed the west side of the city along with a famous tourist industry and a thriving shopping district. It is only now coming back.

This exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum is about New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.  The works are mostly still photographs by eminent artists who “made their bones” photographing these cities during very hard times. There also are some powerful videos of race riots and violent demonstrations in Chicago during the Democratic Convention in 1968.  It is a superb photography exhibit which is being shown all over the country. It will be shown at Princeton until June 7, 2015

Bruce Davidson is one of the most famous of these photographers. He is well know for his NYC work including his 2 year project called “East 100th Street” where he followed residents of one block in Spanish Harlem during the late 1960’s.

 

This still is from a video being shown of the rioting at the Democratic Nat. Convention 1968. Paul Goldfinger still

This still is from a video being shown of the rioting at the Democratic Nat. Convention 1968. Paul Goldfinger still

 

Still shot from the Democrat convention riot video. Helmeted police use clubs on the crowd.

Still shot from the Democrat convention riot video. Helmeted police use clubs on the crowd. 1968

 

Bruce DAvidson image from the Princeton exhibit.

Bruce Davidson image from the Princeton exhibit.   4/20

 

JACK TEAGARDEN    From the album When Jazz was King

 

 

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Under the Coney Island boardwalk. c. 1960. By Bruce Davidson ©

Under the Coney Island boardwalk. c. 1959. By Bruce Davidson ©

 

 

BOARDWALK

 

By Charles Pierre.

 

This splintered swath

with its burning masses,

where nothing can grow,

 

hides a cool path

of sand and grasses

directly below,

 

a place of laughs

and eager kisses

only the teens know.

 

From the author’s 2014 collection Coastal Moments, Hayland Press, New York.

 

k.d. lang

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saul leiter my room
“In My Room”   Photograph by Saul Leiter.

 

 

GEORGE HELD:

 

Your bra & panties

hanging on the door—

Do Not Disturb

 

George Held is a poet and a retired English professor from New York City.  He wrote this haiku after seeing Saul Leiter’s erotic photograph  above on Blogfinger. George has contributed many poems to Blogfinger.

Saul Leiter was a pioneer in color photography, mostly for fashion magazines, but he also took thousands of black and white images of nudes in his New York apartment.   You might say that  he was an aficionado of naked women.

Of course his artist’s  eye found secret imagery.

Leiter, a life-long New York artist, died in 2013. This photograph above is  from the cover of a book which he published of nudes called    In My Room.

 

Joao Gilberto “Outra Vez” (Tr: Another Time)

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Paul Goldfinger photo. 2019.  Forked River,  New Jersey.   7/18/23 re-post.

 

 

Bee Gone

By Jean Wiarda

 

When I stepped through the doorway a bee flew by and was gone.

Standing motionless, I realized that something was different, very different.

The world was oddly still and utterly silent, as though everything was over and gone

and the bee had been the last to leave.

Had there been a message to go?  A text, an email that I’d missed?

I wondered, “Is everything OK?  Is everything ‘as it should be?’”

If everything is ‘as it should be’, shouldn’t I have been gone before the bee?

If everything else is gone, why am I still here?”

I paused, looking and listening for some sign, an indication that nothing was amiss.

Not a leaf was stirring, no bird twitter, no far off sounds of people or machines.

All was eerily quiet, as if I had stepped into a photo

instead of through my front door.

And then, there it was . . . finally . . .

a chirp, a note and then a few more bird calls.

It was over, this strange interlude.

 

Jean Wiarda is a Jersey Girl living in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

She is an FOB  (Friend of Blogfinger)

 

AARON COPLAND:  “Appalachian Spring”   From the Lincoln Portrait.  Zubin Mehta conducting.

 

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Beachfront Sunrise. By Paul Goldfinger. Ocean Grove. Blogfinger.net ©

 

Hi Paul:

Greetings from Manhattan. I was struck by your quietly beautiful photo, “Beachfront Sunrise,” (posted recently on Blogfinger), and your statement that you preferred sunrises to sunsets because “beginnings are happier than endings.”

Here is the poem, “Dawn,” from my 2008 collection, Father of Water.

 

Best wishes,

Charles Pierre

 

 

Dawn

By Charles Pierre

 

The first hint of morning on the ocean

is a trembling of shadows,

 

a dark hovering of muted tones

that moves with imperceptible pace,

 

a vanishing medium through which

the day brightens and widens,

 

the new light going on for miles and miles

in the shine of emerging surf.

 

BILL FRISELL. “Across the Universe.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Charles Pierre. 2009. By Marcella Kerr.

Charles Pierre. 2009. By Marcella Kerr.

Hi Paul,
Greetings from Manhattan. At this time of year, as temperatures warm along the coast, one can see sailboats being moved from winter storage on land to their berths at marinas. And as the wind picks up, one can hear their rigging striking the masts. Here is the poem “Tuning Forks,” from my 2008 collection, Father of Water.

Best wishes,

Charles Pierre

 

 

St. Thomas, USVI. Paul Goldfinger photo.

St. Thomas, USVI. Paul Goldfinger photo.  Click once to enlarge.

 

 

Tuning Forks

 

By Charles Pierre:

It is past midnight, and the sailboats
float side by side at a sheltered marina,
in stillness so complete that not even
a lapping against the hulls can be heard.
Yet high above the water, at the tops
of the mastheads, the rigging of each craft
starts to ring aloud in a rising wind,
the ropes and cables striking the masts,
sounding possible routes to new lands.
The musical tones, in random clusters,
sailing out from the crowded harbor
toward an uncharted ocean of dark.

 

JESSICA MOLASKEY with Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer.”  From Jessica’s album Pentimento

 

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urthonaessays.com

urthonaessays.com

 

“The Red Wheelbarrow” *

 

By William Carlos Williams, 1883 – 1963

 

so much depends

upon

 

a red wheel

barrow

 

glazed with rain

water

 

beside the white

chickens

 

 

Submitted by Lee Morgan of Ocean Grove:

Lee says, “William Carlos Williams was gifted at painting images with his poetry. After reading it again this evening I wonder if Williams felt an interconnectedness of all things as he observed the world.”

*”The Red Wheelbarrow”  was first published in Williams’ 1923 book Spring and All.

 

Editor’s note by Paul Goldfinger, MD.  Editor Blogfinger.net, Ocean Grove, NJ:

Williams was a practicing pediatrician in my hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey when I was attending  Rutherford schools.    But, unfortunately, I never heard of him then.

Poet Charles Pierre told me that there were other writers  who were physicians including Oliver Wendell Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  and Michael Crichton.

I never understood this poem, but Lee says it is about imagery, as in painting images with words.  OK, that is understandable, but, as with all poetry, there’s probably more there there.

What do you think?  What about the opening sentence:   “So much depends upon….”    Anybody out there?

Read the comment below  by “Blind Pursuit.”   It is excellent.  He is from Ocean Grove. —Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.

 

ALEXANDRE DESPLAT:   “Elisa’s Theme” from the movie score of The Shape of Water.

 

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Hi Paul:

Greetings from Manhattan. Over fifty years ago, my grandmother said a few things to me shortly before she died that I knew would eventually find their way into a poem. Here is “Grandmother’s Note” from my 2008 collection, Father of Water.

Best wishes,

Charles Pierre

 

 

Paris. By Paul Goldfinger ©

Paris. By Paul Goldfinger ©  Click to enlarge.

 

Grandmother’s Note

By Charles Pierre

 

Looking for less with each added year,

I’ve begun to live in the small space

that surrounds me now, in the shadows

 

that gather at my feet and follow

as I walk along, and in the breezes

that take my shape for an instant,

 

leaving nothing but gentle creases

in my hair and a cool ripple

over my skin. Expecting little,

 

I go where my handwriting leads me –

become just a sound, a word, a phrase,

part of the impression on the page

 

for a moment, not an old woman

with the obvious lines of age, but

a clear thought in this surrounding space

 

CAL TJADER: “The Night We Called it a Day”

 

 

Charles Pierre. Photograph by Marcella Kerr. ©

Charles Pierre. Photograph by Marcella Kerr. ©

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Fort Myers, Florida. By Paul Goldfinger

Fort Myers, Florida. By Paul Goldfinger   2014

 

Tambourine

 

The tune of summer

is not a modest one,

with the show-off sun

 

playing yellow notes

over miles of ocean,

and the wind blowing

 

in some exotic key,

and him turning cartwheels,

his pockets full of shells.

 

BOB DYLAN sings a “jingle jangle ” song that goes well with “pockets full  of shells.”

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https://blogfinger.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ny-springtime.jpg?w=1000&h=758

Paul Goldfinger photograph.    West Village in New York City–early spring. 2013.

 

 

The vacant mansion
next door dwarfing my cabin—-
my tulips stand tall

 

Laura Nyro and La Belle:

 

 

 

 

 

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Image taken “before the last storm.”  Photographer Gladys Henderson. March,  2018.

 

 

The tip of a yellow

crocus pushing through the snow—

spring fever

 

 

DICK HAYMES  sings “It Might As Well Be Spring.”

 

 

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Central Park c. 1972.  Paul Goldfinger 

 

 

haiku by George Held.

 


Winter lingers—–

fingers of spring still wearing

woolen gloves

 

ANITA O’DAY

 

 

This haiku was originally published at Haikuniverse.com ©  2019

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Bob Bowné.  Winter Ocean Grove. 2015. ©

 

SCULPTURE

 

By Charles Pierre

 

In winter, my tongue

and teeth chinker

through cracked lips,

 

each poem a carving

of white breath

without marble’s heft—-

 

the chiseled lines

dying to silence,

shrouded in mist.

 

 

HOLLY CONLAN   “Winter”

 

 

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