Tag: American Poetry

“The Sleep Of Reason” by Edwina Pendarvis, P. J. Laska, & Peter Kidd, A Review by Roger D. Hicks

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The Sleep of Reason: A Collection of Poems by Edwina Pendarvis, P. J. Laska, and Peter Kidd, Igneus Press, 2019, $5

Review by Roger D. Hicks

This little book of poetry has been in the making for a short while and, since I know two of the authors, I had been eagerly anticipating its arrival in my mail box for a while.  It appeared yesterday and I quickly slammed through it which I don’t usually do with poetry.  I like to read poetry slowly, a poem or two at a time, and then return at least once or twice to reread it for better comprehension, appreciation, and respect for the poets involved.  I assure you I will do that with this little epistle at least once or twice more.  But, also out of respect for the authors, this work deserves your attention and awareness of its existence as soon as possible.  “The Sleep Of Reason” by Edwina Pendarvis, P. J. Laska, & Peter Kidd is available from Igneus Press, a small press which was founded by one of the authors, Peter Kidd, whom I do not know.  But P. J. Laska and I have been friends since the early 1970’s when we first met and he was a finalist for a National Book Award in Poetry for his collection, “D. C. Images And Other Poems”.  Laska introduced me to Edwina Pendarvis and she and I have been friends about two years although we grew up in different forks of Beaver Creek at slightly different times only a few miles apart.  

The Sleep of Reason, a Collection of Poems by Edwina Pendarvis, P.J. Laska, and Peter Kidd (front cover)

The book is entitled for an etching by Francisco Goya, the great Spanish artist which is more fully entitled “The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters” and is in the permanent collection of the Prado.  The etching is a metaphor for the many prices of ignorance, especially self-imposed ignorance.  It one of a series of about eighty prints which Goya produced about the “caprices” of Spanish society in his time from about 1746 to 1828.  According to Art Gallery NSW, Goya was making statements about many of the weaknesses of unthinking, uneducated, and willfully ignorant people.   Art Gallery NSW’s analysis of the piece states that Goya’s intent was to confront “…superstition, vanity and folly, as well as hypocrisy, cruelty, greed and injustice.”  I cannot think of a better analogy for discussing the lives and works of both Laska and Pendarvis.  I do not know Peter Kidd or his work well enough, at this time, to make the same statement about his life and work.  Both Laska and Pendarvis are doctoral level retired professors, native Appalachians, and have spent their lives in the effort to confront and eliminate all those same weaknesses which Francisco Goya was addressing in his etching.  When I think of the two of them, I am also reminded of a quote from Clarence Darrow which I have used on my e-mail since shortly after November 8, 2016: “I have lived my life and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and poor—but against power, injustice, and oppression.” When Laska and I met for the first time, we were both connected to Antioch Appalachia, a branch campus of Antioch University which was located in Beckley, WV, which has come to be recognized over the last forty years as having produced some of the finest, and most politically and socially active, writers in America and Appalachia.   When Pendarvis and I  physically met for the first time, we were on our way to a political protest in Huntington, WV.  This little book by Laska, Kidd, and Pendarvis continues that tradition of activism for all three of the authors.  Goya would have been proud to be associated with such work.  

The Sleep of Reason (back cover)

The book is small, only about 28 pages, but it is well worth the price of admission.  It contains eight poems by Pendarvis, seven by Laska, and eight by Kidd.  All are examples of outspoken beliefs about some or all of the character flaws which Francisco Goya was confronting in the work for which the book is named.  Pendarvis addresses the hanging of John Brown in 1859 in the poem “Farmer Brown Ascends The Gallows” and ends the poem with these powerful words: 

“He’d kept his eyes on heaven

and the hell of this world and the next.

He loved the beauty of action.

The crops he raised blossomed fire.” (Edwina Pendarvis)

Those words epitomize several of the goals of a social activist, to always keep your eyes on the prize, to always know that we must confront injustice and ignorance wherever we find it, to take actions to bring about change, and to hope in our hearts every day that our actions will “blossom fire”. 

In his poem “Almost Dead Matter Walking Bags”, Peter Kidd delivers some of his own political statements with the opening and closing words:

“a nation of self interested material/machine worshipers
forever waiting…

the Atom Bomb finger tips away
from the most sociopathic
narcissists in the world.”  (Peter Kidd)


That, my friends is a strong political statement in today’s America.  It is also a strong poetic statement in just about any other time or place.  If reading lines like those does not raise your political hackles, then you have none. 

But this little book is also loaded with what is simply just good, solid poetry intended to expand both the mind and soul of the astute reader.  In her poem “Making Salt”, Pendarvis uses Daniel Boone to make both poetic and powerful points.

“Boone, skulking his lonely way
through iron age Kentucke
found mastodon bones lying around a salt lick…

Squatting by his fire, beside
a behemoth, he poured cold
salty water into a flat pot.” (Edwina Pendarvis) 

While some readers might wish to quibble about the use of the words “by” and “beside” in the same line, very few would argue with the deft phrasing and opulent word pictures the poem conveys.

Over the last forty plus years, I have been blessed to read most of the literature which P. J. Laska has produced, much of it in the manuscript stage, and I must insist that this little book contains some of his best work over the last decade or more.  You will find this book to be pleasure and a motivator for some social action on your own part.  You can buy the book from Igneus Press or from Ecces Books, 392 Rio Altar, Green Valley, AZ 85614.  

reblogged from http://myappalachianlife.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-sleep-of-reason-by-edwina-pendarvis.html (Apr. 8, 2019)

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Numbers and Logic In the Use of Stanzas (Number Poems), by Peter Kidd

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Photo: Sarah Stone

Number Poems, by Peter Kidd, were originally published with Chinese translations by Yin Xiaoyuan, for Beijing-based Encyclopedia Poetry Society, Feb 6, 2019

Numbers and Logic In the Use of Stanzas*

an assignment of international importance
and how the polymath soul
sews with
the very finest of
gold thread

fragments of content flourish
like never before
almost like there never was a before
the return of “vague categories”
in a time with boxes forming cubes

and yet there is recollection

repartee with legally dead souls

have you noticed the hat market
for men
is now exclusively for the bald

it’s not easy
giving away
the secrets

we’ve become a system
of mini systems
perhaps too many moving parts
to keep it running

and tho the spirit exists in divine deed
I’m surrounded by heretical do-aholics
auditioning for the yet to be filmed finale
it’s evening right after sunset
watching the damsel flies skim
atop the still pond
every now and then
dips
and swoops up larvae.

11/17/18

 

“ an homage to the power of the single image conjoinment ”

 

Couplets

Biblical Journalism
mixed with Whitman

something basic
and concrete

cornerstones
House of Creation

Melville, Whitman
Dickinson, Poe

if there is such abstraction
as say a literature

there’s a back and forth
involved in more than one process

a certain balance
to ambivalence

another abstraction, Society
unconsciously drawn to obscure

what is obvious to one
can be oblivious to another

it’s not the balance in things
so much as what weighs out

Process too
can be Precious

even the stars are not abstractions
they are physical bodies in a physical universe.


Title Should Be A Hand Drawn Black Ink Triangle

the center
the circumference
the radius

three part mystery
in the East
too

even thought requires thinking
then review the thought
and do something with it

Atman
Buddhi
Manna

holding
over
the square

in Time the present gives us
remembrances
imaginary futures

30 red roses
and
3 white roses

the conscious
the subconscious
the unconscious

the ability
to pull
it altogether

and act
gently
in the human condition.

 

The Square

the body
and nature
and all
that entails

the soul
our inner world
and that which
has longevity

the chi
in its singular
ongoing
ness

the small ego
without
upper case
authority.

 

Drawn 5 Pointed Star

the human form
arms out
legs apart
head up
engaged in poetry.

 

Three Sixes

marinated in supra illusions
taught tricks of the elements
they once worked expressly
in the psyche of humanity
with both the ability to speed it up
and slow it down at will

Lucifer
seduced by low level urges
self-righteous to the sixes
only emotion is pride
he lives in a soul swamp
and feeds on guilt and sentiment

Ahriman, too, evolving
from God of Dark for Zoroaster
into our second form
gets its kicks
on Route 66 dealing in fear and chaos
use a shield to reflect back his non self

Azuras
incarnating into our technology
contaminating for 52,000 years
this synthetic sun condition
the final lesson
about fossil fuels

the Trinity of Evil
working ever so hard
to slow down our awakening
frantic, dependent upon matter
becoming
the very last illusion.

 

Seven

each day
of the week
named after
a Primordial Planet
under its influence
subtle as
it may seem

a 49 petal rose
seven eras
in seven epochs
stretches out
evolution
post
Atlantis

seven burning bushes
eight junipers
placed upon a banking
accomplishing visual
design features
while stabilizing
the soil

seven red roses
in a bouquet
of fantasy
a
key
to the wonder
of the world.

 

Eight

the octave
of song
plays within
the Apriori Word
forming language
with which
to express
the Music of The Spheres

mental pictures
going through the scales
which no longer belongs
to Western mankind
solely
spices of antiquity from the East
simmering in the pot
of universal musicality

the muse
you say
yes
I obey
she comes
before dawn
the dew yet evaporated
from the lawn

to sing to
the Sun rising
from
the horizon
early meditation
to the songs
of the birds
in the dead elm tree.

 

Nine

it’s not for not
that the cat
a creature of curiosity
is given the option
to use 9 lives
in its exploration
of back alleys
secret spots
each a nemesis

nor did the Greeks
miscue
with their 9 higher worlds
or the 9 pillars
at the deep end
of a marble
pool
reflected
in its afternoon water

“the whole 9 yards”
the measure of which
appears to be everything
included
9 stones in the pre-zen garden
set in place by the imaginer
having serious
dialogue
only softened by the plants

each stone tells
the imaginer
where to place
the next stone
and this is how
it works
grail-like
step-by-step
all the way home…….

the imaginer
has already
mastered
inspiration
and
intuition
only to
begin again
at the imagination

9 eagles
fly for prey
in the western most pasture
9 rabbits
scurry
for cover
9 buffalo
graze
the grasses

 

Twelve

12 signs of the Zodiac
12 eggs in a dozen
12 inches to a foot
12 disciples of the Christ
12 is a dozen
12 geometries in Leonardo’s “Last Supper”
12 donuts a unit
12 bodhisatva’s circling Vishnu
12 apple trees in my orchard
12 months in a year to circle the Sun
12 days to Christmas
12 hours in a half day
12 minutes till two o’clock

the intuitive measure
of geometry
at its divine best
is the source
of unqualified beauty
these numbers
related to macrocosm
resonate
here
in the world
of malleable
nows

the abstraction
of all things
including numbers
can be a stretcher
but like all things
of substance
can be a risk
if the rubber
never
hits
the
road.

Sixteen

16 petals in the lotus flower
of the Troubadour
“4 squared” Bob Kaufman’s
first words to me
we were on about the solarplexus
this Amfortas
of the Piscean Age
to my Parsifal
of the Aquarian Age
each petal
both dark and light
illuminate the Atavistic
as well as the Contemporary
the blossom blooms
sets itself
a spinning

16 adventures
in the Minnesingers
tale
circling back
unto itself
alchymical initiation
this text
of oral
from town to town
singing their song
each night
to a new group
of souls
for a pittance
perhaps
food and some ale.

*The title preface poem “Numbers and Logic In the Use of Stanzas” was not originally included with “Number Poems”, as translated and published originally for Chinese readers. We publish Peter Kidd’s original preface to ’round out’ the experience for American readers.