My "Thrice Happy Poetry" Kindle book will be free tomorrow, 15 Oct 2017 for one day

Amazon Kindle ^ | December 2016 | Henry Livingston

[mairdie]

The Kindle edition of "Thrice Happy Poetry" will be free for one day - 15 Oct 2017 - starting about 3am E.S.T. 14 poems, mostly love and beautiful women, by Henry Livingston, author of Night Before Christmas, illustrated with 174 vintage postcards. Think a comic book of poetry.

[mairdie]

Henry Livingston loved women and laughter. Many of these poems were ones I found during my research through the New York newspapers of the time, searching from 1770 to 1830. Some of Henry's poems appear in his poetry manuscript book. When a poem from the book also appeared in a newspaper under the pseudonym R, we knew we could reasonably claim other poems from those same newspapers that used the same pseudonym.

Over the past year, I've been working with Auckland University Professor Emeritus Mac Jackson on a method of statistical analysis that compares the body of guaranteed Henry poetry against a body of random newspaper poets of the time. Then we statistically compare a single poem against those bodies to see if the poem matches Henry's style or not. Mac has gotten one paper out of this work so far, focusing on the phonemes of the poems - where the tongue is moving in the mouth as you recite aloud, an unconscious characteristic a poet doesn't control.

But, for now, there's one book of 14 of the poems illustrated from my vintage postcard collection. Without any modesty, and as an art history/physics major, I have to say that the book is breathtaking.

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[JockoManning]

You might enjoy the short haiku type verse linked in my tagline.

[mairdie]

[InterceptPoint]

Worth a look. Plus I never turn down recommendations from art history/physics majors.

But, as I recall I’ve never met one before today.

[Fightin Whitey]

Beautiful post.

[mairdie]

Made it through the first quarter of fourth year at University of Chicago. Schroedinger Equations had me baying at the moon. Mother had been a fine arts major there and encouraged me to stick it out in a different major, so... I got to study in the same studio where she worked - sculptor Lorado Taft’s, with whom my grandmother had also studied. Took a fifth year to get all the art classes in and they wouldn’t take my Russian so was forced into French. Teachers cringed when I recited. But I had some wonderful graduate level classes in archeology and ancient Chinese art and Greek and Roman architecture. Never had I cried in a physics class, but the sight of a French Impressionist painting covering the front of an auditorium.... It was worth all the pain to study both.

[mairdie]

Thank you, Fightin. It is much appreciated. That was a real labor of love.

[mairdie]

I enjoyed those, Jocko. They reminded me strongly of the beat poetry of the 20’s/30’s New York City scene. My father was an Army rifle instructor, but he was also part of the Village Vanguard Greenwich Village poetry scene. This is a poem written about father by one of the well known beat poets, John Rose Gildea, whom mother complained ruined the wall behind the sofa with his hair gunk.

FOR THE BLIND TIGER
An Epitaph - Jan 8, 1929

Etch him in brown
Here is an upright man.
Born to lie down.

[JockoManning]

Thanks for your kind words.

What a story about your dad. Love it.

Which of those Haiku did you like most? I’ll be happy to tell the author next time I’m in touch with him.

[mairdie]

2-3, 10-12, 16, 26

[mairdie]

>>What a story about your dad. Love it.

That poem page

Favorite poems of father's

LOVE poetry!

My own poetry ranges wildly, but is often the same storytelling that I learned as a child. Just in poetry.

From mother came the leavening,
From grandfather the flour.
Grandma poured her spirits in
And brother, sugar's power.
Father was a phantom
And with him went the salt.
He died when I was just a child
So it's really not his fault.
I stood beneath the branches
And asked his family tree
If all the nuts upon the ground
Were fruitcakes just like me.

*****

Our marriage is like furniture
Whose corners weather through the years,
Each everyday collision wearing down the painful points
'Til, round and smooth,
We bump against each other easily.

*****

Mother met father in the shadow of time
Cast by permanent stones of cathedral and bells.
The building they met in was wood, thin and cheap.
I know this because I walked in that place
Thirty years from a soldier's chance meeting with fate.
So, I guess, in some sense, I'm a child of them all
Of mother, of father, of the Humanities hall.

She was a journalist trying to find
In the day's small events
Some explaining of why
She was her,
Who she was,
A girl in the prime
Of her green salad days
Seen through sea-green young eyes.

He was a poet explaining himself
In the words of a soldier
To any and all
Who could hear with deaf ears
What it was to be young
To be strong and alive
And in love with a lady
Who saw through your eyes.

[JockoManning]

Wonderful lines! Powerfulimages.

What precious memories!

Congratulations. Sounds like you had an interesting family. They sound precious. I hope they were.

Did any of the Haiku particularly strike your heart?

[JockoManning]

Oh, just saw this answer. Thanks. Will convey that to the author.

[JockoManning]

Another question.

Do you think the best poetry comes out of the hottest crucible?

Or is there no correlation?

Or is it the juncture of the biggest heart with the hottest crucible?

Or is it just the most awake eyes with the biggest heart?

[JockoManning]

Another question.

Do you think the best poetry comes out of the hottest crucible?

Or is there no correlation?

Or is it the juncture of the biggest heart with the hottest crucible?

Or is it just the most awake eyes with the biggest heart?

[mairdie]

They were absolutely fascinating. I’m the palest reflection of my mother. She had an almost photographic memory and could remember the jokes her college professors told. But she mostly played mental games, rather than using it for something more. When she died, she asked how everything she knew could disappear, and it tore through me. Thus my 30,000 pages website. Everything I know gets shoved out to everyone so that it won’t die with me.

The grandfather who raised me was a railroads signal engineer who invented a number of signals. As a young man he worked for the Edison company and was brought to Edison’s NJ lab to teach Edison about signals. For a week daddy slept on a cot in the lab and Edison would awaken him at night with questions. After a week, Edison knew everything about signals and daddy was exhausted and came home.

My other grandfather was a gold miner who won and lost fortunes from Alaska to central america. Stetson, six-shooter and a newspaperman whose stories were on front pages with lead-in bios from other writers.

His father-in-law was brought to D.C. by Stanton to run the Lincoln assassination investigation. He was one of the special judge advocates at the trial and put together the records for hte Library of Congress.

And on and on and on and on. I learned my history out of genealogy.

[mairdie]

>>Did any of the Haiku particularly strike your heart?

I tried to answer this before but it doesn’t seem to have worked.

No. My mind. I’m more head than heart.

[mairdie]

>> Do you think the best poetry comes out of the hottest crucible?

Or is there no correlation?

Or is it the juncture of the biggest heart with the hottest crucible?

Or is it just the most awake eyes with the biggest heart?

*******

Poetry comes out of everything. No biggest anything. Everyone has stories inside themselves and everyone has their own rhythm. They have things they need to say about what is fundamental to their own nature, that they hope touches something within someone else. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But that can’t stop them from trying. Poetry, to me, is nothing more than the bones of thought. Sometimes elaborately carved, as in an etched whalebone. Sometimes as stark and bare as a skull on a desert floor. I love poetry because every single word counts. It’s a challenge to compress big ideas into small spaces. Thus your friend’s love of haiku-like verse. But I don’t think there’s any one way to go about anything. And it’s that variety that provides the richness in which we mentally roll.

[JockoManning]

Here's some more I like:

53:
The Elites dance on
Blind to the descent
Of the dance floor

54:
Desolate desert
Desperate thirsty souls
Water from The Rock

57:
The god of this world
Slinks in on deception
Clothed in bright light
Darker than hell

59:
Plant cactus...Harvest peaches
The media screams
Adults & farmers know better

65:
White horses descend
Riders' swords flash
Destructors disintegrate

76:
Newer Brighter
More memory more bling
Salvation thru shopping

78:
Kiss me here Kiss me there
Wiggle this;wiggle that
What's your name?

87:
The sugar-tit is empty
The breast rarely there
The Boob-tube has no milk

92:
Besides the still waters
His hand leads my heart
Nestled into Him

100:
The valley of the
Shadow of death
Has become a freeway

103:
Every knee shall bow
Every tongue confess
Light wins

114:
Jesus--Now please?
The boy asks.
A hole swallows the gestapo

119:
Hell's hollow haughtiness
Called & strutted
Until the lightening struck

131:
Peace in the furnace
Calm under the blade
Glory in The Highest

I should stop. LOL. I like a lot of them.