Tag astrology

* 2014 End of Year Reading

José Angel Araguz 3 Comments

Seeing as we’ll be in 2015 by next Friday – life happens that quick! – I thought I would do something different to wrap up 2014.

Below is a short reading from my chapbook Corpus Christi Octaves done on the banks of the Ohio River earlier this week. Note the heavy fog on the river: by the end of recording, we were halfway in fog ourselves.

Special thanks to my wife, Ani, for going above and beyond the call of duty in the name of poetry by both recording this reading as well as providing the cover art for the book:

* bien hecha *

* bien hecha *

The collection deals with the passing of Dennis Flinn and Christine Maloy, poet friends from my hometown Corpus Christi, Texas. The poems read – “Sky,” “Stage,” & “Snow” – are written in an eight line form, each with its own syllabic measure.

Thank you to each and every one of you who stops by and reads this blog. My goal when I started was to have a forum in which to send a little positive poetry-centric energy out into the world. Through your readership, I feel that energy to have been returned many times over.

Enjoy the reading – awkwardness, fog, & all! Good writing and reading to you in the new year!

See you next Friday!

Happy fogging!

Jose

* wintering with tomas tranströmer

José Angel Araguz 2 Comments

We’ve had some steady days of clouds making their way over us. The early mornings have been looking something like this:

* greyer days *

* greyer days *

In my work, I’ve been working with repetition in some recent poems of mine, trying to incorporate repeating words and images conceptually. The poem below by Tomas Tranströmer is a good model for what I mean. Each time a word or image is repeated, it is reembodied and adds to the overall effect. It’s almost as if the first “blow” in the beginning of the poem sets the details of the poem in motion.

A Winter Night – Tomas Tranströmer

The storm put its mouth to the house
and blows to get a tone.
I toss and turn, my closed eyes
reading the storm’s text.

The child’s eyes grow wide in the dark
and the storm howls for him.
Both love the swinging lamps;
both are halfway towards speech.

The storm has the hands and wings of a child.
Far away, travellers run for cover.
The house feels its own constellation of nails
holding the walls together.

The night is calm in our rooms,
where the echoes of all footsteps rest
like sunken leaves in a pond,
but the night outside is wild.

A darker storm stands over the world.
It puts its mouth to our soul
and blows to get a tone. We are afraid
the storm will blow us empty.

***

Happy emptying!

Jose