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Art and Creativity
For Freedom
Write what matters, as well as possible, risking triteness, risking being labeled political, risking being under or overfunded, risking being imprisoned. The only weapon anyone really has against you is death. And that weapon, too, the older poets used to say, can be turned against an enemy.
April 1977Another Appetite
Except for a few independent strands, her soft white hair is pulled back from one of the gentlest faces ever to smile through a window. Her dress is plain, as comfortable as her worn blue tennis shoes, yet feminine.
April 1977Where I Write
“Where do I write?” a good friend asked me. And when? And how? What are all the externals? He thought it might be helpful to others to know that I sit in a chair, near a window; that I eat and drink without limits, impulsively; that I like to look out at something natural.
March 1977The Dearest Jewel
The most important thing about small press poetry is probably direct personal contact with our readers. When I sell on the street or at fairs, I live for the occasional smile of incredulous pleasure from people who like poetry but have never seen a poet.
February 1977Ninety Nine Big ’Uns
Henry Huggins was one of the best liars in the county. He was a short, stocky, red-faced man with squinty eyes and a waxed handle-bar mustache. He wore bib overalls and a dirty broadbrim hat pulled down so far it bent the tops of his ears over. He read nickel Westerns and sat around the general store telling elaborate lies.
February 1977Photographs By Stephen March
“Only the love for this splendorous being can give freedom to a warrior’s spirit; and freedom is joy, efficiency, and abandon in the face of any odds. That is the last lesson. It is always left for the very last moment, for the moment of ultimate solitude when a man faces his death and his aloneness. Only then does it make sense.”
February 1977Journal
I have noticed that there are those who give spontaneously, unself-consciously. There are also those who have the same ability, but become distracted and brought down by the shadow of their own personalities, and a wavering results. In that instant of wavering, the gift melts. A state of listening grace evolves from instinctive setting aside of self.
December 1976
