Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Before we leave this season, I would like to post Rita Marie Recine's "Happy Birthday, Jesus."  Although not every reader is Christian, Rita's sweet poem evokes one of the moods of this holiday season.

Happy Birthday Jesus
Where are your candles?
The family awakens early, it is still dusk, the air is fresh and crisp.
Mom is still in her nightgown, dad is making coffee.
Children are in exaltation.
Beginning their celebration
Happy birthday Jesus

Somewhere across the globe there is Christmas.
 Songs and carollers walk the streets.
Reaching out to people all over town
Our king is born today. In Bethlehem
Offering peace on earth and good will to all of mankind
No mayhem

Emmanuel, God is with us, your given name..
Your sacred name no one can disclaim
Liberator, greatness.
Rescuer of all humanity.

Christmas should be everyday
Time to cheer through out the year
For the spirit of giving should never be taken away
Handle with care …nothing else can compare.
I often ask myself if many are aware.

A moment to celebrate, reflect. 
Memories to recollect with music and dance
A melodious divine tune for the king of angels is born
White cloth embeds Him.
  . Mary and Joseph gaze.
As they adore Him.
Happy Birthday Jesus

Emmanuel, God is with us, your given name..
Your sacred name no one can disclaim
You are worshipped from the heavens and the earth.
The choral is singing a song of praise.
 Hallelujah,
Hallelujah!

Liberator, greatness.
Rescuer of all humanity.

Happy birthday Jesus
Where are the followers who were once so joyful
Where are the trumpets, the harps and the flutes.
triumphant sounds.
As I ponder upon our   heritage
Ancestors ,roots.

Happy Birthday Jesus
Where are your candles?

Where is the starlight which covers the night with its lustrous beauty so divine 
HE always opens the door, gives us only what we can handle

Happy Birthday Jesus
Where are your candles?

Where is the crowd.......
don’t see anybody around

I love Christmas.....for it is Christ's special day
would not have it any other way…………………
Happy Birthday Jesus
Where are your candles?

Strands of children aligned so fine in a straight line
Two by two…..

By the courtyard , by the sea
Awaiting  Santa’s arrival with happiness and glee.
Don’t you agree?

I believe in Santa too……candies, lollipops, and toys anew
I wish though there was also a line for Jesus ………………………..
Happy Birthday Jesus


Where are the candles, burning lamps which provide light  in  the night 
brightening the paths of  the earth, heavens and the sky.
I will light your candle
Have it flicker throughout the year
Happy Birthday Jesus

I will be your star.
I have the twinkle in my eyes
Happy birthday Jesus.

RitaMarie  Recine


July 4th, 2015

To accompany Rita's poem, I'd like to post some music for you.  Let's start with John Coltrane's "Spiritual": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7m5joZPP0U

I was able to find Gary Mann's "Blues for Baby Jesus": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV3CRTH-4Mk

Let's finish with two pieces by Mary Lou Williams.  Her first is "St. Martin de Porres":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNd-X2uMM1k

The next is "Praise the Lord":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J80ysXQJ4yA

Halloween, Jazz, and Feliz Navidad!

I've been celebrating Christmas in bits and pieces.  Tonight I'd like to post Donal Mahoney's "Feliz Navidad" -- before it is New Years or Little Christmas or, worse, Candlemas!

Feliz Navidad

Pedro swings a mop all night

on the 30th floor of Castle Towers

just off Michigan Avenue

not far from the foaming Lake.

The floor is his, all his, 

to swab and wax till dawn. 

The sun comes up and Pedro's 

on the subway snoring, 

roaring home to a plate 

of huevos rancheros, 

six eggs swimming 

in a lake of salsa verde, 

hot tortillas stacked

beside them. 

After breakfast, 

Pedro writes a poem 

for Esperanza,

the wife who waits 

in Nuevo Leon.

He mails the poem 

that night, going back

to his bucket and mop.

Pedro's proud  

of three small sons,

soccer stars

in the making.

On Christmas Eve 

the boys wait up

in Nuevo Leon

and peek out the window.

Papa's coming home 

for Christmas!

Pedro arrives at midnight

on a neighbor's donkey,  

laughing beneath 

a giant sombrero.

He has a red serape 

over his shoulder,

and he's juggling 

sacks of gifts.

When the donkey stops,

the boys dash out and clap 

and dance in circles.

Esperanza stands 

in the doorway

and sings 

Feliz Navidad.

Donal Mahoney

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Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in print and online publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey).

I seem to be going backwards, but here is Allyson Lima's moving poem about her mother and jazz.  I had intended to publish it during the semester.

House Musicians

She was more absence than presence

Never spoke of her father

Except to say he played piano

I only knew her by the music

Spied on her from behind the door

Pale fingers poised above the ivories

And the black keys—

Hold the low tones then flutter

Down cascading phrases

          “The falling leaves drift by my window

            The autumn leaves of red and gold

            I see your lips, the summer kisses

            The sun-burned hands I used to hold”

She plays Nat King Cole but it’s her song too

           “Since you went away the days grow long

            And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song

            But I miss you most of all my darling

            When autumn leaves start to fall”

Who is that guy? I ask when she hangs a portrait

5x7 black and white in the hallway.

Dapper bow-tied entertainer--piano player

His gaze so seductive it could stop you cold

Even a kid knows this guy’s trouble

Her music was no sing along,

No Mitch, no Bing, no bedtime lullaby

Hers were the jazz riffs

Cubist tone fragments

Music undone broken notes smoky

Drifts shifting in air like dark dreams

Reshaped caught on vinyl

Records of survived betrayals

Broken beats of lives revived

In low-lit smoky rooms

Blackhawk, Blue Note, urban clubs

And her glassed-in living room.

LPs in cool jackets leaned against

The blond wood stereo like Sinatra

On the night street album cover

Borsalino angled over baby blues in the boozy

Lamplight and cigarette smoke

In the wee small hours—such well crafted drama

He made grown women cry

Music always playing when I came home

From school always playing in her afternoon

Errol Garner Duke Ellington Oscar Peterson

Louis Armstrong trumpets and Ella Fitzgerald scats

in her unearthly voice how high the moon

Ella Fitzgerald voice of the century

My mother so admired her she once made my father

Go backstage at the Blackhawk just to pay respects.

Ella-- voice for all time couldn’t stay in the same

San Francisco hotel where she sang

Then left out the back door to walk

A dark street to dream elsewhere.

Armstrong and Fitzgerald sit together on

The album cover posed on folding chairs like

Old married folks at the grange hall

His white socks rolled down bebop-style 

She wears a cotton print housedress

(Ella must have hated that cover—

She sang in gowns and pearls in Paris)

MJQ’s suit-and-tie jazz John Lewis hits highbrow notes

Ray Brown plunks the double bass makes it speak like

No one ever heard Miles Davis Coleman Hawkins Art

Tatum, Charlie Parker Les Brown and Wes Montgomery Les Paul

Milt Jackson jivin’ the vibes— those round sounds held her

Django Rheinhart  Stefan Grappeli

Are you kiddin’ me?

You know she felt good then

Even when the pops came along

Stan Getz’s strange meadow lark and

Astrid Gilberto her gorgeous Portuguese

Makes a beachcomber out of anyone

Stuck in suburbia

Cal Tjader’s red hot vinyl beats

Antonio Carlos Jobim’s guitar with

Brazilian accent--Latin’s catching on

Las Vegas nightclubs--Louis Prima Keely Smith

Ahmad Jamal’s Cry Young and

Not one single musical –no post-war feel-good South Pacific

No Oklahoma where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain

To blow away the 1950’s suburban housewife blues

But Ray Charles--Ruby and Georgia on My Mind to break your heart

Dad comes home whiskey-breathed

Swings her ‘round the kitchen keepin’ the beat

One hand stuck down the back of

Her French blue stretch pants

No, Jack, No! she protests eyes sparkling

Singing along with Ray hit the road Jack

We didn’t know he would really go.

Never guessed they would take new lovers.

I know because I found the love letter

in her lingerie drawer—musician too

Distant mystery-mother of four

My younger sisters don’t remember her

Ask me what she was like

Died in the hospital age 42

After a routine operation

Some say she died of suicide.

I say it was a slow dance

In the wrong generation

For a woman like her

Who lived in music and

couldn’t get enough of it.

By Allyson Lima  October 19, 2015

Costumes                                                                             By Allyson Lima  October 31. 2015                                             

Bend the pretend wires of time

outward

One day—

Do what you meant to do

What you’re meant to do

Is there a costume for that?

Go ahead

whine a little

at the sun

Give it a little airtime

before you leave

Still here?

Take my hand, take two

I’ll go with you in the dark

Knock-knock

Are you still waiting

For the door to open

In your silly costume?

Trick-or treat

Sweets and bellyaches

You’ll get both

                                            Before

                                                                 the  door

                                                                                      closes.

Trick-or-treat?

What do you seek

In the moonlight?

Don’t forget to ask

Don’t forget to knock

There are no costumes

Next time around.

By Allyson Lima  October 31, 2015

Allyson has given me so many ideas for the music, but let's keep a Christmas theme.  Unlike many of you, I feel deprived of holiday music.

Let's start with Nat King Cole's "Christmas Song":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89gVQvFV7hQ

"O Come All Ye Faithful" is one of my favorite carols:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7etY6D9TaHg

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis performs "We Three Kings":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67BEFZt_njA

Here is their "White Christmas":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6mvjnhwrEs

Oscar Peterson recorded a Christmas album in 1995, and here is his version of "Silent Night":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixJVS5_24lE

The album also includes "The Christmas Waltz":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGWVbfEXG4g

Allyson just sent me a photo of Lincoln Center at night!

  

Christmas Presence

Apologies for the break.  I guess it turned out to be a hiatus after all.  Let's move the deadline for the fall/winter contests to Jan. 30.  

However, the papers are all graded, and Angelee Deodhar & Mary Jo Balistreri will start us off again.

The holidays and the New Year can be a time to break away from old habits.

They can also be a time to look back and return to one's roots.

Ekphrastic Haibun : January

Looking at the subtle flat, overcast lighting filtering in from the left and embers glowing at far right of Frank Weston Benson’s Rainy Day, reminds me of my childhood in the hills. I remember sloshing around in gum boots, the lovely squishy sound of water in and around the boots, paper boats and running downhill from school with my raincoat flapping around me, the hood flung back, books hugged inside close to me.

Later as I grew up I walked in the rain, protected by an umbrella. Now, as a grandmother to be, I look forward to running in the rain with my grandchild.

New Year’s Eve-

meteor showers from

welding works

For more information about Frank Weston Benson's Rainy Day, see below:

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/64479 

Angelee and the Indian-American author Raveesh Varma collaborated on the haibun below.

Collaborative Haibun :  Capriccio

                                                         

Prose by Raveesh Varma                                   

Haiku by Angelee Deodhar

beyond prayer flags

incense vanishes into

mackerel clouds

I am already dying, when she comes in to visit me carrying chrysanthemums . White curtains, much like her hair while keeping me defenseless under the harsh glare of hospital lights ,protect me from the outside world. Used to such visits, at times I wonder what will she do, after my release from the shackles of this diminishing life of mine.

She chats with me of various things... of life and love (was I ever that young?) and all things in-between; in the kitchen, in the car, over coffee, over tea, or over a flower vase arranging roses ,freshly cut from the garden. She tells me when she dies, I must celebrate with wine, food and music in the manner of an Irish wake, she insists that she does not want me to mourn her .Too much of our lives have gone in mourning and on this one occasion there will only be the purity of us, a transparency untouched by sorrow. She threatens that should I mourn her, she will come back to haunt me forever .I immediately retort that then I will mourn her, mourn her over and over again.

apogee-

the silence since

the children left

This was when interleaved moments of shock and denial, had not set upon us the brittle scaly patina within which we now carry our reverse metamorphoses from butterflies to amorphous, plain eggs. She tells me of uncharacteristic and strange things in the privacy that exist between her senses and mine.

Though she talks of things in the present, every word carries with it the scented breeze of a million other words reminiscent of open wildflower fields, under an unchained white light, not witnessing an unwanted death at an age when death is still the subject only of poems.

It is this light, which having illuminated the wasteland of my life, will be released into the universe in one infinitesimal spark, when my body finally breaks, flesh crumbles into ashes which will be immersed in the never-ending, stream of my Mother, the Ganges.

                                        

sonorous chants-

no crows alight today

for the shradh food

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image credit  http://uploads8.wikiart.org/images/james-mcneill-whistler/caprice-in-purple-and-gold-the-golden-screen-1864.jpg!HalfHD.jpg

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srIE7LesrNw

Richard Strauss: (1864-1949) Capriccio - Introduction (String Sextet) - Previn & Wiener Philharmoniker

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh6mDL-VwYw
Rimsky Korsakov Capriccio Espagnol Op 34 Berliner Phil Dir Zubin Mehta YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIfHGjdF7qI
The Halle - Tchaikovsky: Capriccio Italien Op. 45 Published on Jan 20, 2014

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ1Olh_pjsE

Balkan Capriccio ( Music Video ) by Stevan Jovic

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Bio :Raveesh Varma, a structural engineer, of Indian descent, immigrated to the US nineteen years ago. His  achievements in the fields of literature, music and engineering are noteworthy, as  he is a self taught pianist and also writes fiction. He remains grateful to his wife and two children for the unconditional love they bestow upon him.

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Bio: Angelee Deodhar, an eye surgeon by profession is a haiku poet, translator, and artist.

She lives and works in Chandigarh, India. Her haiku/haibun/haiga have been published internationally in various books and journals, and her work can be viewed on many websites.

Reviews of Journeys 2015, an anthology of International Haibun edited by Angelee Deodhar can be read here  
http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/ and https://wordskies.wordpress.com/2015/12/23/journeys-2/

Thanksgiving can be any day of the year as Angelee and Mary Jo Balistreri remind us in their collaborative haibun.

 Thanksgiving

All afternoon, the robins come, six, seven at a time to push and shove each other till one, fully immersed in the birdbath splashes all the others. Two wait patiently on the railing for their turn. Nothing like this has ever happened and it is impossible for us to leave our places at the window .

Later, with the sun low in the sky, the water’s almost gone. The birds keep arriving We fill the feeders and refresh the almost empty bath. Forgetting this is their world and we are visitors… we wait… we are still waiting.

campus pond-

late afternoon shadows

departing geese

Collaborative haibun :

Title and haiku Angelee Deodhar

Prose Mary Jo Balistreri

      

Mary Jo's poem encourages us to remember the beauty of Paris although recent events may still have shaken you.

     Under a Canopy of Golden Chestnut Leaves

Across the Seine, Notre Dame rises flushed

by sunset’s antique brush. My husband pours

Champagne into fluted glasses. Bubbles burst.

We relax, a crusty baguette, wedges of Brie,

apple slices. Our eyes track amber

moving across the water, soft strobes

from houseboats and the Bateau Mouche.

Small liquid lamps that bob in river wakes.

A candle on the table flickers. It’s autumn

and romance lingers on our lips.

A spell’s been cast and we are wordless.

Solitary. Braided. Neither here nor there.

Awareness hangs on a hinge as he refills

the glasses. We listen alone. Thoughts

ribbon among owls distant cries, voices

muted by water. Retreating footsteps

on cobblestone. Quiet. Fleeting touch of breeze

on my cheek. Only Our Lady’s stones

across the river, solid, substantial, cast gold

into the night sky, clear and weightless as sleep.   

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I have to start the music off with "Parisian Thoroughfare."  This version is by Arturo Sandoval:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcWDXrumftU

Here is Sandoval's version of "I Remember Clifford":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDXekoy116M

Here Sandoval performs "Night in Tunisia" with Dizzy Gillespie in Havana:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xncznvkB7S8

I'll finish with something new, a cover of a song by Taylor Swift:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsGgyLUKEpk

I hope that these songs inspire you to write a poem for the fall/winter contests:
http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/09/welcome-to-fallwinter-contests.html

'Tis the Season part 2

'Tis the Season also for end-of-year awards.  Choosing nominees is often difficult, but it is also fun to go back and look at work from the past year.

This year I nominated some work for the Pushcart Prizes.  My students in ENGL 101 convinced me to select Catfish McDaris' "Sweet Jesus":

http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/01/flash-fiction-and-poem-by-catfish.html

I also chose Charles Clifford Brooks III's "For Dad" although his "Promise for Momma" is also wonderful:
http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/03/promise-to-momma-and-for-dad-by-charles.html

Not only did A.J. Huffman win Thelma's Prize (Spring 2015) for "The Barbie Formerly Known As" but I also nominated her poem as one of the six:  http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/05/aj-huffmani-am-saxophoneand-barbie.html

I also chose Miriam Sagan's "Etudes": http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/07/miriam-sagan-and-chopin.html   You may also know about her blog, Miriam's Well.  It is well worth exploring: https://miriamswell.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/report-and-haiga-from-nepal-michael-g-smith/  I am also intrigued to see that she teaches poetry online as well!

Martin Willitts, Jr.'s "Letting Her Hair Down" is another stellar poem, part of his series inspired by Andrew Wyeth's Helga drawings and paintings:  http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/10/after-midtermsmartin-willitts-jr-and.html

I nominated the multi-talented Angelee Deodhar for her haibun "Grandparents' Day":  http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/11/haibun-by-angelee-deodhar.html
To learn more about haibun, take a look at an anthology that Angelee recently edited:
http://www.amazon.com/Journeys-2015-Anthology-International-Haibun/dp/1515359875

Congratulations to all Pushcart Prize nominees from The Song Is...

In addition, having heard about the anthology Bettering American Poetry, I nominated Catfish's moving poem "Elizabeth" http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/03/while-im-counting-votes.html
and Lynne S. Viti's "Harp Music" http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/08/lynne-viti.html

Congratulations, Catfish and Lynne!

In the meantime, the fall/winter contest will be open until at least December 30.  Poems inspired by jazz musicians born in the 1900s and 1910s and by Latin jazz are welcome!
http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/09/welcome-to-fallwinter-contests.html

Here is some Danilo Perez to inspire you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo3BAlJ0jUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQfOBeEU4JA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJit6sFzp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gSke2yogcw