Jeanne Poland's Poetry Blog
05 Mar 2015 1 Comment
in Family Tags: Colum McCann, definition, high and low, lovely, quartet, slap the music down, song ofNYC, transported, vivacious, Whitman
Got the quartet together in 1978
Colum McCann
He said, “I wanted it to be a Whitmanesque song of the city, with everything in there – high and low, rich and poor, black, white, and Hispanic. Hungry, exhausted, filthy, vivacious, everything this lovely city is. I wanted to catch some of that music and slap it down on the page so that even those who have never been to New York can be temporarily transported there.”
04 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in Family Tags: definition, fear, Franklin DelanoRoosevelt, Jeanne and Quenby, laugh at fear, Only thing we have to fear is fear itself
Laugh at fear; its tail is courage
1975
Jeanne and Quenby
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
03 Mar 2015 2 Comments
in Family Tags: a British drinking song, A Poem Emerges, definition, Francis Scott key, jot on the back of an envelope, national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner
Jeanne’s young gets a higher view (1975)
The Star-Spangled Banner took from 1812 to 1931 to become our national anthem.
The lyrics come from a poem written by Francis Scott Key more than a century before, “Defence of Fort McHenry.” He’d spent a night toward the end of the War of 1812 hearing the British navy bombard Baltimore, Maryland. The bombardment lasted 25 hours — and in the dawn’s early light, Francis Scott Key emerged to see the U.S. flag still waving over Fort McHenry. He jotted the poem “Defence of Fort McHenry” on the back of an envelope. Then he went to his hotel and made another copy, which was printed in the Baltimore American a week later.
The tune for the Star-Spangled Banner comes from an old British drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven,” which was very popular at men’s social clubs in London during the 1700s. Francis Scott Key himself did the pairing of the tune to his poem. It was a big hit.
For the next century, a few different anthems were used at official U.S. ceremonies, including “My Country Tis of Thee” and “Hail Columbia.” The U.S. Navy adopted “The Star-Spangled Banner” for its officialdom in 1889, and the presidency did in 1916. But it wasn’t until this day in 1931 — just 80 years ago — that Congress passed a resolution and Hoover signed into law the decree that “The Star-Spangled Banner” was the official national anthem of the United States of America.
02 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in Family Tags: clues of speech, definition, dialogue, emotional reality of the news, emotions, excite readers, gripping quality, Jeanne from Queens, point of view, scenes, social status, Ton Wolfe
Doesn’t everyone dress in gold in 1977?
Tom Wolfe:
In an essay published in 2007, Tom Wolfe argued that the newspaper industry would stand a much better chance of survival if newspaper editors encouraged reporters to “provide the emotional reality of the news, for it is the emotions, not the facts, that most engage and excite readers and in the end are the heart of most stories.”
He said there are exactly four technical devices needed to get to “the emotional core of the story.” They are the specific devices, he said, “that give fiction its absorbing or gripping quality, that make the reader feel present in the scene described and even inside the skin of a particular character.”
The four:
1) constructing scenes;
2) dialogue — lots of it;
3) carefully noting social status details — “everything from dress and furniture to the infinite status clues of speech, how one talks to superiors or inferiors … and with what sort of accent and vocabulary”; and
4) point of view, “in the Henry Jamesian sense of putting the reader inside the mind of someone other than the writer.”
01 Mar 2015 1 Comment
in Family Tags: articulate, certain knack for poetry, definition, inarticulate is a suffering, Jeanne from Queens, put my world in order, Richard Wilbur
Jeanne and Quenby
1975
Richard Wilbur said:
“I would feel dead if I didn’t have the ability periodically to put my world in order with a poem.
I think to be inarticulate is a great suffering,
and is especially so to anyone who has a certain knack for poetry.“
28 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in Family Tags: cartoon, definition, good writing, Jeanne from Queens, John Edgar Wideman, poly-nose Jeanne, things important to you, things scary for you, things that eat you up, writing
Poly-nose Jeanne (cartoon by Jeanne)
“Good writing is always about things that are important to you,
things that are scary to you,
things that eat you up.”
—John Edgar Wideman
27 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in Family Tags: albums, definition, face to face, Facebook, Facetime, Jeanne from Queens, Quenby, startling visuals, stay in touch, touch
Jeanne and Quenby
1992
stay in touch: facebook
facetime, face to face, albums:
startling visuals!
26 Feb 2015 1 Comment
in Family Tags: choices, definition, forgive, get to choose who to love, Jeanne from Queens, musings, Owen, we children of God, Wedding Shower, who to adore
Jeanne and Owen
At a Wedding Shower
for Quenby
7-15-2007
we children of God
get to choose who to love-who
to adore-forgive
25 Feb 2015 1 Comment
in Family Tags: bathing suit in sun, definition, Forty years ago, Quenby's Beginnings, so where's my sunhat?, tenderest introduction
Quenby
Forty Years Ago
bathing suit in sun
tenderest introduction
so where’s my sunhat?
24 Feb 2015 5 Comments
in Family Tags: already naked, alternatives, definition, follow your heart, graphic user interface, icons, spiritual enlightenment, Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Today is the birthday of Steve Jobs, born in San Francisco (1955) to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who placed him for adoption. Clara and Paul Jobs, an accountant and a machinist, adopted him when he was still a baby. Growing up, Jobs and his father would tinker with electronics in the garage.
He dropped out of college after a semester, went to India in search of spiritual enlightenment, returned a devout Buddhist, experimented with LSD, and then got a job with a video game maker, where he was in charge of designing circuit board for one of the company’s games. In 1976, at the age of 21, he co-founded Apple Computers, and less than a decade later, Apple unveiled the Macintosh computer. It was the first small computer to catch on with the public that used a graphical user interface, or GUI (sometimes pronounced “gooey”), where people could simply click on icons instead of typing in precise text commands.
The graphic user interface revolutionized computers, and it’s on almost all computers today. It’s on a whole lot of other devices as well, like fancy vending machines and digital household appliances and photocopying machines and airport check-in kiosks. And graphical user interface is what’s used with iPods, another of Apple’s wildly successful products.
Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. He opted for a variety of alternative treatments, but eventually — in 2004 — he underwent surgery to remove the tumor. His health began to decline in 2009. He was 56.
Jobs once said, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
The Vibrant Channeled Creator 