GARY  BLANKENSHIP- RESPONSE TO WALT WHITMAN

Gary Blankenship

Of Leaves and Songs – Walt and Me

When his Song met the world,

he was old enough to have experienced

lands and people from the Eastern surf

to the raw, unpolished edge of the West,

to know what he did not know

OTHER RESPONSES

Pg.17

 

Lois P. Jones

Before he was born he knew who he was

certain that each person he met was a universe
in the world, capable of filling the sky-

 

Pg.18

 

Stuart Nunn

 

Sunday morning - England

 

The newsagent’s assistant scans the heavy papers. She doesn’t see the headlines spelling disaster.

 

Pg.19

 

Sherry O'Keefe

 

Trombone Paper (in response to 1. contralto)

She wraps her prayer
with a fevered bow
in wrinkled trombone paper
ribboned with trademark dotted eighths
 

also

 

The birch tree and its givings (in response to 3. children)

 

Graft (in response to 8. spinning girl)
 

Saturday Market (resonse to 20.b old men and young)

 

Mercy Tin (in response to 21. immigrants)

  
Tante Berta(in response to 21.immigrants)

 

half-way dance (in response to 24. dance)

 

Pg.20

 

Alice Folkart

 

A New Song
(a poem after Walt Whitman's,

I Hear America Singing)
 

I hear America singing,

stinging songs, carols of perils, I hear,

I fear.

 

Pg.21

 

Mick Moss

 

Old West

(in response to Gary's 'Turkey Shoot')

 

A nice slice of old west life
where the newly arrived
haven't had time to create a culture
so cling to the old ways

 

Pg.22

Sally James

She wolf - Poem inspired by Gary Blankenship’s poem

Number 26 Hunter  (Wolverine)

 

Some would call me gentle, others kind. They do not know me. I am wild, I am free, am more wolf than human.

 

also

 

A Love Poem

 

Pg.23

 

Sally Evans

 

Settler Scottish of a Song

.

also

 

The Postcard

 

Pg.24

 

James Bell

Walt you
 
are a long way away in time
even your words have become a distance
we need to cross deliberately

 

Pg.25

 

Ralph La Rosa

 

Man and Book

 

As man and book,

he reads us in himself,

each page a leaf of grass

 

Pg.26

 

Catherine Kanaan

 

Discovering Whitman

 

the uncut hair of graves

 

and now with that fine spun thread

a link between us I take him up

 

Pg.27

 

Stuart Nunn

 

Searching for America
 

This man goes searching for America.

He finds it
everywhere he looks.

 

Pg.28

 

Waiata Dawn Davies,

 

Waitaki New Year

 

 

All day caravans and campervans, will draw

Into our reserve and make a circle round the green.

Awnings will spread, children scatter to take up

games laid down last summer.

 

Pg.29

 

Jonathan Shaw

 

Reading the Australian papers with Walt Whitman on my mind, 12/12/2007

My Latin teacher, the one who once stopped in mid-sentence
when he saw a fox on the hill opposite our window

 

 

Pg.30

 

Nancy Williams Lazar

 

Eternity

 

The atmosphere is not a perfume

though it beckons to be drunk

into the mind

 

also

 

Posing with Butterfly

 

Pg.31

 

Barbara Phillips

 

Nativity Abstraction

 

she nods over the eggnog in her hand

face lined, suffused with tree glow

 

so long ago and yet I can’t forget

she says, as she turns, eyes moist from the smoky

fire or something else, it’s hard to tell

 

 

Pg.32

 

Brenda Morisse

 

Response to "Lunatic" #10
winter

The doorknob makes a fist, threatens my latin
click and spiked dance steps. Torch songs and musk
travel with goodbyes. Dear and sorry stressed, locked
inside the glove compartment,...

 

 

Pg.34

 

Terrie Leigh Relf

 

The woman looks out the window at the falling rain
 

I can't sleep what with waves thrashing against rock
the plaintive scuttle of crabs desperate for a safe haven
from seagulls swooping

Like memory, their lives are dashed against the
barnacle-encrusted pier

 

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