Essays
Original Essays by Warren GastonSURREALISM
Surrealism is an artistic expression, usually painting or poetry, that originates from the unconscious mind. It does not start with an idea to be logically pursued. It does not begin with an agenda, imposing meaning or form on material. Surrealistic poetry simply...
Language World
I have just spent a week with a young woman bulking up on language. She is 2½ years old and calls me grandpa. A year ago she made noises. Now those noises are being transmuted into distinguishable words. It is dawning on her that the surrounding big people have given...
Thanksgiving Shadows
Refugees from the Old World come to the New. They have been persecuted. They have forged a brave escape. Children. Women. Men. Months on the winter sea. The North Atlantic. They rejoice, yet are full of dread. Glad to have solid ground beneath their feet, they do not...
The Red Wheelbarrow & the Question of Being
"As it reveals itself in beings, Being withdraws." from: The Anaximander Fragment, Martin Heidegger I call your attention to two words in the above quotation; beings and Be-ing. Beings are all the things that be which is everything. That is why the noun is plural....
The Zibaldone of Giacomo Leopardi
I have recently discovered a book, the Zibaldone by the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837). Zibaldone is an Italian word meaning commonplace book, a book in which a person writes down ideas, quotations, anecdotes, observations, and information, things one...
Logos & Eros in the Poems of William Carlos Williams
“To refine, to clarify, to intensify, that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force--the imagination” William Carlos Williams – Spring and All I have loved Dr. Williams for forty five years, through his poetry, not his prescription pad. (I do...
Certainty, Poetry, and the Whole Self
Rene Descartes got the head ahead of the whole. The name Rene Descartes may not ring a bell with you. She is not a French fashion model. Rene isn’t even a she. Rene is a 17th century philosophical he. Your memory may not hold his name in its store of significant facts...
Working a Poem for All It’s Worth
Poetry is work. Writing it is work. Reading it is work. Like all work, poetry requires training. Since this is a poetry website, this is on the job training. A poem is in your face. Deal with it. This poem was written on March 6 and posted today, July 6. L. A. Map In...
Two Styles of Poetic Attack
A poem is an army of words. Its purpose is to win over the reader or hearer to a richer and more attentive way of standing in the world. In the past the army marched into battle in formation, row after row into the fray, gaining new territory for our human experience....