Intimately Distant

These two words don’t really go well together, do they?  Or maybe they’re perfectly fitted.  These are the words by which I navigate in all the writing I’ve done.  I’ve written poetry/songs, fiction shorts, essays (all of which boil down to my ramblings), but they contain the fitting of oddities, things that cause one to blink and stare into something I’m going to call beautiful.

Can a poet post a review of his own work?  I think it’s probably very bad manners, and suggests the existence of other bad habits.  But I’ve got this thought in mind, for when I read back over just the few that are up on this site, not including the hundreds in my collection, I see striking thoughts and a scope that’s just breathtaking.

There, I even used words above to underscore the point.  This stuff is vivid, maybe surreal (I’m not sure what that actually means, but I don’t know what “spiritual” really means either when applied to a person or thing of this world).  Actually, trying to write this without the style I guess should be termed “mine” is rather difficult.

So am I saying anything here?  Don’t know.  I’ll try to make a clear statement.

Reading my own work, I find myself short of breath in the stark emotions, warm and alive in the bright motion, curled in anguish in the loss, clear and focused throughout all of it.

That’s probably just as clear as trying to read I’seah backwards (I can do that, though).  And there’s probably much more to it than what’s here.  I’ve written poems about the process.  Doubtful they scratch the surface.  There’s something powerful and vivid about the whole thing.

Based on my interpretation of Websters, spiritual is not a good descriptive. Yes, I have a spirit, and yes, it definitely is the source of this work, filtered by the mind and the known language. I don’t think spiritual can sufficiently tag my work

Surreal could be, if the focus is made simply on symbolic objects, but that can’t entirely serve. It’s not definitive, and my intent is not via the subconscious or nonrational. I prefer thinking/feeling be expressed as such, not through surreality, if it means what I think it means.

Tearing apart my own writing, analyzing, whatever, smells like burnt something-or-other, but I’m interested in how it turns out. If I’m committing literary suicide, I’ll never know, so here flies the little bird. I find beautiful phrases that parallel the effects of Khalil Gibran, Louis L’amour, Tolkien, Melanie Rawn, Enya, The Violet Burning, Jars of Clay, Phil Keaggy, Anika, Lib, Heather, Loreena Mckennit, Michael Whelan…. On and on I can pull from all these musicians/writers/artists/people some aspect of them or their work and tie it to my own mind. And there’s probably quite a bit more I could claim as influence beyond these more prominent ones. But it’s all me once the pen lifts from the paper and the finished work.

First poem? “The Black Knight” was written in part while listening to an instrumental of the same name by a group called Leatherwolf. They’re a metal-band I heard of around 1989-’90. I happened to get a recording of the one song and it followed me around for years. I wrote the poem, I believe, in 1990 or ’91, and it was actually published in 1992. That was for the school’s literary anthology. Very much a foreshadowing of my writing future in it’s style and imagery. I doubt many readers could recognize it from later work.

Early works included much painful reflection during my senior year of high-school in Korea. Separation from the “First True Love,” and my Only Friends really worked things into a smolder that wouldn’t… hasn’t gone out. Don’t ask for details, this isn’t a biography and I don’t believe in psychoanalysis.

Those who know PookaHistory are few but far more informed than the scope of this study. In addition, tearing apart more than two-hundred and twenty individual pieces of work would exceed, on the order of three or more times the word-count, the collection itself.

I’ve done work by commission. The only one I specifically did on request was for a couple long ago in 1992 at OS “A” school, right after joining the Navy. That one, “Trinkets,” ended up permanent in the collection. Don’t know where they are, or if the love-song ever stayed with them. Don’t even remember their names. I will never reveal the true nature of the trinkets. HAHA! Now you’re gonna tear it apart, those who have the piece in hand, trying to guess.

Some have seen simple attempts at putting words to Enya’s music. Not lyrics, but capturing the essence of her amazing work. That was around the same period as “Trinkets,” and included her “Flight,” as well as possibly others. I think most of this thread happened during my first year in the Navy.

Many times, the musicians in this list have simply put me in the frame of mind to “fall into myself.” That invariably brings more poetry. McKennit’s song, “Dante’s Prayer,” and maybe others sort of “spoke” to me, in words and message completely different from what she was singing. Sometimes it was the music, or the words, or even just her voice. Those are very powerful pieces and represent “mature” work, very clearly recent (2002, if memory serves).

I’ve written under the influence of Melanie Rawn’s Dragon series, mostly long discourses on tiny bits of her work. That, of course, has resulted in a couple really amazing pages. I think I commiserated with her characters at times, and revelled in their experiences as well. Asimov has recently sparked some trains of thought.

I mentioned Tolkien and Gibran, observing some of mine has the imagery or tone for which they’re known. Nothing specifically drawn from them that I can tell. But it’s hard for me to see where I’m “soaking up” influences.

Whelan’s art just seems at times to be a mirror of some of my writing. Especially his Passages and some other inanimate subjects. His perspective and imagery in general seem to be canvas incarnations of my words.

My fiction has spurred poetry and vice-versa. Several pieces, “Cried the Rune,” “The Rowan,” “Featherfall,” “Ten Gold Beads,” to name some, are interwoven in what may be an actual storyline of substance someday. But they, too, are personal reflections of me, not just fiction. The characters in my poetry, save for a very few exceptions, are real people highly modified. Untangle them and you get a solid gold cookie.