Landmass And Other Poems
Artwork and Bardic Poetry Book by Joseph S. Plum
Welcome:
Greetings and welcome to American Bardic Poet.
“fire gone back to ash draws flame from lighted eyes”
When the poet and I sat down to put together the book “Landmass And Other Poems,” we needed cover art to match the title poem. I suggested that Dad use one of his own paintings for the book cover. (This was before he took up painting again in his 70s.)
“All my paintings are gone,” he said.
“Not all of them,” I answered.
When I was a child, I witnessed the poet burn his paintings en masse, the curved landscapes and subtle figures forming a giant bonfire out on the remote Iowa hill where we lived. I remember the flames. I remember the colors melting into each other. I remember large canvases full of painted bees becoming smoke. I remember the portraits on thick paper curling, the faces wrinkling in upon themselves.
What the poet did not know is that his daughter reached into the fire and pulled out a painting. I saved one and hid it for all these years.
Now it’s the cover of Dad’s book, “Landmass and Other Poems.”
Good journey,
(The poet’s daughter.)
landmass (an excerpt)
water fallen cold
turns tears to ice from inside,
fire gone back to ash
draws flame from lighted eyes,
sleeping in the etheric overlap
waiting out the complex collapse,
watching as the eons pass,
the constructive soul
cannot help but surpass
what each mind leaves behind
in any attempt to grasp
what reason will define as time.
Read about the poet and the bees here.
Read my post regarding the punctuation and editing of the poems here.
Read the poem, “The Sun Has Traveled Well” here.
🙏🏼 Thank you for gathering here. May it be a blessing. 🙏🏼
About the Poet
Joseph S. Plum is a poet in the bardic tradition. He lives off-grid in rural Iowa and composes his unique chant-like oral poetry for fascinated audiences around the world. Joe has over 16 hours of oral poetry memorized in his head. He pulls from this collection of rhyming lines to compose poems according to the energy of the audience listening. Joe does all of this without writing the poems down on paper or holding any notes.
Joe’s daughter, Emily Lupita, typed up his poems over the years and launched Dreaming Deer Press to publish his work. He now has nine poetry books for sale on Amazon that can be purchased by clicking here or searching “Joseph S. Plum” books.
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