Natures: Solstice, Summer

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Solstice, Summer

Today at 8:21 AM EDT the axial tilt of Earth that produces our seasons brought the Sun to its northern zenith, and so gave us Solstice, the point at which the Sun, Sol, appears to pause before it gradually retreats toward the south, bringing us once again autumn and winter, and Persephone returned once again to the depths of the Underworld. For now, though, She's here among us. It's been a moment to celebrate for millenia.

The folks at Jargon Books are celebrating this year with a Solstice page and a selection of the poems from NatureS as well as the photo of Joyce Blunk's "Weeping Garden" that I've uploaded here too. Tom Meyer's crafted elegant pages, as usual, so please do go feast your eyes.

It's a pleasure and an honor to be in such good company.

Happy Summer.

And Happy Birthday to my son Bryan, who turns twenty today somewhere in the vicinity of Barnaul, in the West Siberian Lowlands, just before he leaves for the Altai Mountains. I look forward to hearing someday before too long the stories he'll be able to tell of his travels. Take care, B.; I hope you're thriving.

Update 2:35 PM: The link to the solstice page is down at the moment, so I've linked directly to the selection from NatureS for now. I'll replace that link as soon as the Solstice Page is back online.

Update 6:55 PM: The link is now fixed.

Labels: family, NatureS

Praise for NatureS

"Way back when, a literary gent by the name of E.L. Pound, from Hailey, Idaho, announced to the world: 'I divide poetry into what I can read and what I cannot read.' I am new to Jeff Davis's work but hit'll read!!! It reminds me that writers named Robert Creeley and Charles Olson once taught at Black Mountain College in Buncombe County NC - and made a difference."

~Jonathan Williams

"These poems are succinct in language and insights - no waste of words here - lovely and moving jewels of the Eleusinian luminous darkness, a magnificent shining in the dark. Poems (all of them) that are gifts, with a sassy bit of awareness to ground them all. At their best, they show an excellent eye and ear for the images and rhythms of nature - fresh, clear, as any sparkling mountain stream - and sing with that limpidity Olson was always trying to drum into my head at Black Mountain. Jeff Davis is a poet who knows what most males thirst to know - and die, not knowing. 'I am written,' Rimbaud said, and he is just that in these poems."

~Michael Rumaker

"Being human and part of nature, what we have in common with the natural world is something we gain then lose, gain then lose, over and over. The continual process of holding and letting go makes up the world we smell, we taste, we see, we feel, we hear, we share. As the custodian of this experience we have none better than Jeff Davis. He has been tireless in his practice of recording these dark and luminous encounters: the flicker of love, or the shadow of leaves in the wind."

~Thomas Meyer