I am hoping that The Weirding Storm, A Dragon Epic, takes off in sales. It is selling slowly, but Indra’s Net, which Ethel and I both have poems in, is already a huge success. It is published by Bennison Books, the same publisher that published The Weirding Storm in Great Britain, and currently it is number 1 in sales on amazon.com in the poetry anthology category. Deborah Bennison is a great editor! Her book featuring poets from all over the world is obviously a huge success!
Category Archives: poems
Indra’s Net a Success!
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Published Books, Thomas Davis
Bennison Books Announces Publication of Indra’s Net
Bennison Books, the publisher of my new book, The Weirding Storm, A Dragon Epic, has just released a new international anthology of poetry called Indra’s Net. Ethel is honored to have three poems in this important anthology. I was fortunate enough to have two poems accepted.
Carol Rumens, the Poetry Editor for The Guardian, one of the United Kingdom’s most important newspapers, wrote in the forward that:
The title of this anthology, Indra’s Net, was suggested by one of its poets, the late Cynthia Jobin. She explained: “Indra’s net is a metaphor for universal interconnectedness. It’s as old as ancient Sanskrit and as ‘today’ as speculative scientific cosmology. It’s what came to mind when thinking about nets and webs and interconnectedness … and jewels and poems.”
All proceeds from the anthology’s sale will be donated to the Book Bus, a “charity [that] aims to improve child literacy rates in Africa, Asia and South America by providing children with books and the inspiration to read them.”
I hope some of those who read this blog and Ethel’s and my Facebook postings will purchase what is a worthy project well worth everyone’s support.
To get more information on Indra’s Net to go to: https://bennisonbooks.com/2017/07/13/indras-net-all-profits-to-the-book-bus-charity.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Published Books, Thomas Davis
Chokecherries
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Ripe chokecherries
on the branch
remind me
of the bitterness
of winter’s coming.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Poetry’s One Language: Taliesin in New Mexico
by Thomas Davis
Taliesin walked a sparse wood.
Pink and white stones sheered into cliffs.
This was not the wild seacoast where clerics and bards warred,
declaiming words of power,
but a land as dry as Job’s tongue:
“Where shall wisdom be found?”
The bard had stood on a black rock jutting into sea-fury.
He had called mists and forest spirits,
swarming to gestures and words like ghostly raiments,
then walked through a shimmering gate into sweltering skies.
Standing below a tall, red cliff, he sent his spirit
across a dry land and walked,
feeling poetry falter in the great silence.
On a sandstone table he stopped and stared at hairy black spiders.
A thousand scuttled across the red stone in frenzy.
He could not understand spider’s movement’s language.
He could not feel poetry’s spirit ebb and flow
where no coracle boats or sailing ships plied waves.
He studied a turquoise juniper tree’s green flame
and tried to feel how such small trees could walk,
but they seemed rooted in fields of pink and white stone.
Taliesin trudged with his staff through a long day.
Sun blazed; a horned moon, waxing, rose.
The bard’s heart shuddered.
How was he to escape a land where poetry was tenuous?
Where no selkie dived beneath waves into seaweed forests?
He listened: Women’s voices elegant and wild with frenzy –
Men speaking words as strange as the landscape.
A red wolf howled beneath stars and horned moon.
A cold wind blew.
Pinyon, pine, and juniper branches danced and sang.
The bard smiled and raised arms out of his brown robe.
He spoke poetry’s one language to night sky, trees, and wind.
A black rock jutted into a foaming, wind-driven sea.
Note: The is a rewrite of a poem posted a long time ago.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
Forgiveness
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Before you come
into the wilderness
you must leave
your anger and hate
behind you.
You must open your heart
and extend your arms
before you can see
the new ground-cover plants
whose leaves feel
like a baby’s skin.
Look!
A yellow swallowtail.
She is leading us
through the shaded trees
and wants us to follow.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Uncategorized
Freedom
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
When I was young
I yearned for a pony,
a brown, bushy-maned,
fast-stepping pony:
One that I could let
have his head
and taste what freedom
really was.
When I was older,
I told everyone
I was going to marry
a man from the West
that owned a horse ranch.
Now I’m getting too old
to ride horses,
but can watch herds
of wild horses
in the West —
if they can keep
from getting caught
and made slaves out of;
they are the freest
of all horses,
like birds
who are the freest
of us all.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Spotted Pony
a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
The Weirding Storm is Published!
The Weirding Storm, A Dragon Epic has been published by Bennison Books. It is now available at amazon.com.
The U.S. Amazon address is:
The address for Bennison Books, a UK publisher, is: https://bennisonbooks.com.
I am hoping that anyone who purchases the book from Amazon, either U.S. or U.K. Amazon, will also review the book. That helps publicize it in the amazon universe.
I am really excited about this publication. Bennison Books publishes some of my favorite poets and to be part of their stable with one of the best books I have ever written gives me an euphoric feeling. I hope some of you will be willing to be transported to another world where dragons and humans still co-exist along with witches, warriors, and battles, to paraphrase Terence Winch, one of the U.S.’s greatest poets.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Published Books, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
In the Time of the Black Snake
by Thomas Davis
an irrelgular sonnet
The buffalo come stomping, snorting, blowing.
The blizzard howls like old men throwing fits
Of rage against the way their bones are creaking
Into another year, arthritis stirring
Up aches so harsh their anger steals their wits.
Snow crusts on dark hides, slows their stamping, singing
Until the universe becomes a song
Protesting how long drills drill into earth,
Into the heart of who the peoples long
To be inside the spirit of their birth,
Inside the breaths that make them who they are,
A being on the earth made from the star-
Stuff spun into the dance against the snake,
The warriors singing as they stomp and shake.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
Captured Memory
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
We are going
to a movie
in Minneapolis.
He spoke.
Brokeback Mountain
is showing,
he grinned.
A willing mother,
surrounded by a sea
of young men,
A twinkling
In his eye —
a captured memory
in a wind of thoughts.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
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