(July 2004) Page 2
(July 2004) Page 2
 RICHARD JAMES VAN DER DRAAIJ
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ODE © Richard James van der Draaij |
 RICHARD VALLANCE About Richard Vallance. Born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, March 11th., 1945, Richard Vallance, H.B.A., M.L.S, is fluently bilingual in English and French, and reads Spanish and Italian, ancient Greek and Latin well. He wrote his first major poem at the age of 18, in 1963. For years, Richard wrote mainly in the field of Library and Information Science. At Chicago, in October, 1983, he won the $1,000 Data Courier Award for Excellence in Online Published Papers. Poetry: Richard has composed over 2,500 poems. In 1998, he published his first full book of poetry, A Quilt of Sonnets: Forty Four Familiar Poems, Ottawa: Providence Road Press, © 1998. 56 pp. ISBN 1-896243-07-x. In February, 2001, Richard founded his first poetry discussion group, Describe Adonis, for sonneteers. All of Richard's poetry groups have now been transferred to Smartgroups (UK), under the banner The New Pleiades = la nouvelle Pléiade. Richard's world class poetry page is Poesie’s laissez-faire Faire Foire, which showcases over 40 poets worldwide. PLFFF features sonnets, haiku, contemporary and historical poetry, and grants the monthly Prix laissez-faire Faire Foire Award . PLFFF is a member of Phenomenal Men of The Web: Arts & Humanities. Richard is the Editor of 3 Canadian poetry E-Zines, accessible here, Poetry Journals. Since September, 2001, Richard has been the poetry reviewer for Poetry Life and Times, which features the monthly Vallance Review. He is also regular contributor to the same E-Zine. Richard is also often featured with the U.S. Amerindian E-Zine, Autumn Leaves and in the US print poetry journal, The Neovictorian/Cochlea (Madison, Wisconsin). CD-ROM Books: 1. 10 of Richard's poems were included in Millennium Dawn, Kedco Studios Press, Las Vegas, NV, © 2002 ISBN 1-878431-38-2. CONTACT: Richard Vallance (Coolgoose.ca) |
WHEN IS APOCALYPSE? © Richard Vallance 2004My Carousel Home is:
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Jan Sand in New York
JAN SAND, poet and illustrator from New York (now residing in Helsinki), is a regular contributor to Poetry Life & Times and the newsgroup alt.arts.poetry.comments. A great deal of his work is about animals, or science fiction. Recently Jan was published by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press, on their latest CD ROM e-book, "A Way With Words (Poetry Real and Surreal), which also includes complete books by Dale Houstman, Sara L. Russell and Keith Gabriel Hendricks. Jan's illustrated book on the CD is called "Wild Figments And Odd Conjectures", which is also sold separately, in a limited-edition "single" CD.
To see an illustrated article about Jan's poems, visit the November '98 issue of Poetry Life & Times, and scroll down past the Editor's Letter. He also has his own poetry pages on Charlotte's Web at Artvilla.
Were my hair green grass, My bones hard stones, My eyes blue skies Behind which soft white thoughts Could move on vagrant winds, If I accepted birth from stellar dust Boiled from hell’s cauldrons, Then would I know myself as true child Of this golden star which swings, As if on magic string, On our path through galactic whirl. But we estrange ourselves. We must concede Our bones are tiger bones, mice bones, Bones of hummingbirds, bones, of slow submersibles That lurk the seas of night. This skin could grow hair or scales or feathers To fly the hurricane, swim warm seas Through coral glories. Our eyes can now probe the dust of Mars, Stare at turbulence from submarine volcanic jets, The feral hawk sits on our shoulder, The grinning frog, the ghostly jellyfish, the buzzing wasp And the spirit of those gigantic earth shaking predators Trail our path. We are brother to the sequoia, sister to the butterfly, Father to those fire spitting entities That will see the stars. We are family. ELEPHANTS © Jan Sand
The benefits of reaching, Touch, To be significant of Much Must process through machineries of Words. Language clockwork regulates the Way Bizarre phenomena encountered in a Day Can be domesticated, netted like wild Birds. But, like the elephant read by men as Braille, We frequently miscomprehend and Fail To get the total sense of things quite Right. Our elephants which we create, set Free Can be clumsy things, set in wild Spree, Smashing, in stampede, all else of Worth, Raging through the pliant minds of Earth To smash the Sun, release horrendous Night. THE CALL © Jan Sand
The cell phone clanged To announce a friend to tell About a laughing gull that banged Its head against her window and fell. “What can I do?”, she cried, And I wondered what to say. “Do you know-?” ,”No, no.”, I denied. “I know nothing in that way.” She hung up in desperation And I sat, stunned and alone. Somewhere, a gull's last exhalation, Its eyes turning to black stone.
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