Circling Around Our Times, Our Culture

By Arlene Corwin

These are critical times some would say self-caused and reaping, times. Rickety, dangerous - but on the other hand, a world loaded with gifts and potential. Its a fight between the goodies and the baddies, the flux within all of us.
Circling Round Our Times, Our Culture addresses the whole with a sharp eye. It makes you sting, cry, go Oh yeah, I knew that! It makes you question yourself. After all, You are our times and culture! I dont see anything you dont see. Im just here to prick you in form and rhythm. says Ms. Corwin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469154244

Arlene Corwin

Arlene Corwin is a professional jazz singer/pianist, yoga practitioner of some 40 years, and author of 11 previous books, each circling round some singular aspect of life. A graduate of the High School of Music & Art and Hofstra University, she lives, performs and teaches in Sweden.

Book preview

Circling

’Round Our Times,

Our Culture

6105.jpg

Arlene Corwin

Copyright © 2012 by Arlene Corwin.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4691-5423-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-5424-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Cover design: Nelson Zancato

Back cover photo: Ulf Magnusson

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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108606

Contents

Preface to Circling ’Round Our Times, Our Culture

A Couple Of Bangs

A Dangerous Place

A Funny Little Calculation

A la Jane Austin

Addictions

After Four Airplane

Crashes & Two Trains

After The News

Age Fixated

All At The Same Time

All Pulsing Heartbeats Love Life

All the Universes

And Their Thoughts

All This Talent

Always Connected And Available

Always On His Way

And Tracks Of Deer

Are In The Grass

Apocalypse The Friend

Apples

Arctic Ice Sheets

Arlene’s Extra Poem

As Of…

Back From Brooklyn

Bedtime Observation

Blood On The Fabric

Bondage of Accessories

Bonuses & Politicians

Bridges, Walls & Limitation

Bureaucratic Monsters

Business As Usual

Calamity On Television

Clearly Not Enough

Climate Change: A Shift Observed

Clover Of Transformation

Coming Out of Hesitation

Communication Problems

Creation In Your Generation

Dear Mr. Obama

Death Of The Foreign Minister

De-loading

Do You Really Want to

Peel Your Face?

(A Reflection On Face Peeling)

Does Anyone Live

Long In Vegas?

Empire Builder—Prototype

Every Day That Passes

Every Six Years

Everybody’s Making Cd’s

Everybody’s Writing Books

Everything Is A Clock

First Poem Of ‘Ninety-Four

Form Without Content

Four Airplane Two

Train Crashes Later

From The Expression Life

Is A Bitch

Frustrations Of Frank Zappa

Global Situation

Gone In A Minute

Graduation Gift To Two Siblings

Groan Says The Tree

Haiku George

Happy New Year

Have I Any More Tears?

History

Hitler

Holocaust Conference:

Stockholm 2000

How Not To Save Money

How Sexist Can You Get?

How To Become That Way

I Am The Past

I Don’t Really Want

To Forget This

I Don’t Watch Nature

I Like To Mention My Friends

I Saw A Fire I Saw

The Vain Illusion

I See Through Everything

I Will Not Call It Death

If Everyone Were Honest

If The System Doesn’t Work

If You Do The Slightest

Thing Wrong

(They’re There Waiting)

Impulsion

In Our Time

In The Long Run

Inclusive/Exclusive

Influence

Injuries & Disappearances

It’s Good To Remember

Jurassic Park Unknown

Just Do It

Just For The Books

Last Call For Alcohol

Let The Sorting Take Place

Life’s Work

Listening To A Call-In

Madrid Tragedy

Major Power Outrage

Make Loneliness Your Friend

Manipulated

Mediocre People Are Always

At Their Best

Mining The Moon

Mission

Moment Of Silence

More Greed

My Mother Tongue

My New Phase

My Specialty Is Me

My Watch Stopped

My Friend Nelson

In The Fast Lane

Myth Of The House

Nail Filing

Naked Is Quicker

Negative News

No System Works

Nobody Wins In A War

Not Everything Concerns You

Not Immune

Not Made To Multi-Task

Notes from the Overground: Thoughts On Touring

Nothing Is Sacred Anymore

Off The Hook

Olympic Games Nineteen Ninety Sex,

On Those Who Borrow

One Day They’ll Say

One Day They’ll Say… Part 2

One More Villain Gone

One Password Is Enough

Only The Lonely

Use The Telephone

Our Age’s Jumble

Our Age’s Jumble

Our Scandals, Our Rascals

Our Times, Our Culture

Out In Town

Out Of Business

Planet Crisis

Platinum Blonde Conundrum

Plenty of Warning

Poet’s Protest

Pointless

Profit First #1

Profit #2

Propaganda

Quieter World

Record Keeper

Reflection On Fame

Remains 2099

Risk Taker

Second Hand Store

Show Business

Sitting On A Lawn

Some Societies Don’t Succeed

And Die Out

Stereophonic Truth

Stick-In-The-Mud

Sticky Blood

Stuck In A Soap Opera

Suffering For Society

Talent Helps

Test of Faith

Thank You, But…

The American Way Of Life

The Chain

The Cog

The Crazy Leaders of Burma

The Disposable Razorblade

The Doped Olympics

The Industry of Experience

The Jew

The Long, Long Sundays

Facing Time #1

The Long, Long Sundays

Facing Time #2

The Magic Ray

The Man Who Killed His Child

The Noble Prize

The Novelist

The Only Thing That Lives

The People Are Never

The System

The Planet That Feels Sick

The Poem Is A Life

The Psyche Of The Culture

The Pyramid

The Sale

The Trial

The War

The War Is Over?

The Weather

The Witnesses

The Wobbling Top Of Fame

There Is No They

There Is No

Weather Out In Space

There Is Nothing New

They Want My Money

Things

Thinking

This Is War

Too Many Names

Tsumani Expected

Twelve Days Into The War

Twenty Minutes From New York

Unavoidable Scarring

And Healing

Vain & Personal

Volcanoes

Waiting For Spring #1

Waiting For Spring #2

War Book #1

War Book #2

Was Neitzsche Right?

Watching Hubble

We’ve Cancelled The Papers

We’ve Fished The Fuck Out

Of The Sea

We’ve Reached An Edge

Weapons #1

Weapons #2

What Is Money For?

What’s To Be In ‘93?

When The Cyclic Hour Strikes

Where Is The Winning Then?

Whistling In The Wind

Who’da Thought?

Winter Surprised Us

Wish For A New President

This Work In Progress

World Telepathy

Zope

Preface to Circling ’Round Our Times, Our Culture

9.22.2011

I must remind myself to remind you that all the poetry is based on real events, observed and reacted to.

9.28.2011

I never thought that I, of all people, writing about love and nature, God and wrinkles, vanity, creativity and thinking would discover that I’d formulated over two hundred poetic thoughts directed at global goings on. It seems I take in more than I realize.

As I read it over, Circling ’Round Our Times, Our Culture seems to concern itself with a greed→corruption→downfall syndrome. Observing and reacting, I’m not sure I offer much in the way of cure except by inference. But inference is didactic enough. We can find out what to do by seeing the wrongs of what not to do. Also I like to think that the poems stand by themselves.

There is a Sanskrit phrase neti-neti. It means not this, not that: reaching truths by pushing non-truths out of the way. The process of elimination. We do it all the time.

9.29.2011

In general, there are only two things I wish for: that the reader can identify with the theme; that the reader appreciates the construction or humor or irony, sees levels, nuances. The poetry is visual—there are puns only the eye can understand. The poetry is aural: puns fun of sound, one phrase building on another. Small details make the whole. What a miracle if writer and reader marry on these levels.

The mind is quirky. One wants the reader to notice and like that. Its development is not sequential. One writes about… where one is at the moment.

10.8.2011

As you may notice, I write in spurts. The thoughts must be running around my head unconsciously. They seem to come to the surface when they will. Therefore, I hope the reader understands the higgledy-piggledy coming together of the preface. In the end there is a preface that says what I want to say to you in preparation of reading.

1.29.2011

This collection is possibly the last I might have chosen to publish in my desire to get my poetry out into the world. But these latest days—revolutions in the Middle East, failing countries in the European Union, stolen billions, pirates, fundamentalism, anomalous weather—seem to have pushed Our Times… to the forefront.

Going on my underlying principle—that there is a cover for ever pot—I’ve decided to publish the collection.

I’ve always considered myself apolitical. But eyes have I, and ears—to read, see, hear and listen. How can I not react? Even detached observation evokes reaction. And when I react I write. And when I write, I come to conclusions—or don’t—itself is a conclusion of sorts. At any rate, the results have been x number of poems which I early on called Our Times, Our Culture.

Instead of sitting in the cyberspace of files and folders, or printed out on A4 paper in collected piles around the house, it may be a help. Propaganda it is not.

They are observations, subjective and probably flawed—but poetry.

10.9.2011

As I edit and collate I’m beginning to appreciate a darkness in the collection. When Bud Kauderer, my friend of 58 years and former editor of the Annapolis newspaper generously offered to go through the collection with his sharp eye and straightforward suggestions, he noticed this darkness, which I quickly denied. I know longer deny it. He was right. All I can do is defend the darkness, realizing