I am giving away two signed copies of my latest poetry collection, The Truth I Must Invent. You can enter on Goodreads. The giveaway ends on Feb. 23.
The Truth I Must Invent book cover.
The Truth I Must Invent is a collection of narrative and philosophical poems written in free-verse style. Employing a minimalistic approach and whimsical language, the book explores the themes of self, identity, loneliness, memory, existence, family, parenthood, disability, gratitude, and compassion.
I discovered this anomaly while exploring a Central New York library.
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates.
In this case, one little e makes a big difference, as this should be Oates, like Joyce Carol Oates or Hockey Hall of Famer Adam Oates. Not like Quaker Oats. But the little misspelling doesn’t diminish the quality of the book. Once the reader opens it, the person will get lost in the masterful storytelling and prose of JCO.
I just wanted to share that I’ve been featured in a short interview on AwesomeGang.com. You can find it here.
Also, I will be the guest on a poetry podcast at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, July 6. I will be reading selections from my latest collection, The Truth I Must Invent.
The show is Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio, hosted by Dr. Michael Anthony Ingram. Here’s the link to connect on Thursday.
Have a safe and happy Fourth of July weekend.
I’m excited to report I have a new poetry collection available. It’s entitled The Truth I Must Invent, and it was my pleasure working with publisher Akshay Sonthalia from Poets’ Choice to bring the book to fruition.
The Truth I Must Invent book cover. Cover Design by Koni Deraz; Cover Photo by Engin Akyurt; Book Design by Adil Ilyas.
You can find a print version on the publisher’s site. It’s also available on Bookshop.
The Truth I Must Invent is a collection of narrative and philosophical poems written in free-verse style. In it, I explore the themes of self, identity, loneliness, memory, existence, family, parenthood, disability, gratitude, and compassion. The work examines the conflicting web of emotions all adults face and the truths that lie in between. It also suggests that even in our darkest moments, joy and contentment can be found through resilience and a willingness to hope.
Here are a few excerpts:
Cake Mistake
Peggy made a huge mistake
when she baked a
grocery store celebration cake.
She put a D
where a T should be
in the middle of the
word CONGRATULATIONS.
The customer was pissed.
But Peggy kept silent
as the irate woman left the store
without paying for her order.
Peggy’s manager docked her pay,
and yelled at her for making
such a stupid mistake,
to which Peggy replied:
“Look, I never went to college
and there’s no spell-check when baking a cake.
And I’m sorry I screwed up, but I think that D
will taste just as sweet as a T,
so I’ll take that cake home for my kids to eat.”
Camera Angle
What would I choose
if I were given a chance
to lead a different life?
What mistakes
would I correct?
What new road
would I take?
But you can’t splice
the scenes of your life
to edit the past.
You can only point
the camera forward
and zoom into the future.
Observation After Eating Out
Pity for my son swells.
Yet I feel helpless,
Unable to intervene
To make his autism
Go away.
Our patience dwindles
As his outbursts intensify.
But love does not wane.
Instead, it grows stronger.
I have only one son.
Yes, he is different.
He is noisy and
Requires constant attention.
But I am thankful for
His presence in my life.
And who needs the quiet anyway?
©2023 Francis DiClemente
The Truth I Must Invent (Poets’ Choice)
It’s been two years since I published my last poetry collection, Outward Arrangements: Poems. To mark the anniversary, I am running a free Kindle book promotion. It starts today and ends on April 7. You can find the book here.
Outward Arrangements Cover
I recently finished Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and so many poetic passages in the book stuck with me.
This line in the Amazon description sums up the book: “Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life.”
Meditations: A New Translation Paperback by Marcus Aurelius and translated by Gregory Hays.
Here are some of my favorite passages.
Book Two: On the River Gran, Among the Quandi
17. Human life.
Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
Book Three: In Carnuntum
10. Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.
Book Seven:
22. To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, they they haven’t really hurt you.
Book Eight:
36. Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. … Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized.
44. Give yourself a gift: the present moment.
Book Nine:
13. Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.
Book Ten:
17. Continual awareness of all time and space, of the size and life span of the things around us. A grape seed in infinite space. A half twist of a corkscrew against eternity.
18. Bear in mine that everything that exists is already fraying at the edges, and in transition, subject to fragmentation and to rot. Or that everything was born to die.
Book Twelve:
2. God sees all our souls freed from their fleshly containers, stripped clean of their bark, cleansed of their grime. He grasps with his intelligence alone what was poured and channeled from himself into them. If you learn to do the same, you can avoid a great deal of distress. When you see through the flesh that covers you, will you be unsettled by clothing, mansions, celebrity—the painted sets, the costume cupboard?
I’ve been reading Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems, which includes the works Mexico City Blues, San Francisco Blues, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity and Book of Haikus. The Beat Generation novelist and author of On the Road inspired my writing of poetry many years ago. Kerouac, Langston Hughes and Charles Bukowski taught me that you didn’t need an MFA to write poetry, as their art sprang from life experiences. They showed me the power of raw and real voices and stories expressed in the form of free verse.
Kerouac’s collection has more than 600 pages of poetry, but I found much of it gibberish—stream-of-consciousness thoughts, rantings and Buddhist and Catholic references. Yet Kerouac also delivers heart-crushing beauty within the pages of this doorstop.
The poem “Hymn” appears in a section entitled Pomes All Sizes.
“Hymn”
And when you showed me the Brooklyn Bridge
in the morning,
Ah God,
And the people slipping on ice in the street,
twice,
twice,
two different people
came over, goin to work,
so earnest and tryful,
clutching their pitiful
morning Daily News
slip on the ice & fall
both inside 5 minutes
and I cried I cried
That’s when you taught me tears, Ah
God in the morning,
Ah Thee
And me leaning on the lamppost wiping
eyes,
eyes,
nobody’s know I’d cried
or woulda cared anyway
but O I saw my father
and my grandfather’s mother
and the long lines of chairs
and the tear-sitters and dead,
Ah me, I knew God You
had better plans than that
So whatever plan you have for me
Splitter of majesty
Make it short
brief
Make it snappy
Bring me home to the Eternal Mother
Today
At your service anyway,
(and until)
I also enjoyed many of the pieces in the section Book of Haikus. I believe Kerouac’s haikus do not follow the strict Japanese pattern of three lines of five, seven and five syllables.
Here are some autumn-related selections:
Late moon rising
—Frost
On the grass
Waiting for the leaves
to fall;—
There goes one!
First frost dropped
All leaves
Last night—leafsmoke
Crisp cold October morning
—the cats fighting
In the weeds
A yellow witch chewing
A cigarette,
Those Autumn leaves
Kerouac, Jack. Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems. New York: Library of America, 2012.
The book also served another purpose for me. Late last night I found a nail sticking out of the cheap wood paneling in the bedroom of my apartment. I was worried my son would catch himself on it, but I didn’t feel like going to the closet to grab my hammer. So I used the book to bang the nail back into place. Thanks Jack!
I am running a free Kindle promotion for my poetry book Outward Arrangements. It starts today and ends on September 6. Here is the direct link.
Outward Arrangements Cover
My end-of-summer reading list has ballooned with my “Currently Reading” page on Goodreads looking ridiculous with nine titles on view (although I’m actually only reading seven).
One book I’m reading is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
Meditations: A New Translation Paperback by Marcus Aurelius and translated by Gregory Hays.
Even though his words were written centuries ago, Marcus’s observations are very prescient with keen observations for the living. This passage from from Book Two: On the River Gran, Among the Quadi hit home with me.
7. Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.
It inspired a short poem that sums up my activities both at home and on the job:
Not Done Yet
My whole life
is a To Do list
that never
gets done.
And a similar line of thought:
Multitasking
In the process
of multitasking,
I feel like I’m
half-assing
everything.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, I am running a free Kindle promotion for my poetry book Outward Arrangements. It starts today and ends on April 6. Here is the direct link.
Outward Arrangements Cover
Francis DiClemente 