"Light spreads hope," says Francis Powell in First Breath...
I was sitting on my front deck yesterday afternoon reading Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul when our package of thirty copies of First Breath: 2010 Savant Anthology of Poems arrived; but to receive the package I had to pay $50.03 customs tax!
Still smarting from the unexpected expense, I eagerly opened the package and held a copy of First Breath in my hand; and, of course, I put Jung aside and immediately read First Breath from cover to cover - twice!
As I pondered my first impressions of First Breath, I smiled in agreement with myself that I was perfectly correct in saying that Savant speaks the voice of today's troubling times; but there is hope, despite Scott Mastro's cheeky little poem "Trapped in Crap." It does feel like we are "trapped in crap" today, and it can get pretty frightening and make us angry at the world; but as Zachary Oliver tells us in his poem "On Fear" - "Let it go. Anger is nothing but an aggressive expression of fear."
"Light spreads hope," says Francis Powell in his poem "Light," which we see reflected in my poem "A Bouquet of Wild Flowers," inspired by a simple gesture of love, the brightest light of all the lights that Francis Powell delineates in his poem, the same light of love that V Bright Saigal reflects in his poem "Ripples of Love," and Helen Doan in her perfect little poem "A Rose."
"A rose remains a rose, /By any other shade," says Helen Doan. There are many shades of love in First Breath, and I would like to commend our poet/publisher Daniel S. Janik for giving us the opportunity to speak for our times through Savant. As Shelly wrote in his timeless essay "On Defence of Poetry" -- "Poets are the hierophants (interpreters of sacred mysteries) of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirror of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not." As poets, we may not always understand what our Muse inspires us to write, but we have to write to give expression to the voice within that cannot be kept quiet.
Thank you fellow poets, for having your say....
Orest Stocco, author of MY UNBORN CHILD, by Savant Books and Publications.
