Western Voices: Arlene Corwin

Bio:
Born: Nov 8,1934. Bklyn, NY.  
Currently: working jazz pianist/singer, yoga teacher, poet. 
Residence: Sweden
Early life: singer, harpist, budding poet.  
Hofstra University graduate. 
50’s Lead role in cult musical “The Nervous Set”.
Appeared in Cassavetes “Shadows”, lead in B film “Jukebox Racket”, wrote score to “1,000 Shapes of Female”.  
60’s,70’s, 80’s Lived in Paris, Greece, Lebanon, England (TV, radio and lecturing)  
80’s to now, Sweden.  
Have published 17 books of poetry, still writing, teaching yoga & performing.



Working Through Thought-Come-To-Life

After all the time of alterations, 
Reconstruction, wooing,
Swapping, substitution, plain redoing,
One begins to see a rhythm in and out the line;
A something not to cry about, groan or complain,
For it, benign, makes for the ‘real’ of art;
Rhyme, meter in the walls, the very cell
Fulfilling which one cannot help but feel well.

Perhaps a look into thoroughness of the poetic bent
Put under microscope of strength,
Reveals endless levels, endless youth;
Embryonic possibilities which only come to birth 
When worthy poet cozies up to word and breadth.

After all the time of playing blacksmith
To the craft of scribbling, 
Not just dabbling -  
Finally, yes finally, a text without pretext
Or mixture comes to earth.
One’s said the thing one had to say
The best, if not the only way
One could - that day.


Self-Interest

Oh, so big, so mono-formed.
So easily mis- un-, de-formed
And yet infused with nothing but
you that’s there and cared for
More than anyone within your sphere.

Showing forms that seem concerned
And even empathetic 
With a pride and unearned
Self-conviction that conceals a mind cosmetic -
Hard to rid one’s selfish self of,
So well hid, this dearth of love.

Fueled and filled by all the vices,
My advice is:
Nothing,
I might have it too.


I Write To...

I’m quoting myself- a brash and vain thing.
A Facebook answer dug from ashes of awakening.
In answer to some honeyed comment, I replied,
“ I write to share, write to be read…
I write in form
From some mysterious and magic norm
Sent by conundrum’s force and source;”

I’ve frilled my answer, 
Filled my answer
All because I am a poet 
In my heart,
Not smart - besotted and bewitched
By thought through language.
Not thought-through, but thought, through word.
How I anguish over each and every turd.

Anyway to sum it up,
I send you friends, a cup of wine
Which lots think fine, and 
Which I see a hint of the divine in.
Yours devotedly, Arlene


1 comment :

  1. Absolutely wonderful poetry. Fresh and novel in approach and contents. Superb similes and metaphors and symbols that run through the thought so smooth and effortless that that the thought and its manifestation become one overwhelming experience.

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